Folding Forum

Hi,

when I view the file unitinfo.txt in the dir of the consoleclient, I get a "due time".

How serious I must take this time?

Ciao,
Stefan

Welcome to the Forum!
Due time is the final deadline. There is also a "Prefered deadline" when the work will be sent out again to someone in case you have problems, and final deadline means the client will give up, delete the work done and download a new workunit.
Stanford would like you to return the work before the prefered deadline, but the final deadline is the actual last time to return work.
All the deadlines can be seen on the project summary page.

Hello stefan42, welcome to the forum.

Deadlines are very serious. After the final deadline passes, the work unit is aborted, and no points are awarded.

Work units are very time sensitive in the folding@home project, unlike other projects. F@h work units are also serial in nature, one work unit builds on top of the previous work unit.

Hi again,

I use the smp-client with 4 cores.

The WUs I get are sometimes quite heavy to calculate. Some take more then 20 mins per percent . Thats ok so far. However, the "due time" is set only 6 days in the future.

I don't use my computer all the time. And it's a bit "pressing" to get these tight deadlines and waste potential processingpower, energie, time and money (the computer consumes much more when calculating) if I don't cope that...

Ciao,
Stefan

If you find that the Preferred Deadline can't be made with your current system usage, you can always switch to 4 instances of Classic Client, installation guide. They have Preferred Deadlines that are very long when compared to SMP2 WUs.

FYI, currently the majority of SMP WUs have the Preferred Deadline of 3 days and the Final Deadline of 6 days. You should be aiming to finish the WU before the Preferred Deadline to ensure that you get the Bonus Points for SMP2 WUs only. If you submit the WU after the Preferred Deadline but before the Final Deadline, you will not get Bonus Points, instead you will get base points which are very low.

Hi all,

thank you for the answers.

BTW: I am not interestet in points. I want to offer cpu-power to senseful sience projects. But I don't want to throw cpu-power (which means nuclear energy, coal or oil) in the bin.

However, it is still "pressing" to use the SMP-Client. And I guess using four parallel clients is quite complicated.

I think I will just use the normal client instead. Perhaps after the beta phase for the smp client the "due time" will be set a bit softer.

Bye,
Stefan

The deadline requirements are not set because the client is beta; they're set because of the requirements of the research. It's unlikely that there will ever be any relaxation of the requirements.

All contributions are valuable, and if you're comfortable with a single client, then thank you for that level of donation.

How to run install multiple CPU clients is described in the F@h Guides. Pick the guide that matches your client type.

Installation for a multi-CPU system (Systray Client)

Installation for a multi-CPU system (Console Client)

However, it would be really great when the future smp-client could strongly regard the setting of the WU-size.

10 days would be much easier to cope than 6 days for my little cpu (I don't use my PC more than 20 h per week)

Bye

bruce wrote:The deadline requirements are not set because the client is beta; they're set because of the requirements of the research. It's unlikely that there will ever be any relaxation of the requirements.

All contributions are valuable, and if you're comfortable with a single client, then thank you for that level of donation.

Part time folders are better suited to using multiple copies of the Unprocessor client instead.

7im wrote:Part time folders are better suited to using multiple copies of the Unprocessor client instead.

NOTE: This will still be true for the foreseeable future. Even when V7 comes out, there will be projects that have relatively long deadlines which are ideal for part-time folders and there will be projects that have a strong need for a prompt return. If you have a SMP project that your hardware can complete in, say 1.5 days with a deadline of 4.0 days and you fold 50% of the time, you'll complete it in 3.0 days, which is within the deadline, but the WU could have been assigned to someone else with a similar computer who can complete each WU twice as fast.

That other person will have completed two WUs, each one in half the time, Those two WUs will earn him maybe three times as many points because they were returned farther ahead of the deadline. You, on the other hand, would be completing the same amount of work on projects that are less time-critical.

7im wrote:Part time folders are better suited to using multiple copies of the Unprocessor client instead.

Part time folders are better suited getting small WUs with longer deadlines.

Don't you see that there is a potential to get more processing power for smp-projekts, if you carry longer deadlines?

If you have a fast food resturant and selling burger there. And the customers have 5 minutes time to eat the burger and not allowed to take away. The uneaten burger are rubbish then. This in the bin have YOU made. The solution is easy: Make your sientists more patient or let them less decide if possible.

And the benefit is more health: Cause less wasted energy leads to less coal emission and less nuclear waste. This makes people more healty. A bit like your projects.

BTW: The client as not really a bug, but a quite weird behaviour: Is recently calculated a heavy WU und finished it some hours before the deadline. (Unfurtunately I let the computer run without any further sense. Just for YOUR project). After connecting the server a new WU was downloaded and I thought: Well, the WU was sent, too. NO, it wasn't sent. The upload-server was not reachable. Back with my computer in "Offline-Area" I saw the finished WU. And then the deadline came and the client deleted the finished WU. Great job: nearly 40 hours pure quad-smp-calculation time wastet. Do you see the problem? It seems I just can't ignore the producion methods of electrical energy not that well like the majority.

Bye,
Stefan

Yes, but your burger is a bad example. FAH has a very large sign on the front door of the burger place that clearly reads all burgers must be eaten in 5 minutes or less. The sign also says French Fries can be eaten at your leisure, no limits (very long deadlines). So anyone who knowingly buys a burger, and doesn't finish the burger in 5 minutes, is the one wasting the energy, not F@h. So the better option for slow eaters would be to buy the French Fries.

Long deadlines would only slow down the return of SMP work units, and SMP WUs need to be returned especially fast, hence the short deadlines and larger bonus.

SMP WUs are a perishable item, with a very short shelf life. Your SMP burger would have spoiled by the time you finished eating it, and you would get no bonus points, maybe no points at all.

Slower but slightly more processing power is clearly not the goal with SMP work units. Faster and fewer is the preference at this time. The Quick Return Bonus makes that very clear. Return an SMP WU in 3 days, get 1000 points bonus. Return it in 2 days, get 5,000 points. Return it in one day, get nearly 20,000 points or more. That's enough incentive that many people run SMP 24/7. And enough incentive that making the deadlines longer to attract slower folders or part time folders does not speed up how fast the science gets done. And the science is the priority.

Sorry, but this has been debated a 1000+ times, and the answer is always the same. SMP deadlines are not going to be extending for part time folders. Choose a different fah client from the menu that better suits your dietary needs.

I am guessing that your "restaurant" analogy is inaccurate. A more "appropriate" one is like this:

A customer (potential F@h Donor) visits the restaurant (F@h Project) and views the menu (available F@h Clients) to find the food item (F@h Client) that fills his need and he can afford easily (his contribution to F@h). He then orders his food (installs & run F@h Client) and eats it (folds WU). Now if he ordered too much food and can't eat it, you can't blame the restaurant for "wasting" food (too short Preferred Deadline). If the customer is unsure about the menu, he can always ask the cashier (F@h Forum) to help him out and in a majority of cases, the customer and restaurant is satisfied by the informed food choice. Now if a customer is rich (powerful system) but has a small appetite (less time to run F@h Client), do you think that it acceptable if he purchases a large meal only to eat a small portion of it and throw away the rest? I doubt that you would classify it as "acceptable behavior" On the other hand if a customer is rich and really hungry (F@h enthusiasts) they won't mind ordering the largest meal available since they know that they are capable of eating it (folding the WU within the Preferred Deadline) hence there isn't any wastage of food (WUs taking longer to fold as they are reassigned once the Preferred Deadline is over).

Now in your case, you have a "powerful" system (Quad Core) but that isn't a dedicated system and your personal work has priority over F@h (Remember that F@h is Distributed computing Project). So the best option for you would be a single instance of Classic Client. I am aware that 4 instances is the best option for your system but I would always recommend that you "test the waters" with a single installation that is very simple and easy to run. Once you monitor it and have a good understanding of how the F@h Project functions, you can then move on to 2 to 4 instances of the Classic Client depending on your personal choice.

Now all that food talk is making me hungry so I am off for a quick snack

EDIT -> Got ninj'd by the might 7im

I suspect F@H Burgers are very high in protein