Folding Forum

Jesse_V wrote:

screen317 wrote:Here's something else that perplexes me. Two days ago the Native TFLOPS (total) and x86 TFLOPS were 5091 and 7252 respectively; today they are 5074 and 7209 respectively. How does that make sense?

I don't see anything strange here. Participation waxes and wanes, and people add/remove hardware or reconfigure their systems over time. I've heard that participation picks up in the winter months, but seems to ebb a little bit during the summer. You can see from that page that GPU and PS3 folding adds far more to the x86 FLOPS than they do the Native FLOPS, so that affects those numbers as well. Like stocks, such fluctuation is normal, but they really should always be going up.

Oh. I made the mistake of thinking it was cumulative. Never mind.

5 Native PFLOP, now 4.924, is well down on November 10, 2011, when the 6 Native TFLOP barrier was passed. In fact, we're back to February 18, 2009 performance-wise. :/

It would be interesting to see whether this is a seasonal fluctuation, as the Northern Hemisphere moves into winter, whether it's a temporary blip (due to any network issues), or whether it's a longer term trend as people consolidate into fewer but faster computers and QRB.

k1wi's post reminds me; if you are after some historical information about F@h's participation levels, I and many others before me have periodically updated those numbers on the Wikipedia article. Since every version is saved, you should be able to track down that information and when exactly it was changed.

Start on this page http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... on=history and do a find the term "flops" or "Participation" on the screen. Then right click the "Prev" link next to each revision you find, and open the link in a new tab. Continue looking for "flops" and "participation". When you reach the end of the page, hit the "Older 500" link, and continue again. You should be able to find some good historical data there as we update things from time to time. Good luck!

I am interested in publishing a picture of the peak of Jan. 16 vs. May 10, 2012.
I have not managed to figure out how to insert a picture in this forum.

Jorge1950 wrote:I am interested in publishing a picture of the peak of Jan. 16 vs. May 10, 2012.
I have not managed to figure out how to insert a picture in this forum.

Easiest way is to host the image with a website such as tinypic and then wrap the link to the image in [ img ]Photo link[ /img ] (without the spaces)

Absurd. Even in the most humble forums, you can post an image directly.

Not true!

My home forum has rules to curtail posting pictures, even though it is now corporate owned. The forum size gets too large, and hosting costs go up. And with so many free places that will host pictures for you, like imageshack and the like, there is no need for any forum to allow direct posting.

7im understand. This is the result of trying to get a supercomputer, as cheaply as possible. And then the idea that the donor does not need much attention, will be there forever.

However, the donor is the weakest link in the chain. So what are the statistics showing total production "TFLOPS". The global economic crisis is restricting participation.
The budget for energy costs and equipment is not infinite. For those addicted to FAH, but we struggle making cuts in other areas of the family budget, to continue the bad economic situation, it will have to yield to pressure. For example going from 24/7 to 14/7, or removing part of the GPU.

The processing power of GPUs, is far the most reduced. The of 5472 TFlops was 16/01/2012, today 11/05/2012 decreased by 31.83% to 3730 TFlops.

What can we do? I think part of the answer is to increase the threshold of retirement. How? Keeping informed the donor, through the window "About Project" of V7. Currently more information is being included in that window, either! It could do more, I think so.

Other ideas for "About Project" of V7:
1. Publish in different languages. User selectable. Russian, Chinese, Spanish, etc..
2. PG include short news, often renewable.
3. Each WS, refresh information.

This would make sense to the donor, who is working on something real, though it may not entiender much. Quick will get familiar with scientific terms, and their sense of belonging and significance would increase.

You also forget, this is a 3rd party support forum. This is not hosted at Stanford. So trying to get a supercomputer as cheaply as possible has NOTHING to do with hosting or not hosting images in this forum. It's simply a matter of hosting in other places is free, so there is no need to host them here. And it keeps the forum smaller and faster. That's all.

The drop in GPU FLOPS can also be attributed, in part, to the end of life for ATI GPUs 4xxx and down. A noted lack of work units lately would surely drop the FLOPS...

7im've come to understand that some basic supports of FAH, are not supported by PG. This applies to this Forum and KakaoStats. However, it has become the central support FAH, in its relationship with donors.

With regard to the lack of WS. If I have noticed for some time, that it is large FAH for PG.

Anyone can now edit my stats page to help:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... pY1E#gid=0


Trying to figure out how to add text to the figure legend-- probably missing something obvious.

How accurate is the Total CPUs or Total Number of Donators fields? I suspect that they can overestimate the actual total number of CPUs. Would you increase those numbers if you changed your username, or the machine ID, or anything else like that?

The PG tends to be conservative in counting Active numbers. It counts only those clients which complete a WU, so althouigh there will be times the number is overestimated, there will also be times when it's underestimated.

Changing your username or team number won't matter. Changing your MachineID might, but only after you complete a WU under both configurations.

TFLOPS also counts only productive work on the day the WU is uploaded.

bruce wrote:The PG tends to be conservative in counting Active numbers. It counts only those clients which complete a WU, so althouigh there will be times the number is overestimated, there will also be times when it's underestimated.

Changing your username or team number won't matter. Changing your MachineID might, but only after you complete a WU under both configurations.

TFLOPS also counts only productive work on the day the WU is uploaded.

Thanks for the information. Does it also apply to the Total CPUs and Total Donators as I described?

I'm not sure how they count Total CPUs or Total donors. Most likely they're actual (inflated) totals. I ignore those numbers.

The original question was about "Active..." and to me, that's all that's important.

I suppose some other DC project reported totals on their website so it was reported here because the data could be collected and be posted for comparison . . . and to point out that the totals are much higher than the actual meaningful numbers.