Change in BA requirements

[Haitch]

I think you are spot on here... smp will not receive any more attention other than what is out there now with the other folders.

What I do see is a move away from FAH into other DC projects as this is just a wrong decision all the way around and alienates those seeking to help.

I agree this will backfire completely. However, I'm just one voice.

Well another voice says my three 4P Hex core boxes will be moving onto some other project - not going to run them just for SMP, the PPD/$ is not worth it for me.

H.

[Jesse_V]

I think you are spot on here... smp will not receive any more attention other than what is out there now with the other folders.

What I do see is a move away from FAH into other DC projects as this is just a wrong decision all the way around and alienates those seeking to help.

I agree this will backfire completely. However, I'm just one voice.

Well another voice says my three 4P Hex core boxes will be moving onto some other project - not going to run them just for SMP, the PPD/$ is not worth it for me.

H.

That's a shame. A ton of scientific work for Folding@home gets done with extremely high-end CPUs such as yours. Dr. Kasson wants to focus the bigadv program, that's his call. If I owned a machine such as yours, I would keep running SMP work. There's plenty of F@h scientific work that has yet to be completed and SMP is a big part of accomplishing that science, and that's the bigger picture. PPD is just a by-product of that, calculated from a formula. Personally I care more about getting science done efficiently however I can for Folding@home, and I'm happy with whatever tier I land in. PPD is not that big of a deal for me, it's just a number and is almost never mentioned in any of the resulting scientific papers. The science is.

[kerryd]

I'm just hoping it'll be 32 threads and not 32 cores, would be pretty sad if my dual Xeon E5-2650's couldn't make the deadlines.

You said the magic word (DEADLINE) we all know core count does not matter when it comes to speed of return. As Kasson said they currently do not have any better way to determine what is capable of running bigadv WU's. By the way fah has no way to determine the difference between a core count and thread count a 8 core 16 thread CPU is seen as a 16 core CPU.

A problem I do see though is that most of the rigs they are eliminating will not go to smp they will just start collecting dust in some obscure corner of a persons house because smp does not pay well enough to justify running them so I have a feeling this may backfire but I may be wrong.

Hopefully Peter will elaborate a little on the deadlines so we will know what wiil make it and what will not make it.

I think you are spot on here... smp will not receive any more attention other than what is out there now with the other folders.

What I do see is a move away from FAH into other DC projects as this is just a wrong decision all the way around and alienates those seeking to help.

I agree this will backfire completely. However, I'm just one voice.

Its all ready backfiring I deleted wu's on both my 4p's stopped gpu folding. Both my 4p's are less then 5 moths old and where bought to fold, now I will not even be able to sell them. Way I look at it why wait , I can put the $170 it cost to run them a month to a better use and its sure not smp's folding.

[P5-133XL]

Well another voice says my three 4P Hex core boxes will be moving onto some other project - not going to run them just for SMP, the PPD/$ is not worth it for me.

H.

Your call, you get to decide what motivates your actions on your machines. If some other project fits your goals better than folding then their gain, our loss.

Since points have no intrinsic value other than competition within F@H, then I question the value of PPD/$ as a scale to compare different DC projects. What other project can give you a better PPD/$ scale especially considering whatever project you change to you'll be starting your points at zero?

[Bill1024]

1,000,000,000,000 points and a dollar fifty will only get you a cup of coffee.
But having a computer that did 150k PPD that now will only do 60k PPD for the same cost to run. Doesn't sound like a good deal to me.
Folks spend thousands of dollars on hardware and hundreds or even thousands a year in electricity, this is the thanks we get? 2 to 4 months notice, that's it
The SMP work units point value took a hit a while ago. I had 2 AMD phenomII 1045T @ 3.6ghz that got 18k PPD 15-20 avg 18k
Now those two phenoms only get 10k PPD. Now take one or two cores to keep a GPU loaded up, that's down to 4 cores that nets 5-7k PPD. 6 core CPU getting 5k PPD? Really?
Right there so many stopped doing SMP for that exact reason. There are tons of CPUs sitting idle that could fold SMP that aren't.
I understand advances in hardware and that bigadv was meant for the powerful servers to do, and people with 4 real + 4 hyper were doing bigadv.
And the change a couple years ago was done to halt that, I get it.
Why not set bigadv at 24 cores,cut the return time a few hours and up the PPD for regular SMP?
Then that way some smaller servers stay folding SMP if the points are increased.
Giving more points for regular SMP lwill not cost PG a dime, and it may make some folders happy and they may stay with FAH.

There are quite a few switching to crunching on the grid, this time people are mad, not just unhappy, caveat folder.

[HaloJones]

I think Bill1024 has a very valid point about reduced SMP points. I have a 2600K that gets half what it used to and my other CPU aren't folding at all anymore.

[powerarmour]

It's hard to say what is equal work for equal points though, I'd guess the SMP was adjusted to be more comparable to the work GPU puts out which is fair enough, but I think the net result is that it does make SMP a bit redundant for a competitive donor.

Now BA has raised minimum requirements, I can't see why those competitive donors would want to keep running an older server just for SMP, they may as well build a multi-GPU box, which would unfortunately affect the SMP work overall I'd imagine. I suppose once everything shifts to OpenCL also, CPU's will drop even further down the food chain as they currently don't perform quite so well with that API either (comparative to GPU's that is).

[ChristianVirtual]

Without having done any simulation on the effect:

double the core requirement for BA could be accompanied with doubling the k-factor for regular CPU; with the non-linear effect this could keep the high-end folding rigs in the game.

It would also set a mark for the importance of science produced.

[Haitch]

Well another voice says my three 4P Hex core boxes will be moving onto some other project - not going to run them just for SMP, the PPD/$ is not worth it for me.

H.

Your call, you get to decide what motivates your actions on your machines. If some other project fits your goals better than folding then their gain, our loss.

Since points have no intrinsic value other than competition within F@H, then I question the value of PPD/$ as a scale to compare different DC projects.

Points have no intrinsic value, but they do have a motivational value, and this move is cutting my motivation to fold by two thirds. That sort of change is enough me to take the time, effort and $200/month power bill elsewhere.

H.

[Viper97]

I think you are spot on here... smp will not receive any more attention other than what is out there now with the other folders.

What I do see is a move away from FAH into other DC projects as this is just a wrong decision all the way around and alienates those seeking to help.

I agree this will backfire completely. However, I'm just one voice.

Well another voice says my three 4P Hex core boxes will be moving onto some other project - not going to run them just for SMP, the PPD/$ is not worth it for me.

H.

That's a shame. A ton of scientific work for Folding@home gets done with extremely high-end CPUs such as yours. Dr. Kasson wants to focus the bigadv program, that's his call. If I owned a machine such as yours, I would keep running SMP work. There's plenty of F@h scientific work that has yet to be completed and SMP is a big part of accomplishing that science, and that's the bigger picture. PPD is just a by-product of that, calculated from a formula. Personally I care more about getting science done efficiently however I can for Folding@home, and I'm happy with whatever tier I land in. PPD is not that big of a deal for me, it's just a number and is almost never mentioned in any of the resulting scientific papers. The science is.

My 4P-48C qualifies for bigadv this year... next year who knows? My point is when will I need to buy a supercomputer to meet the requirements of a bigadv? Science gets done period, either with FAH or BOINC projects. The thing is as a contributor when will I wake up and suddenly realize my equipment has been marginalized? I don't see that happening with BOINC however; I do see that happening with Stanford.

I'm suggesting that those who wish to continue folding do so but those whose equipment does not meet the needs of FAH move onto something else such as WCG and BOINC projects. If folks don't want to fold strictly SMP because of the cost per credit for SMP vs cost per credit for bigadv that's their right. We are donors after all. We do not get paid to do this.

[7im]

This isn't that much of a change when you get past the initial knee jerk reactions. While the current 16 threads (aka 8 HT cores) is the threshold, the actual deadline requires much more computing power, and depending on core speeds, the deadline threshold is about 16 real cores, not threads.

Well, 16 real cores is already 32 threads, so not much of a change there.

And if you think about it, they don't have to change the deadlines, hence no mention of it in the post. 1. The deadlines are already up around the 24 to 32 thread count threshold, no change needed. And 2. When they raise the thread count threshold it also has the affect of raising the speed of returns, which is like raising the deadline without actually having to change the deadlines. 3. If they changed the deadlines, they would have to rework all the K factors of the current projects to rebalance the points and that's just too much tedious work. It's way easier to just change one setting on the server and let that do all the work.

Yes, this will mostly affect borderline 2P systems, but PG was shooting for a mostly 4P base with the last change anyway. And as they stated after the last adjustment, more adjustments should occasionally be expected. Well, it's coming.

[mdk777]

As announced, it is a rather blunt tool.

We also recognize that core count is not the most robust metric of machine capability, but given our current infrastructure it is the most straightforward surrogate to evaluate.

Is it better than nothing? I don't know.

I can make all kinds of inferences but they may or may not be accurate.
The negatives of the announcement have already been voiced.
Any positives? Well, it is a fair notice to people thinking of building a 2p machine...but it really doesn't go any further.

I get the feeling that PG really doesn't have any projects with a pressing need for BA, but wants to keep the option open for the future.
Not a horrible thing, but laying out the facts rather than metering out drips of information would go a long way toward restoring donor confidence.

[Grandpa_01]

Just to clear something up here those of you talking about changing to Boinc projects are in for a bit of a disappointment if your choice is biological (Protein Folding) I have always ran some Boinc from time to time and fah smp pays more ppd than boinc does. WCG which has it's own point system does a little better than the rest of the projects whereas it pays 7 WCG points to 1 Boinc point.
If you are thinking you will be more completive with boinc I can tell you that it will most likely be the opposite there are allot of really big producers, I am currently helping my team out in the Christmas Challenge and With 7 OCed top end 4P's, 3 - 980X and 3 - GTX680's (GPUGRID) I cannot make the top 20 in WCG. So I would not count on that as far as greater ppd rewards go.
If PG looses production they will reevaluate the SMP points scheme if they don't they will lose market share and I doubt they want to have that happen. Anyway I just wanted to clear up a little misconception about other projects.

[Viper97]

There's a lot of talk about BOINC but I think there is also a perception issue. From my perspective we've seen FAH points change over time and have adapted to that. However, I don't see a direct correlation between points for BOINC VS FAH as relevant. I tend to look at it as a kid, this is my first time... okay here are the rules... I can do this and I get that.

What I see with FAH is the perception of value varies from moment to moment and always causes one to adjust to the changes which causes disorientation with the donor.

I don't see that with BOINC or WCG you get what you get and it remains a constant. This adds stability to the concept and doesn't cause a flux in the space time continium for some.

Still SMP for FAH needs to be re-evaluated. In order to make the justification for folding palatable an equal point spread across the folding spectrum is needed. I.E. if I can get X points for Y power with bigadv why shouldn't I expect the same return for my power dollars for SMP or GPU folding? It just boils down to that one simple thing for many I believe.

[powerarmour]

I think the simple thing is that in future I won't be spending more money on building a server to fold bigadv unfortunately, I'd feel a lot more comfortable building a multi-GPU system going forward.