Folding Forum

I have a WU on my laptop that has an ETA of 1 day but the expiration time is in 1 hour. Why does the software not calculate that there isn't enough time to complete the unit and expire it earlier?

It's maybe because that WU has been in your system for several days, idle/paused? What is its Assigned date?

Expiration times are set long before they're assigned to the user.

I have 2 Atom based (and I should clarify, like 8 years old) systems that, despite having "4 CPUs" (dual core hyperthreaded) and not really doing anything else, they can't complete work assigned to them in time and I had to just shut them down.

KimboJ wrote:I have a WU on my laptop that has an ETA of 1 day but the expiration time is in 1 hour. Why does the software not calculate that there isn't enough time to complete the unit and expire it earlier?

The "software" doesn't necessarily know, what caused the time to complete to extend beyond the expiration time. E.g. when a new WU starts, during the first 5% or so, there can be fluctuations of quite a few hours to the ETA.
The software might also not know whether you are running other programs on that computer which take priority and temporarily slow down the progress of that WU. Therefore it won't dispose of the WU before the expiration time, I guess.

There should maybe then be a warning that states 'based on the average, this work unit will not complete in time - abort?'
I had a WU that was only 50% complete and was on full power, and only had 1 hour left before the expiration time, and had an ETA of 1 day. Fluctuations aside, this work would never be able to complete earlier and should have aborted earlier. The ETA is far longer than the real time to the expiration time. It's a waste of resources and makes me less likely to run the software constantly if it has too many flaws like this.
My new unit is already 23% complete and has an ETA of 8 hours, after only a few hours of running.

I agree with you - it would be nice to have some form of "heads up" - it could even go further - "are you sure you want to pause/change power setting/reduce CPU cores … If you do you may not complete WU before Timeout/Deadline" - but not sure realistically how much chance there is of getting this enhancement through or quite how some of the logic might be coded … Would be worth raising an enhancement on GitHub - https://github.com/FoldingAtHome/fah-issues/issues

Could you post your log with both the top 100 lines or so which should have your configuration in it and the part of the log at the start and the end of the WU that took so long - there might have been an issue with the WU if you are completing some WUs in 12 hours - or it may just have been a much "larger" Wu - but could be worth a check? … For guidance on posting logs (if needed) - viewtopic.php?f=61&t=26036

Recently, due to the COVID-19 research being time critical, the Timeout was reduced to 1 day to ensure the fastest turnaround for the scientists to work on. Given that part of the COVID-19 research ties in with the Moonshot project (https://covid.postera.ai/covid) where they need data ASAP which has caused a reduction of Timeout only for those specific projects. Other projects for Cancer, and rest do have a reasonable timeout period. Generally speaking, the older the hardware, the more hours it needs to fold. I have read that Core i5/i7 first generation CPUs running 24/7 are able to meet the timeout deadline. Those CPUs are about 10 years old.

Slight digression but relevant in a way ... there is a difference between timeout which is the point at which WU is reissued but still valuable for you to return it and the expiration which is when the client will dump the WU as it no longer has value.

Some people may treat the timeout as if it is the expiration which it isnt ... obviously good to get WU back asap and preferably by timeout but the WU may well still add value right up go expiration.