Folding Forum

Jesse_V wrote:Thanks Risto, but I was thinking we could modify the existing spreadsheet to hold the new information. This isn't unlike 2009 when they started reporting x86 FLOPS in addition to native. Now they're reporting CPU cores in addition to physical CPUs. As before, we could just add another column ("CPU cores") which contains no values before today. Personally, I think the CPU cores value is more important than the regular CPU number, so we could consider merging the two and just switching over. Just two ideas.

Keeping both #CPU's and #cores is interesting and it would be especially interesting to know why so very many windows-computers seems to have only 1 core.

Rattledagger wrote:

Jesse_V wrote:Thanks Risto, but I was thinking we could modify the existing spreadsheet to hold the new information. This isn't unlike 2009 when they started reporting x86 FLOPS in addition to native. Now they're reporting CPU cores in addition to physical CPUs. As before, we could just add another column ("CPU cores") which contains no values before today. Personally, I think the CPU cores value is more important than the regular CPU number, so we could consider merging the two and just switching over. Just two ideas.

Keeping both #CPU's and #cores is interesting and it would be especially interesting to know why so very many windows-computers seems to have only 1 core.

Remember that the uniprocessor main v6 client was the recommended download for a number of years. Unlike some other software, F@h does not have an auto-update feature, nor a mailing list. I'm not entirely positive, but I thought some of the v6 clients had expiration, thus forcing the user to upgrade. AFAIK, neither the latest v6 client nor V7 have this feature. Either there are a lot of uniprocessors out there, or there are plenty of folders who are running the recommended v6 client in the background, and aren't interested enough to notice that V7 is out. Generalizing here, but I think Linux and Mac users tend to more attentive to the changes in the software world around them than Windows users. It could be a combination of actual uniprocessors and legacy clients.

Jesse_V wrote:Remember that the uniprocessor main v6 client was the recommended download for a number of years. Unlike some other software, F@h does not have an auto-update feature, nor a mailing list. I'm not entirely positive, but I thought some of the v6 clients had expiration, thus forcing the user to upgrade. AFAIK, neither the latest v6 client nor V7 have this feature. Either there are a lot of uniprocessors out there, or there are plenty of folders who are running the recommended v6 client in the background, and aren't interested enough to notice that V7 is out. Generalizing here, but I think Linux and Mac users tend to more attentive to the changes in the software world around them than Windows users. It could be a combination of actual uniprocessors and legacy clients.

Yes, majority still running v6 on a single core can be a reason, since FLOPS/core is higher for Windows it's also possible they're not including #core-count from v6-SMP-clients and only from v7-clients. In case running multiple v6-uniprocessor-clients on same computer is counted as multiple cpu's this will also give a wrong impression about #cores, but also about how many active computers FAH really has.

Whatever the reason, keeping track of both #CPU's and #cores can be interesting.

mdk777 wrote:well, if numbers have no meaning...
Not if you have any regard for accuracy and credibility.
Saying that you are off for years by 2x and 3x and it doesn't matter.
Well, then you might as well not post them.

"our donors are producing over 3000 TFLOPS of donated calculations..wait, looked at it again and it is really 5000...all the better..."
close enough...

A year or so ago we were over 6000 TFLOPS and pushing 7k, something has gone badly astray in the intervening 12 months, apart from the PS3 shut down, even the top teams are losing members hand over fist. This does not bode well for the longevity of the project

Jesse_V wrote:I'm not entirely positive, but I thought some of the v6 clients had expiration, thus forcing the user to upgrade. AFAIK, neither the latest v6 client nor V7 have this feature.

I remember beta versions of the V6 client had expiration dates, effectively limiting the time the beta versions would be used in production. More recently, the trend has been to release new projects that only work on version X.XX or greater, meaning that you could continue to use an old (non-beta) version if you were willing to limit your choices of projects or features. If the QRB for GPUs goes public, there will be an immediate upgrade of any V6 Windows clients that don't accept passkeys.

Nathan_P wrote:A year or so ago we were over 6000 TFLOPS and pushing 7k, something has gone badly astray in the intervening 12 months, apart from the PS3 shut down, even the top teams are losing members hand over fist. This does not bode well for the longevity of the project

The FLOPS isn't very interesting, since with different methods to measure now and one year ago it's not accurate. Also, with different methods to define FLOPS in FAH and other projects can't directly compare.

Looking on #active on the other hand should be interesting, since AFAIK none of the definitions have changed here since last year.
Using 15.11.2011 for last year and comparing with todays numbers, Nvidia is down roughly 27%, Windows & Mac/Intel both down roughly 50%, Mac/PPC down 63%, Linux down 64% and Ati down 88%. Used core-count for todays CPU-usage.

Mac/PPC is understandable, since it's many years since last PPC was released this dying-out is expected. Compared to the others, the larger drop in Linux is surprising, possibly this has to do with changes to bigadv-requirements resulting in some users stopping to fold. The lower drop for Nvidia than other platforms is surprising, possibly this have something to do with FAH now works with latest GPU's?

The drop of Ati is very large, and even more interesting is the huge drop the last month.

Also worth mentioning, according to Kakao there's now 46587 active FAH-users. #active users is the one thing missing from the otherwise great collection of FAH-stats, so not sure how many was active last year.

Rattledagger wrote:Compared to the others, the larger drop in Linux is surprising, possibly this has to do with changes to bigadv-requirements resulting in some users stopping to fold.

During that year, a lot of farms transitioned from multiple i7 systems to a single 4P. Total number of systems and total number of client installations went down and core counts per system went up, many from 4c8t to 24c48t. I'm not sure how many actually followed that route, but the ones that did made a lot of noise about it.

The lower drop for Nvidia than other platforms is surprising, possibly this have something to do with FAH now works with latest GPU's?
The drop of Ati is very large, and even more interesting is the huge drop the last month.

FAH dropped support for low-end ATI GPUs (anything that didn't support opencl). ATI has had trouble producing good drivers. NVIDIA has not faced those problems.

That trend will probably continue due to the announced increase in NVIDIA points with no corresponding announced changes to ATI.

I'm sure there are a lot of factors. There's a thread for this: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=21367

codysluder wrote:During that year, a lot of farms transitioned from multiple i7 systems to a single 4P. Total number of systems and total number of client installations went down and core counts per system went up, many from 4c8t to 24c48t. I'm not sure how many actually followed that route, but the ones that did made a lot of noise about it.

Since FAH now reports #cores, as long as not everyone switched-off more than 6 older 4c8t-systems for one 24c48t-system #cores should actually increase, since it's not but instead dropping steeply it indicates very few made this transition.

Also, according to the stats BA16 was released in february, while the large drop seems to start in middle of May, a month after the 50-days. The stats including a line of when fewer-core computers ran-out of bigadv-work would have been interesting here.

FAH dropped support for low-end ATI GPUs (anything that didn't support opencl). ATI has had trouble producing good drivers. NVIDIA has not faced those problems.

Didn't the dropped support happen before this? Including the date for when older Ati ran-out of work would have been interesting.
In any case, this shouldn't have any impact on the huge drop happening the last month. Also, over 75% of users trying to update drivers at the same day they was released for so stopping FAH seems unexpected.

Also having #active users in the stats would be interesting, to see if a marked drop in #cores was due to users dropping-out or users just switching-off some of their systems.

Rattledagger wrote:Including the date for when older Ati ran-out of work would have been interesting.

The last WU's for the older ATI cards ran out around the end of June. There were some posts connected to that at the time in July or early August, you should be able to find them if you want. One place besides the forum that this is mentioned is in the Windows Installation Guide in the Requirements section in the Note about drivers, etc.

Rattledagger wrote:
Also worth mentioning, according to Kakao there's now 46587 active FAH-users. #active users is the one thing missing from the otherwise great collection of FAH-stats, so not sure how many was active last year.

Sometimes I writing data for Members Active:

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=21317&start=105#p220967

Rattledagger wrote:

Including the date for when older Ati ran-out of work would have been interesting.

See this thread - Radeon pre-4999 Unsupported. (Very few WUs left). As I reported in that thread, May 16th was the last time I saw a Work Unit for the old ATI cards. Several others also reported pretty much the same.

How did two copies of my post get onto this thread??

How did two copies of my post get onto this thread??

If you get a "bounce" when you click on Submit it can sometime send a post twice. Just delete the extra copy if it happens again.

artoar_11 wrote:Sometimes I writing data for Members Active:

Thanks, I did remember seeing your message before, but wasn't quite sure in which thread it was and hadn't any time starting to dig for it. At 66k active in October 2011 and todays active at 46774 this is roughly 30% drop.

Joe_H wrote:The last WU's for the older ATI cards ran out around the end of June. There were some posts connected to that at the time in July or early August, you should be able to find them if you want.

If the forum-software is anything to go by, I've got over 13k "new posts", so this info is in one of those posts...

GreyWhiskers wrote:As I reported in that thread, May 16th was the last time I saw a Work Unit for the old ATI cards. Several others also reported pretty much the same.

Thanks for the info, even it doesn't make the Ati-stats much easier to explain. There was a 33% drop from 01.02.2012 until v7 was released 22.03.2012, so if wu-supply didn't start to dry-out for old Ati-4xxx-cards before later cards had a working client the drop seems a little strange.