Bonus for A4 projects; upgrade to v6.34/v7!

[Jesse_V]

There's a blog post out, introducing an upcoming additional bonus for projects based on the A4 Fahcore, as an incentive to get donors to update their clients. I hope the word spreads onto other F@h forums.

http://folding.typepad.com/news/2012/07 ... oject.html

We've noticed a significant number of high priority projects are trailing behind existing projects. Newer projects are aimed at interpreting and guiding experiments where the full power of Folding@home (F@h) is essential to continue pushing the boundaries of scientific and medical discoveries.

The main cause of this issue is the core version needed to run these simulations. Many of our newer SMP projects use the A4 core, which has several scientific advancements, while existing projects use the still important A3 core. The A4 core is not compatible with Clients below version 6.34 and many donors are still running these older Client versions.

This presents an opportunity to encourage people to donate their cycles towards these vital A4 projects. To emphasize the scientific importance of these work units, we are boosting the base points of all A4 work units by 10% when uploaded (Note that this bonus will not be reported by V7 or by the 3rd party applications which project PPD but the points will appear when your statistics are credited). The quick return bonuses will be calculated on top of the increased base points. This will start on Monday July 23, 2012, and we will keep this 10% bonus in effect for at least 3 months as a trial period, but plan to keep it longer, as needed.

To participate, donors should be running a recent version of the F@h Client. We strongly encourage Windows users to update to the much improved V7 Client. Although F@h Client v6.34 or newer is sufficient to participate for any supported operating system. Please note the Linux and OSX V7 Clients are a work in progress and feedback is welcomed.

v7 Clients: Windows/Linux: Visit our home page, http://folding.stanford.edu/English/HomePage Mac OSX: v7 for OSX is still in testing. For a beta copy: https://fah-web.stanford.edu/projects/F ... etaRelease

Old v6.34+ Clients Windows/Linux: http://folding.stanford.edu/English/DownloadWinOther

[jimerickson]

YAY!!

[Meh_Lay_Lay]

lol that's good I guess, but why would it be trailing behind? I thought most people do SMP folding
I don't care much for my points, and it only starts after the 23rd T.T (public exams for university coming out on the 20th, I might have left this world by then D: lol)

[PinHead]

No hard facts yet, but I've been running some SMP A4's and they do pretty well against the A3 SMP's.

Just Saying ...

[Jesse_V]

lol that's good I guess, but why would it be trailing behind? I thought most people do SMP folding
I don't care much for my points, and it only starts after the 23rd T.T (public exams for university coming out on the 20th, I might have left this world by then D: lol)

My interpretation is that the post is saying "stop running clients < 6.34!" All clients are valuable.

Good luck with finals. I know the feeling. There should be a FreeTime@home project, where bored people contribute their free time to college students during times of need.

No hard facts yet, but I've been running some SMP A4's and they do pretty well against the A3 SMP's.

Just Saying ...

The points change is upcoming, and is applied on July 23rd. Not here yet!
It's a 10% increase in base points, and then the QRB is applied. Would that translate to a 10% increase in the end? I'm not sure.

[Jonazz]

I like this idea. I only wonder if the people who run these old clients will find out about this? If they visited the forum, they probably would have already upgraded.

Oh, I guess this isn't for unicore projects as well I guess?

[Meh_Lay_Lay]

(public exams for university coming out on the 20th, I might have left this world by then D: lol)

woops, I meant the results are coming out.
By the way, do I need to use the "advanced" flags or "beta" or whatever? I really don't know what they do, but in which way should I have it so that it contributes more?

[Jonazz]

Just run the V7 client so you get both A3 AND A4 projects. The older versions of F@H SMP only get A3 WU's.

[Joe_H]

Oh, I guess this isn't for unicore projects as well I guess?

The announcement just says the bonus is going to be for all A4 WU's, no distinction was made between those folded as SMP vs. uniprocessor. Either way the A4 core requires at least 6.34 as a client.

As an OS X folder I have already gone to the V7 beta. But I am using it with OS X 10.6. I can't recommend it to persons running an earlier version of the OS, it does not work at all. For later versions of the OS there are major known bugs that also make it a non-recommendable client. The rest of the OS X folders are stuck with using 6.29, that can not even run most A3 core WU's as they require a newer core that is available only for Linux and Windows.

[Grandpa_01]

This is pretty much aimed at Windows users since v7 does not work especially well on other OS. Windows users are by far the largest group of folders out there and will make the greatest amount of difference. I really should not say that v7 does not work well on other OS because it does work just as well on Linux as it does on Windows you just can not get it to install properly on all versions of Linux last I heard it was working on Ubuntu 11.10 though.

Any way if every body went to v7 with the way the servers are currently set up other projects would suffer.

[7im]

As the news says, this is aimed at whomever is running older clients. Period. The fact that the upgrade path for various operating systems is very different has no effect on the decision to start this bonus. If it did, PG would have waited until V7 was more finished for linux and macs.

[Jonazz]

Any way if every body went to v7 with the way the servers are currently set up other projects would suffer.

Why? If everyone ran the newwest versions the A3 and A4 projects would be divided the way it suits the science best, there wouldn't be a backlog of A4 smp clients.

This also explains why I never get an influenza project using V7, too many other people are folding them!

[Jesse_V]

(public exams for university coming out on the 20th, I might have left this world by then D: lol)

woops, I meant the results are coming out.
By the way, do I need to use the "advanced" flags or "beta" or whatever? I really don't know what they do, but in which way should I have it so that it contributes more?

If you don't know what they do, don't use them! They indicate where you'd like to be in F@h's WU quality control process, but I recommend that you learn more about them before applying either flag. They can take a certain level of responsibility and caution.

You shouldn't need the flag to get this a4 bonus. Just run the latest client that they recommend for your OS and things should be fine.

[bruce]

lol that's good I guess, but why would it be trailing behind? I thought most people do SMP folding

That's probably true, but I don't have any actual statistics. Remember that the Pande Group has some ability to manage priorities and Donors make choices, too, often intentionally but sometimes without knowing it. Those who run SMP on V5 or early V6 have (probably unintentionally) excluded A4 assignments. At least in part, this policy is aimed at them.

I only wonder if the people who run these old clients will find out about this? If they visited the forum, they probably would have already upgraded.

FAH does have a problem communicating with everyone who has an old client. I suppose there is a group of people who installed V5 or early V6 who run a stable client that they have no reason to pay any attention to. They're probably also the same people who pay little attention to team activities and/or competition for points. For the rest of us, I'm quite certain that the team forums will spread the information. The whole point of the announcement is to balance assignments somewhat differently and certainly the mixture of WUs being processed will shift in the right direction, though nobody can say how far it will shift.

Oh, I guess this isn't for unicore projects as well I guess?

Not true, as already mentioned. If your unicore machine is getting only FahCore_78 assignments it doesn't apply to you just like if you're currently getting only _A3 assignments on SMP.

I have run many different clients on many different clients (even including V7 on OS-X, though I agree that it's not ready for widespread distribution. Assignments for A4 do work, however if you happen to have trouble getting other assignments and you have a version of OS-X that it runs on).

This is pretty much aimed at Windows users since v7 does not work especially well on other OS. Windows users are by far the largest group of folders out there and will make the greatest amount of difference.

Certainly Windows is the largest group so in one sense FAH is aimed at Windows but that's not really not a fair statement. It's also aimed at Linux (and will be aimed at OS-X "soon"). If you're a Linux user with one of the common distros, V7 works fine, but supporting every possible Distro and every possible Linux version does have some limitations. I run V7 on Ubuntu and have had no problems at all.

Any way if every body went to v7 with the way the servers are currently set up other projects would suffer.

Please give some facts to support that statement. From everything I know, there's no foundation for that statement and it's not true.

[Meh_Lay_Lay]

If you don't know what they do, don't use them! They indicate where you'd like to be in F@h's WU quality control process, but I recommend that you learn more about them before applying either flag. They can take a certain level of responsibility and caution.

Ok, well where could I start learning a little on how those work? Or do I need to constantly be very attentive to use them? *gasp* quick! I've only got a bit more than 24 hours until doomsday to learn.