Why the use of CPU for COVID-19 projects

[Mackou]

Hello everyone.

I noticed that my GPU slots are not receiving anything and that all my CPU slots are working on COVID-19 related projects.

Why are these jobs specifically made for CPU, is there any reason ?

Thanks a lot for yours answers and keep up the good work !

[Joe_H]

Your GPU should eventually get work, the servers are being kept very busy with the large increase in available GPU's to provide work for. Overall the servers have gone from assigning around 6000 WU's per hour a week and a half ago to current figure of over 30,000 WU's an hour.

As for use of CPU's for COVID-19 there are multiple reasons. There are systems that do not have usable GPU's, but can still be useful for folding. The systems being investigated are smaller, the WU's can complete in a timely manner on CPU's. Overall these projects will also be shorter as they are screening for potential receptor sites that existing drugs will bind to and identify candidates for repurposing for treatment of COVID-19.

[bruce]

There's another factor: The size of the protein, itself. If the protein being studied is particularly small, (look at the atom counts reported) that project runs effectively on a CPU and it is inefficient on powerful GPUs. Say you have a GPU with 5000 shaders and it's only using 80% of them, you would probably gripe.

[tului]

I've been getting covid work on both my dGPU 2060 Max-Q and AMD 4900HS iGPU Renoir, a vega derivative with 8CUs iirc

[JimboPalmer]

Yes, the June servers are much less swamped than the March servers were.