FahCores Named as Hex Values?

[compdewd]

Hello all! Here is my curiosity taking precedence again! I doubt anyone will know the answer to this question but I figured I'd give it a shot.

Anyway, I noticed that in the v7 client (in advanced mode anyway), under FahCore, the core is denoted as a hexadecimal value. I looked up on fahwiki (http://fahwiki.net/index.php/Cores) if any other cores weren't a hex value and it seems like they could all fit under that category. So I was wondering why this is? Is there a programming reason for this? Is this related to the MD5 sums that are mentioned later in the link?

Thanks ahead of time for posting! (whether you have the answer or not )

[bruce]

No, it's not related to the MD5 sum. They're simply identifiers.

When a WU is assigned and downloaded, it contains information about which FahCore is needed to process it. Apparently that's one Byte of data that summons the right core plus some additional information that says it has to be at least version x.xx. (I don't know how that's encoded.)

The projects to develop SMP cores were started in the following order: A1, A2, A3, A4, A5 .... although A5 was released to the public before A4. Each one of those cores has progressed through a number of version numbers, so in my book, the "A" simply identifies the family of GROMACS SMP cores.

[compdewd]

Okay so 1 byte equates to network transfer efficiency I presume. And it makes sense that it is written out it hexadecimal notation since ASCII for 0xa4 = ¤, which is clearly unable to be easily referenced Thanks for replying, Bruce!