Folding Forum

After a long development process, we are excited to announce the upcoming release of SMP2 (threads-based SMP) cores to public testing. The first SMP2-based core is the A3 core, and it will soon become available on advanced methods for OS/X (Intel), 64-bit Linux, and Windows. We are still doing development work to refine the A3 core, but it is at the point where we are ready for public testing.

We are excited about the SMP2 cores because the threads-based parallelization allows us to dispense with the MPI-based parallelization that added an extra layer of complexity and was particularly troublesome for Windows users. We anticipate phasing out the earlier SMP cores and work units in favor of these new ones; at this point in the changeover process, our Windows SMP client will still require MPI to be installed so that the client can handle an A1 work unit if no A3 work units are available. In the near future we will release an updated Windows client that does not require MPI.

The SMP2 cores require a client update; please upgrade your SMP-capable clients to at least version 6.29. We will gradually discontinue SMP projects for earlier clients.

Important: the SMP2 cores use the early-completion bonus system that we piloted with the bigadv work units. We have revamped the benchmarking system to work with this bonus system. The base point values for SMP2 work units will appear low; the benchmarked points values **include bonuses.** Some third-party utilities have been updated to include these bonuses in their calculations.

Please see an accompanying post regarding the bonus system.

One important part of the bonus system is that users:
1. Must use a passkey to receive bonus points
2. Must successfully return >=10 A2 or SMP2 work units with their passkey to receive bonus points
3. Must successfully return >80% of A2 or SMP2 work units to receive bonus points

We will shortly perform a limited "reset" of the bonus-qualifying work unit history. Important: users who have qualified for a bonus will remain bonus-qualified. We will also maintain the % returned for users but will reduce the overall counts to 10. As we do not have an automated "timeout" for bonus qualification history, we may perform rare periodic such resets in the future.

Thanks! We are excited to release these new cores to the public.

1a. The same passkey must be used both when downloading a WU and uploading the result. If you change passkeys, the bonus factor = 1 (i.e. no bonus).

1b. You may use more than one FAH UserName with the same passkey, but each Name/Passkey combination must meet the >= 10 WU and >80% qualifications separately.