Folding Forum

We don't normally post regarding projects that are still in beta testing, but we wanted to make an exception in this case:

The SMP client has been yielding a number of important results for us, but its speed has been limited by less-than-ideal scaling (and less-than-optimal CPU utilization) on 4-core and higher systems. We have spent a lot of time working on this and have a new version of the A2 core that does *much* better in this regard. The first versions of this new core are almost ready for release.

Running project 2662 on this new core, we see CPU utilization of >95% on both 4-core and 8-core machines.
In conjunction with the release of project 2662, we have decided to increase the points value of its sister project (using the A1 core), project 2665. New assignments of both projects will now be worth 1920 points. This make the 2665 points yield more similar to most A1 projects; it will also substantially increase the 2662 points yield.

Because the SMP portion of our project does not operate in isolation and because we value donors to all portions of the project, in the long term we will have to re-examine the normalization of SMP points yield relative to standard and GPU clients. We will also be introducing some additional bonus schemes. But these are things to come.

Thanks for folding!

I should add that with the new high performance cores starting to mature, I am going to look to rebalance points project wide, including *all* clients. There are some disparities that need to be resolved in some uniform way, with the goal of pushing what's best for the science that's running right now.

/lick kasson

I was wondering where the 1920 points came from. I thought I picked up a new project.

Will all projects be able to use the A2 core or does it start with p2662? I am guessing that p2662 will introduce the new core.

jevans64 wrote:I was wondering where the 1920 points came from. I thought I picked up a new project.

Will all projects be able to use the A2 core or does it start with p2662? I am guessing that p2662 will introduce the new core.

Normally all old projects have been using the core it is being released with and do not change to the new core mid way.

Thanks for the upgrading of points Kasson. I think this one was needed.

While it is still not in line with the others, I am grateful, and I will shut up now.

I know VJ and Kasson will want to stick-whip me for this, but I am running 2 SMP clients on 4 of my quads. It would be great if I could set a flag, like -advmethods, to allow fetching of just A2 units vs. A1 units. That way I could run 2 SMP clients on 2 quads and work A1 units and run 1 SMP client on 4 quads for A2 units. I could also use said flag to set my Duos to catch only A1 units.

Was this a special adjustment or just a re-bench using the same 1760 * completion time?

jevans64 wrote:I know VJ and Kasson will want to stick-whip me for this, but I am running 2 SMP clients on 4 of my quads. It would be great if I could set a flag, like -advmethods, to allow fetching of just A2 units vs. A1 units. That way I could run 2 SMP clients on 2 quads and work A1 units and run 1 SMP client on 4 quads for A2 units. I could also use said flag to set my Duos to catch only A1 units.

Was this a special adjustment or just a re-bench using the same 1760 * completion time?

Like all projects, it is unlikely, there will be a flag controlling what projects an individual is folding, and thereby which cores are used.

Especially since running two SMP on a Quad core is totally unsupported. (And remember that the latest linux SMP client supports the -smp X flag, where X>4 ... so the time will soon come that we'll only need one SMP client whatever the number of CPU we have)

toTOW wrote:Especially since running two SMP on a Quad core is totally unsupported. (And remember that the latest linux SMP client supports the -smp X flag, where X>4 ... so the time will soon come that we'll only need one SMP client whatever the number of CPU we have)

I'm part of the 97% of the PC community that is running some form of Windows OS, so the Linux client isn't an option for me.

Don't worry, when the core/client will be stable under Linux, it will be ported to Windows

Any updates its been about 2 weeks since the A2 core was deemed coming soon. I'm anxious to see what this new client can do and to really maximize the use of my Quad farm!

It has been reported that new work units that utilize the _a2 core should be released soon.

Maybe I'm foggy then... is it a new client with the new A2 core WU's and to take advantage of it do you need the latest client? I'm running 5.91 on all my quads.

Sunin wrote:Maybe I'm foggy then... is it a new client with the new A2 core WU's and to take advantage of it do you need the latest client? I'm running 5.91 on all my quads.

It's not the client which need updated, it's the FahCore_A2.exe which is automatically downloaded by the client to crunch new WU. Right now, it's still not ready for public release.