Core 78 projects seem on a hiatus

[Snod Blatter]

Looks like there are a couple more that are still down, for classic Core 78 Uniprocessors

This was up yesterday but seems to be down again today for at least the past 7 hours. Either that or Stanford have finally run out of Core 78 WUs! Of course if Pentium Ms could get core A4 WUs I wouldn't be here complaining..

CoreA4 requires support for SSE2.

[7im]

Then you missed the news blog post saying that core 78 WUs would continue to be around for quite a while.

[bruce]

The biggest difference between Core_78 and Core_a4 is that a4 requires SSE2. I'm not sure how the client detects which CPUs have SSE2 and which do not but with all the CPUs out there and very few easy ways to classify them, it's not surprising that the M may be mis-classified.

[Snod Blatter]

Then you missed the news blog post saying that core 78 WUs would continue to be around for quite a while.

I saw that, but then I was here in February when Pentium Ms couldn't get work either - some fiddling was needed to "release" core 78 WUs to the Ms. I wonder if we have now processed all of these and have run out again.. Odd that it would happen just after this maintenance though. Perhaps the fiddling has been reversed?

bruce - What does it take to get the M reclassified? Would anyone be bothered enough with such an old (and, I suppose, now rare) CPU?

[bruce]

bruce - What does it take to get the M reclassified? Would anyone be bothered enough with such an old (and, I suppose, now rare) CPU?

I think you're right. It's not likely to happen.

[7im]

Pentium M architecture is correctly detected as a Pentium III class system. P Ms are an anomoly. They are the only PIII with SSE2 support. All others do not have that. The client does not currently have the hardware detection abilities to distinguish this rogue processor from all the rest.

[GreyWhiskers]

I also have a Pentium M (740 @ 1.733 MHz) that has had a hard time getting Core 78 work units lately. It's not much of a performer - getting about 123 ppd, day in and day out.

This is what is being logged, for about the last 16 hours (since about 0300Z 2013-08-30):
17:03:43:WU00:FS01:Connecting to assign4.stanford.edu:80
17:03:43:WU00:FS01:News: Welcome to Folding@Home
17:03:43:WARNING:WU00:FS01:Failed to get assignment from 'assign4.stanford.edu:80': Empty work server assignment
17:03:43:ERROR:WU00:FS01:Exception: Could not get an assignment

This CPU is fully capable of running with SSE2 (see the stuff in quote box from a couple of sources). In fact, when I was running both the Pentium 4/HT at 3.2 GHz and the Pentium M, with 2GB RAM each, and when both were getting Core 78 work units, the Pentium M often performed on a given project faster than one thread of the Pentium 4/HT.

But, then the Pentium 4/HT started getting Core A3 and A4 work units, but the Pent M didn't.

Well, as users we just want to know what Stanford's game plan will be on this. If they have run out of Core 78s and aren't likely to have any more, then a current announcement to that effect would be helpful. I'll just stop trying to fold with this old laptop and save the power.

Intel Pentium M 740
The Pentium M 740 has been tested to perform up to approximately 7,400 MIPS and 3.9 GFLOPS (using SSE2). http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm? ... 008&page=4
Frequency: 1733 MHz
Bus speed: 533 MHz
Clock multiplier: 13
Microarchitecture Mobile
Processor core ? Dothan
Data width 32 bit
The number of cores 1
The number of threads 1
Floating Point Unit Integrated
Level 1 cache size: 32 KB instruction cache
32 KB write-back data cache
Level 2 cache size: 2 MB
Multiprocessing Uniprocessor
Features
◦ MMX instructions
◦ SSE / Streaming SIMD Extensions
◦ SSE2 / Streaming SIMD Extensions 2
◦ NX / XD / Execute disable bit ?

[7im]

Ya, I just said that.

They are the only PIII with SSE2 support.

It has also been posted several times the Work Servers with Core_78 work units are still offline. Your request for an announcement was already granted.

[GreyWhiskers]

Yes - the current announcement from last week, for those others who hadn't seen it: Reminder about aging cores (eg Core11, Core78)

[7im]

Yes - the current announcement from last week, for those others who hadn't seen it: Reminder about aging cores (eg Core11, Core78)

Nope. That has nothing to do with this announcement: UPDATE 3: Planned server room maintenance: Monday, August 26

Nor the many forum posts stating the Classic Work Servers are still down. Or that you could see the many downed servers yourself on the Server Status page.

[GreyWhiskers]

The Core 78 projects seem on a hiatus at the moment. The last one I processed on my Pentium M laptop downloaded on Aug 28 - almost 2 weeks ago. Checking http://fah-web.stanford.edu/psummary.html this morning, none of the Core 78 projects that I have seen in the last couple of years are present:
6871
6872
6888
6891 --> The last Core 78 downloaded on 8/28/2013 at 8:52pm Stanford time
6892
6894
6896
6897

The status of the work server that all of these came from seems to reflect that it probably has nothing to serve:
171.67.108.53 VSP13 lin5 classic full Reject

Work server detailed stats show that this server hasn't been in "accept" mode since Aug 29th.

From: Reminder about aging cores (eg Core11, Core78) on August 23, 2013

This is the eventual fate for all cores, but is most certainly an issue sooner for certain cores, especially cores11 and 78. While we don't have any specific end dates for either, we'd like to remind donors that those cores are reaching "end of life" status, and when they are retired, certain older hardware (eg CPUs that don't support SSE2 or older GPUs) won't be supported by FAH.

The bottom line is that we're working to delay that as long as possible, but this post is a heads up that our support of those cores won't last a lot longer. If I had to guess, I'd say probably within a year or so they would be retired, maybe 2 years if the existing projects need additional data.

As always, we'll give donors more information as we know it and try to give a more specific end date when we know it.

[7im]

The news reminder has nothing to do with the server maintenance, as already stated before. The same servers that were down after the maintenance are still down, as you noted in your ealier posts in other topics about this same maintenance issue. We don't need multiple threads on the same topic.

Edit by Mod: Two such topics merged.

[Ossprey]

I have a Dell PE6600 with 4x 3ghz Xeons and I keep getting this same error ERROR:WU00:FS01:Exception: 10001: Server responded: HTTP_FORBIDDEN
I thought it was my firewall
When am I going to get work units??

[7im]

Hello Ossprey, welcome to the forum.

What client version and client type is on the Dell server?

There is no ETA stated for when UNI client core_78 work will return. Your server should be able to get SMP work units.

[somata]

bruce - What does it take to get the M reclassified? Would anyone be bothered enough with such an old (and, I suppose, now rare) CPU?

I think you're right. It's not likely to happen.

That's rather unfortunate considering they shouldn't be excluded in the first place. If the FaH CPU feature detection was properly implemented they wouldn't have to do anything special for the Pentium-M, just see if the CPUID instruction reports SSE2 compatibility and you're done. Likewise, I feel this is a legitimate bug that should be addressed, especially given how easily this issue could be rectified.