Folding@Home

[CougTek]

He started at 3am Friday. 36 million points on his first day. Single user. Will overtake us in three days at this beat. Even Awachs doesn't equal him (Awachs is the most productive user in the history of Folding@home).

If I ever win at the lottery, that guy will be me.

 

[ddrueding]

HPCS...the current theory is "HP Cloud Services" doing a test run of some kind.

 

[CougTek]

690 active clients within the last 7 days. No wonder it achieves those results. For comparison, our entire team had 50 active clients during the same period.

And you were right about the guys behind it. Their team's web site points to www.hpcloud.net (link doesn't lead anywhere for now).

 

[CougTek]

Still, their cloud is made of very powerful processors. If you take the 36657004 points they achieve during their first day and divide it by 690, you get 53126 points per client. Per day. That handily beats my o'ced Core i7 2600K by quite a margin.

 

[CougTek]

 

[Handruin]

Congrats man!

 

[CougTek]

Thanks

 

[ddrueding]

30 million of just about anything is a lot. Congrats.

 

[LiamC]

You da man C!

 

[mubs]

Awesome, Coug!

 

[CougTek]

You da man C!

In fact, P5_133XL still is, but I'm trying to stay within a reasonnable distance in case he has a weak moment.

 

[CougTek]

He started at 3am Friday. 36 million points on his first day. Single user. Will overtake us in three days at this beat.

Only needed two

 

[LiamC]

Looks like today will be my last day for a couple of months. Summer has been delayed here in Aus, but it's getting into the 30's now.

 

[CougTek]

I was about to post that for a man supposed to (even temporarily) give up, you're posting decent numbers. For the nine last months of the year, you've been the top producer overall, barely edging Mark and me (although on the entire year, I woop all your asses ).

See you back in April.

 

[CougTek]

I forgot to underline it, but congratulations to Sdbardwick : first member to ever do 3 million points in a month.

 

[sdbardwick]

Cool!
But it did take 31 days (around 30 days 22 hours). If people could stop tripping the power breaker and tripping over my network cables it would have been under 30 days.

Probably won't be that high again (unless I do something silly); computer and server consolidation underway. Plus, it is unseasonably warm (again- 80F on January 1st????) so the space heaters are off for the next few days.

 

[CougTek]

I received a Project 6900 unit (a big unit). It will probably be my last big unit on my current computers as the deadline for regular big units on 8-core systems is January 16th.

 

[CougTek]

I guess the first member of our team to complete a big beta unit is SDBardwick. He sent a +200000 points unit for the midnight update. So now we know he has a computer with 16 logical cores or more.

Congratulations. I'm jealous.

 

[sdbardwick]

Heh. You noticed before I did. About 260K for that unit, but not that impressive overall - took about 3.75 days. Once I add real work duties to that box (2x Opteron 6128 ), it might not make the bonus deadline.

 

[CougTek]

Still, it's almost 70,000ppd for a single computer. Since an Opteron 6128 cost only ~270$ and dual socket G34 boards can be bought for less than 400$, the ppd per $ ratio is quite good. An entire system like this would cost ~1100$. Each of my Core i7 2600 systems are worth ~800$ and I only average ~50,000ppd for both. They are much faster for daily tasks however.

 

[Bozo]

Does anyone know of a way to run F@H offline and then uploading the results?

 

[CougTek]

No idea Bozo. I don't see an option to establish a connection only when a unit is finished in the V7 beta client.

BTW, we are, since yesterday, back to the 140th place overall (team ranking). We haven't been that high since three years ago.

 

[Bozo]

I just found 'Sneakernetting'

F@H for non-internet connected computers.

 

[CougTek]

Good for you. If it can help you to contribute more, then I'm all for it.

Something strange happened a few minutes ago : I've received a big unit. I'm no longer supposed to receive big units, but I did. I certainly won't complain, but I'm surprised.

 

[Bozo]

After reading the Sneakernetting article, I was wondering if you could use a virtual OS.
Install VMWare 4 on a computer without internet access and on a computer
with internet access.
Install a removable drive system on both computers.
Install a drive in the removable device on the computer with internet access. Install the virtual OS to this drive. Setup folding per the instructions on Sneakernetting.
Then move the hard drive to the non internet computer and run the OS with the VMWare 4 program on it.
Should work????

 

[CougTek]

Unless the computer without internet access is quite powerful, I don't think it's worth the trouble. If it's a 4P 12-core Opteron system though...

 

[Bozo]

Unless the computer without internet access is quite powerful, I don't think it's worth the trouble. If it's a 4P 12-core Opteron system though...

I'll find out in the next few days. :-D

 

[sdbardwick]

Folding cage match this week:
2x Opteron 6128 vs. 2x Opteron 4280.
16 cores @ 2GHz vs. 16 "cores" @ 2.8GHz.
Quad channel RAM (8x2GB) vs. Dual channel RAM (4*4GB); both DDR3 1333; ECC enabled on 6128, no ECC on 4280.

Any bets?

 

[BingBangBop]

The 6128 has 1 FP/Core, the 4280 is a bulldozer with .5 FP/core. With 2x the number of FP units, the 6128 should win hands down.

 

[ddrueding]

My money is on the 6128.

 

[sdbardwick]

I'll be happy if the 4280s lose by less than 30%. 1-(8 *2.8 )/(16*2)

 

[sdbardwick]

Well, for the second time in a row, the ASUS motherboard is DOA (the dual socket G34 motherboard was DOA as well). I hope it will be as easy as the last one - remount all the same components and watch it work.
Cage match results will be delayed a bit...

 

[CougTek]

What motherboard model(s) are so unreliable? Dual-socket motherboards should focus primarily on reliability. This is odd.

Maybe you should switch to Intel's side. An Asus Z8NA-D6 with two Xeon E5645 or E5649 isn't much more expensive than a dual-Opteron setup. It's probably faster too.

 

[Santilli]

Buying a dual socket server board from Asus?????

That has to be close to the ultimate oxymoron. Reliable=/Asus

 

[sdbardwick]

The G34 board looked like it was damaged after final QA; one of the pins in the socket was misaligned - right were a careless application of the protective cover would damage it.

After that experience, I was extraordinarily careful in inspecting and handling the C32 board; it looks fine, but won't even give POST error code beeps, even after removing trying various combinations of single/dual processors and memory configs.

I'd had good experience in the past with ASUS dual socket AMD boards, including an A7M266-D (circa 2002) that still runs 2x AthlonXP 1900+ (using the pencil trace trick to convert them to AthlonMPs).

I considered going Intel 2x 6 core, but the price delta was around $600.

 

[Santilli]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131643
Look carefully at the reviews. 57% only for a server quality motherboard being 5 stars?

 

[Bozo]

The virtual folding system has been transfered to the computer without internet access. F@H is running.
Looks good so far.

 

[Bozo]

F@H runs well switching from one computer to the other. But, like Cougtek said, you need some serious cpu power.

 

[CougTek]

Dans Shearer had his best month of the last two years. Like someone eating All-Brans, he's a model of regularity.

 

[mubs]

Coug, you have a way with words!