And they're Off! Folding At Home.

[DiMaestro]

Well I made a team for The Tech Report on Folding at Home 2.0, we're team # 2630, and currently I'm in the lead.

Folding at home is a pretty good (IMHO) distributed client program to get into, it's gonna, hopefully, help most people out in the long run. Basically it's an extension to Genome@Home, where they're taking the information learned from the Genome project and attempting to learn how proteins fold. What this will do, is hopefully lead to better insite on how proteins fold, and what happens when that 'folding' goes wrong.

It's available in Mac, Linux, and Win os's flavors. Screen saver and Console for Win/Mac. Console only AFAIK for linux.

To grab the binaries head here: http://folding.stanford.edu/download.html

General information on Folding at Home: http://folding.stanford.edu/

Currently we're ranked 627th against all the other teams. We should be able to get into the top 100 relatively easily, but it's gonna take a bit of work to get into the top 10.

For information on our team, and team members go to: http://folding.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/teampage?q=2630.

[Damage]

Guys, we'll be posting more info for n00bs about how to sign up and set up the client, but this is our first "official" TR team, so please join up. DiM has agreed to help keep organized for us.

I'll be posting info on the front page soon.

[lenzenm]

OK I'm in.
Currently, TR gets:

Close to full time:
1) K7-750 256MB PC-100
1) Duron 1GHz 320MB PC-100
1) K6-2 350 192MB PC-100

Part time:
1) K6-2 550 256MB PC-100
1) Celeron 366 192MB PC-66
1) Celeron 366 256MB PC-66
1) Celeron 500 256MB PC-66

May be bringing into the fold (bad pun, I know):
1) 1.466GHz AthlonMP 512MB PC-2100

[DiMaestro]

OK I'm in.
Currently, TR gets:

Close to full time:
1) K7-750 256MB PC-100
1) Duron 1GHz 320MB PC-100
1) K6-2 350 192MB PC-100

Part time:
1) K6-2 550 256MB PC-100
1) Celeron 366 192MB PC-66
1) Celeron 366 256MB PC-66
1) Celeron 500 256MB PC-66

May be bringing into the fold (bad pun, I know):
1) 1.466GHz AthlonMP 512MB PC-2100

Yea, that was a bad pun.

Currently I have.

Athlon 1ghz 320 PC100.
Dual Celeron 450 320 PC100
Celeron II 500 320 PC100
Athlon 1.4 ghz 256 DDR 2100

And am working on all my friends.

[Speed]

Gerbil Elite on the case. I have 2 1900+ Athlons working full time on it, more to come.

[IntelMole]

Am bringing my K6-2 400 to the party, and will get my new system on it, if I ever get it ,
IntelMole

[Damage]

You people are toast.

[IntelMole]

Check out the results page btw:

http://folding.stanford.edu/results.html

The HIV thing sounds especially interesting...

Everyone feel good, we're supporting a good cause!!!!

,
IntelMole

[Dissonance]

Ok, I should be looking this up myself but I have an exam in a few hours so I'll just cop out and ask here. I'm using firedaemon to launch up two F@H consoles on my dually, and I can easily set processor affinity and priorities to each instance, however, Core_65.exe is the process actually doing all the work, and the processor affinity and priority settings aren't carrying over from the F@H console process.

I don't really care if I can maintain processor affinity since I can just let XP handle that on its own, but I would like to be able to have any instance of Core_65.exe automatically set as low priority whenever it's running.

Ideas?

Oh, yeah, my weak system specs that are running F@H...

Celeron 900
P2 266
Dual 933 (spare cycles only)
ph34r!

[DiMaestro]

Diss: Rotoutou got that covered in the news posts. I'll cut and paste here for completeness's sake.

try to edit client.cfg and to append Priority=x in the [Core] section

x is from 1 to 255 (4 is default value)

with process explorer (free : http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freew ... cexp.shtml ) i see fah2console.exe priority is normal (8) and core_65.exe is 4 (idle)

a+
rotoutou - alliance Francophone

On my fileserver both the core_65 processes where running w/ normal priority. I didn't see any detrimental effects due to that.

--- Edit.

According to the_xolf and backed up by the FAQ at http://folding.stanford.edu/faq.html#run.corepriority it defaults to 'idle' thread, however showing normal priority. I think it does default to idle priority, if I had 2 seperate tasks running full tilt on my 'lil 450, I'm sure I would have noticed if they where at normal.

[Speed]

What's with the scoring system? Damage and I both have 22 WUs, but he gets a score of19.2 and I only get 16.5! What's the juice factor?

[Coldfirex]

Just added my humble dually to the effort. How soon until I show up on the team page?

[DiMaestro]

Posted: 10 Apr 2002 01:17
What's with the scoring system? Damage and I both have 22 WUs, but he gets a score of19.2 and I only get 16.5! What's the juice factor?

Speed, I'm not entirely sure, but some work units require more work than others, So the score may be based on how long/hard the work unit was. In a four day period my 'lil 1 ghz did a lot of units, double, almost quadruple what it usually does.

So, it might be based on that? Not really sure.

[DiMaestro]

Quick update.

Just hit top 500, we're 499.

[Nelliesboo]

ok dualie is up and running

[Speed]

DiMaestro, you may have something with different size work units. But that doesn't explain why the first team members always have a higher score / WU ratio. It could be coincidental, but the ranking continues to match the order of joining. Too bad they don't say anything about how they calculate the scores.

Addendum: I just looked over the standings again, and noticed something -- the top 5 is dominated by TR staff and contributors. We have DiMaestro, who is leading this effort, followed by Scott_Wasson / Damage, and Dr_Evil coming up fast at #5 to represent the staff, and Speed at #4. I smell conspiracy!

[DiMaestro]

Speed, I think I just figured it out, time spent folding + work units somehow both contribute to score. You have put out same # of units as I have, but my score is much higher than anyone else. But, I've been doing this for weeks longer than anyone else as well, so I think that's the ticket.

Oh yea, you passed Damage, you're #3 now.

[Speed]

That makes sense, but now that Dr_Evil is shooting past people who have done more work units and have been a team member longer, I think the fix is in. Who do you have to bribe to get better karma?

[Coldfirex]

Well im still not showing up in the team list for some reason. I entered the team number as well as my name in the configuration early last night. Was that all I had to do?

[Speed]

Coldfirex, have you finished any work units yet? You don't appear until you have.

[Coldfirex]

Speed: Havent checked if I have finished any since I joined the team, but I have completed previous WUs. Do those transfer over?

[Speed]

I don't think that previous WUs transfer. Make sure that each client has the correct team number assigned, since it's a local setting.

[JohnnyQ]

Just added my little workhorse to the fray...

Pentium 200 (MMX no less!), 32MB *sigh*

...so I guss I'm going for 'least productive member of the team' status.

Heh, I need a real computer... donations welcome!

JQ

[nrobison]

I'm in. Contribution will be intermittent, but the computer is hot.

[ieya]

And that's me in, too (Jink).

Was running UD, as a member of Ars Technica's team (in their top 20, I think), but have started to switch over clients on my PCs - and have obviously shifted my team allegiance from Ars to TR!

(Which more or less matches my reading habits - while I still check in on Ars for news, it's TR with its Damage/Evil content that draws me in far more these days).

[LJ]

Sweet, it supports linux. I'll throw it on my aging T-bird 1.4.

[Dposcorp]

Ok, i just jumped on the board. #25 at this time. GO TEAM 2630

[Nelliesboo]

aging T-bird 1.4.?

[Dr. Evil]

That makes sense, but now that Dr_Evil is shooting past people who have done more work units and have been a team member longer, I think the fix is in. Who do you have to bribe to get better karma?

Yeah, but Dr_Evil has seven machines on his side.

Seriously, I think that the score has more to do with calculations performed than WU's or length of team membership. As others have said, WU's vary wildly in size-- I had one that took a 1GHz machine over 36 hours, and that same machine then ripped off the next two WU's in under eight hours. Given such variation, it's understandable why some WU's count for more than others when it comes to scoring.

[ANApex]

We're ranked 226 now btw and oh yeah I added my piddly little K6-2/450@500 for now. Only redeeming thing for it is that it's running 24/7. I'll add more once I work some things out.