Folding Forum

i want to support reserch for corona not cancer or any other thing on the list there.

Thanks in advance.

At this time, no. That would take finishing a new version of the client and updating all servers to implement.

Even if added as an option, it would only be treated as a preference. If work meeting that preference was temporarily unavailable another project would be assigned.

Joseph Coffland (the programmer) would need to recode three client programs (Windows, Mac, and Linux ) but doing so would only tell some server you wanted COVID-19.
At least 2 server applications would need to be rewritten by Joseph to actually select a COVID-19 Work Unit. Now every F@H researcher would need to reclassify all his/her projects as being COVID-19 or not. And then, your could easily have your request in 18 months. if all that new code was deployed to every server and every PC.

Or, you can get COVID-19 WUs today if any are available, as the researchers have been giving them higher priority manually.

If that bothers you and you want us to not begin to cure COVID-19 for 18 months, we can have a 'perfect' solution by then. Me, I want to cure it now.

JimboPalmer wrote:If that bothers you and you want us to not begin to cure COVID-19 for 18 months, we can have a 'perfect' solution by then. Me, I want to cure it now.

That was quite rude reply to a new user.
One might expect the list of categories is dynamic, no need for "programming" anything on client or server side, just add a new category to the database. The clients would download the list automatically on startup, the researchers could tag the WUs (without affecting any existing work, that would continue to exist without that tag...).
If the software is not written that way, there is no way for us newbies to know that, sorry for wasting your precious time (that you could have spent researching yourself, but you had to write a condescending reply to the guy)

MartinPanda wrote:One might expect the list of categories is dynamic, no need for "programming" anything on client or server side, just add a new category to the database.

You might expect that, and at this point I bet the programmer wishes he was allowed the extra time to write it that way. Sadly biochemists control the purse strings, and they tend to spend the money on biochemistry, not computer programming.

He has been here one weekend and wants it all rewritten to suit himself. Explaining why that won't happen before we have cured COVID-19 or civilization has collapsed, is a harsh reality. Wanting perfection is great, but demanding it or you will take your ball and go home is not winning me over. It is what it is, now we use it to do the best we can, today. If that means I inadvertently cured a cancer when I meant to cure COVID-19, I am OK with that.

JimboPalmer wrote:You might expect that, and at this point I bet the programmer wishes he was allowed the extra time to write it that way. Sadly biochemists control the purse strings, and they tend to spend the money on biochemistry, not computer programming

Well, in any case, apparently the GPU units are "taken" by the good people, because my GPU is idling, so even if there was the new category for them, we would still be assigned to do something else, or nothing (if there is no work).
So let's see if in a few hours/days there is some new batch to process regarding Covid.
I suppose the researchers are now analyzing the results of the simulations and then they will come up with another batch for us to test, right?

The researchers are trying to spin up additional servers and projects as fast as they can. FAH is currently trying to cope with more than 10 times is usual donor base that has come on line pretty much at the same time. The 2 labs involved in the project are working as fast as they can. please bear with and hopefully this will sort itself out soon.

Martin, that's partly correct. New work is being worked on and generated. But being weekend, and server issues on top of that, its a bit tough to get everything in order
There is new batch coming tomorrow most likely for CPUs. But then again, due to overwhelming amount of new folders, it might disappear very quickly.
Thanks for understanding. Folding@home project has never seen such influx before, or at least I do not remember one like this, and I've been with project since 2002

Nathan_P wrote:The researchers are trying to spin up additional servers and projects as fast as they can. FAH is currently trying to cope with more than 10 times is usual donor base that has come on line pretty much at the same time. The 2 labs involved in the project are working as fast as they can. please bear with and hopefully this will sort itself out soon.

Where are you getting that 10X figure? I saw a post about 2 hours ago that put the figure at around 3X per Extreme OC. Just curious!

aviramof wrote:i want to support reserch for corona not cancer or any other thing on the list there.

Thanks in advance.

Welcome to foldingforum.org, aviramof.

There are two simple answers.

1. The servers are assigning COVAID-19 projects as fast as they can and with the highest priority. (i.e. those project are automatically selected)
2. (as has already been said) patching the client will take about 18 months.
3. It's not a question of scientists failing to allocate funds to programmsers. It's more a problem of the only allowing people to work 24 hours in each day.

Sorry ... I can't count, but you didn't ask for answer 3.

MartinPanda wrote:I suppose the researchers are now analyzing the results of the simulations and then they will come up with another batch for us to test, right?

Here is my theory, (I think of a shogun blast, but you are free to use a different mental image) the researchers decide on a range of possible futures for their protein to fold, then assign those and some turn out to be the way it DOES fold. Now starting from there, they assign a number of futures from this new place. We do those and we solve a little farther in time. Over and over.

If they assign a bigger blast pattern , more people will solve wrong folding patterns the protein does not take, so they want to do multiple 'small' runs. After 5 PM Friday the number of people folding almost quadrupled. So what should have been a weekend work is exhausted. 9 AM Monday will be a shock to those researchers.

Also the servers are sized to handle a given number of donors, so the hardware also had failures. Most are seeing No WU is available for your configuration, but some are getting HTTP errors as the load on the server exceeds capacity. This will be a more long term problem, as better, faster, servers cost money. And they don't have money.

I would have said the GPU WUs were taken by the early people. I don't think they have any list of good people, they would have to pay for that. My GPUs are down to 1/2 what I usually do in a day, and purists want only COVID-19 WUs so no other WUs were on tap either. Can't have him be forced to cure cystic fibrosis when he demands just COVID-19 now can we?

Do corona work loads to assigned to CPU at all? (My CPU is likely has a much higher potential for these sorts of tests than my GPU.)

X-Wing wrote:

Nathan_P wrote:The researchers are trying to spin up additional servers and projects as fast as they can. FAH is currently trying to cope with more than 10 times is usual donor base that has come on line pretty much at the same time. The 2 labs involved in the project are working as fast as they can. please bear with and hopefully this will sort itself out soon.

Where are you getting that 10X figure? I saw a post about 2 hours ago that put the figure at around 3X per Extreme OC. Just curious!

There was a post a couple of days ago somewhere, i'm currently trying to locate it.

Donors does not equal requested work, I am one donor but I need 5 WU to load up all my decicated folding hardware and 11 if I load up my daily driver and retro rig, if every new user has a cpu and a gpu or 2 it soon adds up.

Pukudo wrote:Do corona work loads to assigned to CPU at all? (My CPU is likely has a much higher potential for these sorts of tests than my GPU.)

Yes, there are COVID-19 assignments for CPUs. Though at this moment this applies - Subject: Temporary server outages

They should get the servers that are down back up soon.