Folding Forum

Hi there,

I'm releatively new to F@H (I registered a few days ago). At the moment, I receive Work-Units which each have a ETA of around 2 - 2.5 days while the deadline in most cases is around 5 days in the future. Since I don't have the most recent hardware (Core i5 m430) and do not run my pc for multiple hourse per day I wonder if it's possible to get shorter Work-Units, maybe with an ETA of at most a day. The would fit much better for "folding in spare (idle) time".

I see two issues:

F@H really wants you to fold 24/7 as a project can't proceed until all existing Work Units are received back at the servers. So days later is slowing, rather than speeding up the search for a treatment.

Since the middle of March the servers have been hammered by about 10 times as many volunteers. Cutting Work Units in half would require twice as many servers to get the same work done.

Sorry.

It actually seems like they've been making the WU's larger lately; my guess is to spread out the network load on the work servers.

When you say WUs are getting larger, you might mean that the number of atoms is increasing. That's driven entirely by science. You can't simulate half a protein and you have to simulate it in a suitable volume of solvent. Larger proteins take much longer to simulate each step or each nanosecond.

When you say WUs are getting larger, you might mean they run longer. The number of steps per WU can be adjusted by the project owner. Typically, a project with lots of atoms will receive a reduced number of steps per WU. which means it takes more WUs to create the same trajectory length.

Mortivor_81 wrote:Hi there,

I'm releatively new to F@H (I registered a few days ago). At the moment, I receive Work-Units which each have a ETA of around 2 - 2.5 days while the deadline in most cases is around 5 days in the future. Since I don't have the most recent hardware (Core i5 m430) and do not run my pc for multiple hourse per day I wonder if it's possible to get shorter Work-Units, maybe with an ETA of at most a day. The would fit much better for "folding in spare (idle) time".

Don't mean to chase you away from FAH, but as mentioned before, the best way of contributing is 24/7 folding. The work servers would already assign the lightest work units available in order to match your hardware.
If you want to contribute to science but are unable or not willing to fold 24/7, have you considered signing up with Rosetta@home via BOINC? Their deadlines are much longer usually and the entire setup seems more suitable for part time folders.

The way FAH projects are structured, WUs need to be returned as quickly as possible since the following generation of WUs, bringing the project forward, depends on the previous gen outcome.