SPCR Folds Team Blog

A forum just for SPCR's folding team... by request.

Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Tue Sep 04, 2007 7:53 am

The answer was right in front of me. Me blind. Me sad.

angelkiller
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Post by angelkiller » Thu Sep 06, 2007 7:10 pm

Well, we lost two more places.

We are now officially #25 :cry: :?

Yes we did lose two places but on the bright side, we are 25th in the world! :D The teams around us seem to produce so many points. We've lost five places in the last four months and we're scheduled to lose three more in the next six months. :x

On another note I'm looking to build a small folding farm. Its purpose will be to combine the power of several old computers. Most farms just use several computers to individually fold. I'm looking for all of the computers to work on the same WU. Possible? Any ideas? (Computers are two 1GHz P3's, 1.7GHz P4, 2.6GHz Celeron, and possibly an Athlon 64 3200+.)

ryboto
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Post by ryboto » Thu Sep 06, 2007 8:17 pm

well, I just got my cousin all set up with two single core clients on his X2 machine. He didn't really know how to deal with SMP errors, so i figured this was the best way, it's easy to use, and he doesn't have to remember to start it up, because it will run as a service. I've got a friend who could fold with both his PS3 and Q6600 system, but he's reluctant, and only folds with the PC every so often. But, it is for our team. I almost had a quad core opteron system folding for us this summer, but it had some serious stability issues. Oh well.

Wibla
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Post by Wibla » Fri Sep 07, 2007 2:37 am

I'm having stability issues with my E6600 box, seems a drive is going out and when it "disappears" the system crashes... On the bright side, my E2140 OCer box will be up next week (ordered parts yesterday)

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Fri Sep 07, 2007 10:49 am

Wibla, you may be able to reach 401MHz FSB because the northbridge divider calculations will adjust themselves so that many components on the motherboard will return to their original values.

http://www.overclock.net/intel-motherbo ... -975x.html

Angelkiller, I would like to be able to monitor say 4 boxes from just one display.

People used to take pics of their farms, haven't seen any in a while.

floffe
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Post by floffe » Sat Sep 08, 2007 4:04 am

aristide1 wrote:I would like to be able to monitor say 4 boxes from just one display.
You can use FahMon to monitor several clients at once. You just need to mount the work dirs so that they are readable on the monitoring computer, over Windows filesharing/samba.

vanhelmont
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Several computers on same wu

Post by vanhelmont » Sat Sep 08, 2007 8:48 am

Angelkiller,

"I'm looking for all of the computers to work on the same WU. Possible? Any ideas? (Computers are two 1GHz P3's, 1.7GHz P4, 2.6GHz Celeron, and possibly an Athlon 64 3200+.)"

Probably not easy, but might be doable with smp workunits. They result in 4 processes. In theory you ought to be able to send each process to a different machine. People do this kind of thing with clusters. You might look into setting up your machines as a Beowulf cluster. If you want to do it for fun or learning, great. Otherwise, I'd stick with 1 wu per machine.

On a more fundamental basis, some processes lend themselves to parallelization, and others don't. If you have four bakers, when you need 4 cakes each can bake a cake at the same time. If you need 1 cake fast, it won't work to have one baker measure, the second mix, the third bake, and the fourth ice the cake at the same time. these must be done sequentially.

Wibla
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Post by Wibla » Sat Sep 08, 2007 10:22 am

Is it just me, or is FahMon abit inaccurate about the ETA on workunits? I know for a fact that my E6600@3Ghz will finish up a 1760 point SMP WU in about 26 hours, but FahMon is saying 4 days... (its using about 16 minutes/1%)

floffe
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Post by floffe » Sat Sep 08, 2007 1:37 pm

You can set what FahMon should base the ETA calculations on under Preferences -> Monitoring: All frames from project, last frame or last 3 frames. The next version will also have effective rate, which is % you are at now / time since you downloaded the WU, good for those who don't keep the computer on 24/7.

I'm not sure how it does the calculations, but it might take a few frames for it to find a good average.

Wibla
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Post by Wibla » Sat Sep 08, 2007 1:43 pm

Cool, abit more sane numbers now :) (~1700PPD :D)

Wibla
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Post by Wibla » Thu Sep 13, 2007 11:32 am

o.O .. sup with me being 10th on "24hr average score" ? we need more people with kickass computers :)

My new E2140 will be operational tomorrow evening (CET) I think, then "operation overclock" and F@H ;)

angelkiller
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Post by angelkiller » Thu Sep 13, 2007 3:31 pm

Probably not easy, but might be doable with smp workunits. They result in 4 processes. In theory you ought to be able to send each process to a different machine. People do this kind of thing with clusters. You might look into setting up your machines as a Beowulf cluster. If you want to do it for fun or learning, great. Otherwise, I'd stick with 1 wu per machine.

On a more fundamental basis, some processes lend themselves to parallelization, and others don't. If you have four bakers, when you need 4 cakes each can bake a cake at the same time. If you need 1 cake fast, it won't work to have one baker measure, the second mix, the third bake, and the fourth ice the cake at the same time. these must be done sequentially.
Thanks for the response and sorry for my late one. :oops: I seriously don't remember getting an email about this....

Anyways, your theory makes sense. As for a Beowulf cluster, it looks 10x too advanced for me. :oops: I'm not too good with software.... I was hoping I could get more power out of combining the computers then having them operate alone. I think the points produced when working alone would be so low that it won't be worth the electricity. Great analogy btw.

Wibla
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Post by Wibla » Mon Sep 17, 2007 6:07 am

Damn workstation, halv a WU wasted because it randomly locked up...

vg30et
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Post by vg30et » Tue Sep 18, 2007 4:42 am

Just wanted to stop by and wish everyone luck with their continued folding efforts. Some recent changes have forced me to shut down the folding farm so I will no longer be able to contribute points to the team/project. It's been a fun ride and I hope to be able to return again someday.

KansaKilla
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Post by KansaKilla » Tue Sep 18, 2007 6:09 am

I just wanted to express my appreciation of your efforts in folding for our little team here at SPCR. I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say that we are very grateful to have had you folding beside us, and hope that you will be able to return in the future, whether with a big farm or solo desktop.

We'll really miss your contribution! :cry:

Sincerely,
--KansaKilla

NeilBlanchard
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Post by NeilBlanchard » Tue Sep 18, 2007 8:40 am

Greetings,
vg30et wrote:Just wanted to stop by and wish everyone luck with their continued folding efforts. Some recent changes have forced me to shut down the folding farm so I will no longer be able to contribute points to the team/project. It's been a fun ride and I hope to be able to return again someday.
As KansaKilla wrote -- thank you very much, and we definitely will miss your efforts, so come back as soon as you can! :D

As an aside, when Stanford posts a newer Beta of the Windows SMP client, can someone notify us, please?

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Tue Sep 18, 2007 9:06 am

vg30et wrote:Just wanted to stop by and wish everyone luck with their continued folding efforts. Some recent changes have forced me to shut down the folding farm so I will no longer be able to contribute points to the team/project. It's been a fun ride and I hope to be able to return again someday.
Sorry to see you go and thanks.

You know what to ask for for Christmas, right? 8)

Wibla
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Post by Wibla » Tue Sep 18, 2007 12:28 pm

Sorry to see you go, vg30et :(

peteamer
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Post by peteamer » Tue Sep 18, 2007 11:01 pm

Image ... for your contributions. 8)

Don't become a stranger round these parts. :D


Regards
Pete

avi_dan
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Post by avi_dan » Wed Sep 19, 2007 9:45 pm

Thanks! Come back soon and fold some more!

Avi

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Thu Sep 20, 2007 12:44 pm

Hey VG slowed down some but he's still here, for now.



FGgumphas started folding again.

Welcome back FGump.

RUN FORREST RUN!

Wibla
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Post by Wibla » Fri Sep 21, 2007 9:40 am

Just got a friend of mine to fold (SMP) with a Q6600 @ 2.7GHz for our team :D

peteamer
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Post by peteamer » Fri Sep 21, 2007 10:07 am

Wibla wrote:Just got a friend of mine to fold (SMP) with a Q6600 @ 2.7GHz for our team :D
8) 8) 8)

Wibla
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Post by Wibla » Fri Sep 21, 2007 10:27 am

And here is my dedicated F@H rig..

Image
(Click on image for larger size)

Mussels
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Post by Mussels » Fri Sep 21, 2007 10:50 am

ok i got intruiged.

I wonder what a Q6600@ 3.6GHz, that gets 14.4s in superpi would do to help? i can only do a few hours a day under windows, but i'll fire it up when i'm just watching anime :D

edit: the SMP beta refuses to start, error code "63 (99)"

edit 2: fixed that, forgot to run install.bat

Wibla
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Post by Wibla » Fri Sep 21, 2007 11:11 am

My friend with the Q6600 @2.7GHz does 1 WU / 16 hours (just under 10minutes/1%) .. yours will prolly be faster, do post the results tho :)

Wibla
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Post by Wibla » Tue Sep 25, 2007 6:38 am

If this continues, we're gonna drop like a lead block to the bottom .. seriously, when one guy with two dual core boxes are on the top, something is amiss :/

NeilBlanchard
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Post by NeilBlanchard » Tue Sep 25, 2007 8:29 am

Hello,

We are missing the big producers, but OTOH, the #20 producer is averaging almost 1,200PPD, whereas #20 used to be ~600PPD. :o In fact, the overall average (of the active Folders) is ~547PPD! This is better than TSC! Russia's team average of ~517PPD :twisted:

We will be better off getting more people to Fold, with single machines, I think.

djkest
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Post by djkest » Tue Sep 25, 2007 9:23 am

what exactly is SMP, and how do I get it?

peteamer
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Post by peteamer » Tue Sep 25, 2007 10:02 am

djkest wrote:what exactly is SMP, and how do I get it?
Hi djkest, the answers, or most of, can be found here: http://folding.stanford.edu/FAQ-SMP.html

Shorter answer, it's the folding client for multi core CPU's. Why bother? well on my XP2400+ single core I was pleased to get 100 PPD (points per day), on my current A64 4400+ I am averaging ~950PPD !!! (Mind you points awarded has changed a lot since I started in Dec 03, my first WU took a week to finish and was worth a whole 40, yes forty points. :shock: )

What OS are you using? Lots of forum help to be found either here or over at: http://forum.folding-community.org/forums.html


Regards
Pete

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