Change in BA requirements

[Viper97]

OK, a simple question

The current donor pool for BA is small using the following hardware:- 4p is 4p G34, 4p LGA 2011, 4p socket F and the odd 4p LGA 1567. 2p is 2p G34, 2p LGA 2011, 2p 1366, 2p 1356 and the odd 2p C32.

The new core increase will remove 4p socket F, 2p LGA 1356, 2p LGA 1366, 2p C32, some 2p LGA 2011 and some 2p G34. How are less machines going to do more science?

Trick question... two weeks ago the FAH homepage reported 240K+ active folders, yesterday it reported 234K+ active folders. I believe the numbers are already skewed and reflect the decisions already announced. Ergo, no baseline to judge accurately the continuing fallout from this announcement.

[billford]

Trick question... two weeks ago the FAH homepage reported 240K+ active folders, yesterday it reported 234K+ active folders.

Is that active folders or active clients, and how do you define "active"?

Using "scored at least one point in the last 50 days", Kakao reckons less than 33,000 active folders.

[Viper97]

I see your point the Stanford page mentions computers (no mention of users).

http://folding.stanford.edu/

I'm not familiar with Kakao and how is set up so I'll have to go poke around a bit but if this is an accurate number and I suspect it is, it's even more pitiful that only 33K users in the world is active with FAH.

[Rattledagger]

I see your point the Stanford page mentions computers (no mention of users).

To come to roughly 230k you'll also need to include GPU's in your count, but some users does run both GPU and cpu on the same computer meaning it's counted twice. Also core/cpu is suspiciously low for Windows-computers, this can indicate it's really client-count and where's still many users running multiple v6-clients on same computer and this the cpu-count is inflated.

As for Kakao, no idea how their defining active users, but since the last 12 months active Kakao-FAH-users has atleast dropped 30%.

[7im]

A roadmap would lead to a better understanding on what will come next ...

1) how many new projects are in the pipeline for what core (specially with respect to different GPU category)
2) what kind of new core/clients are in the pipeline; what key requirements (Xeon Phi, game consoles, cloud, mobile ...)
3) what kind of collaboration with hardware vendors (if any) take place ?
4) less important, but also of interests: development/release cycles for FAHclient

Just anything which supports donors decisions on next investments and where to focus on.

Example: If a potential GPU-BA would require 4 GB VRAM then I better buy now a GTX Titan instead of a GTX 780Ti. Or if SMP-BA gets an increase to core count/decrease in deadlines that influence what kind of system to build next or invest in different categories instead.

Like in regular drug development when a new substance not make it out of clinical trial; bad luck. Same if there is a plan to use JIT compiler from NV but they not finish it or Apple don't get the OpenCL sorted out. Nothing PG can influence too much. But they could adjust the roadmap and share with us the information they have (and not potentially protected by any NDA).
A good job for a communication/bridge person between PG and donors.

Just because you don't know the answer to some of these questions doesn't mean the answers haven't been provided.

There IS a plan to use JIT, if/when NV gets the bugs worked out to where fah can use it. Dr. Pande posted that in the news blog. The OpenCL Mac issue is mentioned several places.

1) How many projects in the pipeline? Many. Always. Foregone conclusion. Knowing the exact answer doesn't help the science of the project, and fluctuates so much as to make any answer as irrelevant as the PPD estimate from the V7 client (which may be fixed in the next release, according to the client roadmap).
2) PG does not discuss, nor have they ever discussed unannounced cores or clients. There is no point in talking about something that may never come to light. Only when the project is nearing release do they announce something, like the "Look Ahead to 2014" post in the news blog. Dr. Pande already answered these questions in the forum on the hardware you mentioned. They are watching mobile and Xeon Phi, but no plans for those. Cloud has already been used, but unless you want to donate cash for them to rent cloud power, it's not viable option due to costs. And MS and Sony have shown no interest in folding on the recent generation of consoles. Google the forum. It works pretty good to find this info.
3) Hardware vendors were listed on the previous fah home page. Not sure if that survived the latest remake. Some are also described in the FAQs. Have you read them? Ever heard of Google Compute? Dell hardware donations? Close contacts with AMD and NV? Grants from the NIH? Former member of PG working at AMD?
4) PantherX covered that one well enough.

If you haven't subscribed to the RSS feed of the News blog, you should, just so you don't miss any of the announcements like this, where Dr Pande hits on all of your 4 points.

[7im]

And any discussion of a supposed fah exodus needs to be tempered by the fact that many people have chosen to chase bitcoins instead, and has absolutely nothing to do with fah. Any guess as to numbers or why is ONLY a WAG.

[Grandpa_01]

And any discussion of a supposed fah exodus needs to be tempered by the fact that many people have chosen to chase bitcoins instead, and has absolutely nothing to do with fah. Any guess as to numbers or why is ONLY a WAG.

Yes many are running bitcoins the fastest growing team on WCG is Ripple labs they give coins for science the coins are backed with bitcoins in less than 2 months they have become the #1 team and have doubled IBM's own production. So yes many are going to a form of bitcoins to offset the cost of contributing it is expensive you know to operate these things. http://stats.free-dc.org/stats.php?page ... team=30491

Believe me with when you have customer dissatisfaction you are going to have them looking in other places, there is allot of dissatisfaction right now and the only thing that will get you is out of business.

Just look around at the other forums, and defending a broken system is not going to fix the problem.

[Viper97]

I sense they still circle the wagons, point to another illusion and then go forth and blame other things. Things other than poor decision making by the FAH folks. Really? Bitcoin mining was brought up as a method to supplement income for folding. I.E. if I make enough I can justify electric costs. Another one of those 'visit other forums and stop living in your bubble' messages that are being presented here.

Face it... FAH has done a lot to shoot itself in the foot and it's bleeding out because no one wants to act in a reasonable and responsible manner.

I've seen two folks here that would rather defend the status quo and hope their boot licking works rather than help present changes needed to keep this project alive.

I've posted this on my forum in case it gets ummm... lost. Good day.

[bruce]

OK, a simple question

The current donor pool for BA is small using the following hardware:- 4p is 4p G34, 4p LGA 2011, 4p socket F and the odd 4p LGA 1567. 2p is 2p G34, 2p LGA 2011, 2p 1366, 2p 1356 and the odd 2p C32.

The new core increase will remove 4p socket F, 2p LGA 1356, 2p LGA 1366, 2p C32, some 2p LGA 2011 and some 2p G34. How are less machines going to do more science?

You'll have to invent some numbers to fill in the following potential explanation.

Some percentage X of BA assignments are currently completed in A days by machines that will still be folding after the change(s) take place. The remainder of BA assignments are completed by slower machines in B days. The average completion time is X*A + (100%-X)*B. After the change, deadlines will be shorter and the average completion rate will be A rather than some weighted average of A and B. Yes, fewer WUs will be completed per day, but they'll be completed faster so they'll be more valuable scientifically.

By a similar argument, assuming some percentage of machines which will no longer be folding BA will be folding SMP (granted that that's an uncertain number) the average completion rate of SMP assignments will go up.

If my earlier suppositions are valid (still unconfirmed), the science done by both SMP and BA will improve, speed-wise.

Science dictates some minimum number of trajectories are valuable. Allocating more WUs than are needed is not good, but having trajectories that nobody is working on is also not good. The ideal situation is where science needs roughly the the same number of trajectories as there are machines working on those projects.

If science needs more SMP trajectories to be completed than there are machines to work on them, some are not being worked on, slowing overall progress. If science needs fewer trajectories than the number of donor machines attempting to fold them, either less-critical trajectories are added to the server or the server runs out of work (another cause for angry Donors).

If the FAH virtual supercomputer were pure hardware, no emotions would be attributed to it. Matching the active jobs to the hardware would be as easy as adjusting a few parameters, and nobody would object. Since individual Donors DO care about what happens to their points -- often very, very strongly -- tuning the virtual supercomputer gets very complicated. Strong emotions are felt by anyone who perceives a potential loss in their status. In situations like this one, unfortunately the PG has a goal of maximizing science which may not coincide with maximizing the status of every individual . Reconciling those two goals is NOT EASY. I wish them luck.

[Viper97]

OK, a simple question

n situations like this one, unfortunately the PG has a goal of maximizing science which may not coincide with maximizing the status of every individual . Reconciling those two goals is NOT EASY. I wish them luck.

And if they minimize the status of the individual where perchance is the maximizing of science? Certainly not from the minimized donors.

[bruce]

I sense they still circle the wagons, point to another illusion and then go forth and blame other things. Things other than poor decision making by the FAH folks. Really? Bitcoin mining was brought up as a method to supplement income for folding. I.E. if I make enough I can justify electric costs. Another one of those 'visit other forums and stop living in your bubble' messages that are being presented here.

Face it... FAH has done a lot to shoot itself in the foot and it's bleeding out because no one wants to act in a reasonable and responsible manner.

I've seen two folks here that would rather defend the status quo and hope their boot licking works rather than help present changes needed to keep this project alive.

I've posted this on my forum in case it gets ummm... lost. Good day.

I disagree -- and it has nothing to do with boot-licking. It's just a rational statement of possibilities that you are not considering. As I just said, their decisions are based on maximizing FAH's total science output, not on maximizing the status of specific individuals or teams. I fully understand your perspective but when it happens to conflict with FAH's scientific goals, there are many options which don't happen to match what you call reasonable and responsible.

[Viper97]

Just a quick question Bruce...

How does one rationalize possibilities? Isn't that irrational in itself? Possibilities, probabilities, timelines cannot be rationalized.

Then again I'm a simple man.

[kerryd]

Strong emotions are felt by anyone who perceives a potential loss in their status. In situations like this one, unfortunately the PG has a goal of maximizing science which may not coincide with maximizing the status of every individual . Reconciling those two goals is NOT EASY. I wish them luck.

Well on the 14th of January I will be one uniting all 5 computers that are folding.Tell me how that is maximizing science.I said I would fold smp for that long.
So PG better start thinking of ways to (Reconciling those two goals is NOT EASY).I know I am not the only one leaving Because of this up coming change.
They will never get SMP wu's done as long as core 17 needs one cpu core per gpu , its really like 1 and 1/3 core per.So I can see why there trying to push ankle bitters and such over to SMP.But I can all so see it will not work PPL will just turn them off . Some will wait tell they get no more bigadv some like me will not.
If PG no longer wants my computers to do there work that is fine by me.Hay I mite like not waiting on a wu to play a game or having a little extra cash.


Kerry

[ChristianVirtual]

Just because you don't know the answer to some of these questions doesn't mean the answers haven't been provided.

There IS a plan to use JIT, if/when NV gets the bugs worked out to where fah can use it. Dr. Pande posted that in the news blog. The OpenCL Mac issue is mentioned several places.

1) How many projects in the pipeline? Many. Always. Foregone conclusion. Knowing the exact answer doesn't help the science of the project, and fluctuates so much as to make any answer as irrelevant as the PPD estimate from the V7 client (which may be fixed in the next release, according to the client roadmap).
2) PG does not discuss, nor have they ever discussed unannounced cores or clients. There is no point in talking about something that may never come to light. Only when the project is nearing release do they announce something, like the "Look Ahead to 2014" post in the news blog. Dr. Pande already answered these questions in the forum on the hardware you mentioned. They are watching mobile and Xeon Phi, but no plans for those. Cloud has already been used, but unless you want to donate cash for them to rent cloud power, it's not viable option due to costs. And MS and Sony have shown no interest in folding on the recent generation of consoles. Google the forum. It works pretty good to find this info.
3) Hardware vendors were listed on the previous fah home page. Not sure if that survived the latest remake. Some are also described in the FAQs. Have you read them? Ever heard of Google Compute? Dell hardware donations? Close contacts with AMD and NV? Grants from the NIH? Former member of PG working at AMD?
4) PantherX covered that one well enough.

If you haven't subscribed to the RSS feed of the News blog, you should, just so you don't miss any of the announcements like this, where Dr Pande hits on all of your 4 points.

Sure I read about OpenCL (as mentioned in another thread I also dropped Apple's SVP for software an eMail; of course no reaction on such "spam" from little customers like me; but at least I tried). I read about NV JIT and the potential increase of speed. But I would like to understand how close a potential collaboration between PG and Apple/NV and others is. To solve those performance inconsistencies in OpenCL or NV drivers. Do we know if the vendors are actively working on those topics and what their priority/timeline are ?

That could help Joe Donor who want to play the latest game but also do some folding while not playing. With the game on a higher priority he might decide not to fold because of the difficulties. How big is the influence of PG to vendors ? To solve obvious issues, get more WUs done which eventually helps science: our common objective.

And yes, there are answers inside the forum; difficult to find them all and to judge if they are still valid. Thats why an improved communication plan is crucial for a project in this size and complexity. Donors are also stakeholders in this project (aren't they ?) who ask for more detailed information and transparency.

As a "good folding soldier" I read the news and most forum posts (at least I try to) ... can I make good investment decisions based on it ? not really.

[7im]

Again, FAH never recommends purchasing hardware just for folding, as the hardware and software landscape shifts at unexpected intervals. All things out of FAH's control. But if you are going to do that, you should educate yourself as best you can. PG can't provide the answers they don't themselves have. They don't know when JIT will be finished. They don't know when Apple will come around. Not even NV or Apple always know those answers, so how can fah? So how can fah communicate what it doesn't know?