Folding Forum

If you were here day to day and saw what goes on, I think you'd have a radically different point of view in terms of how all of this works. We're here to push science forward and aren't trying to "bait and switch" donors (there's nothing to gain from that). We're trying to push the envelope and try new things, but in the end, we're here to push the science and that always takes precedence. The day when science doesn't take precedence is the day that we stray from our mission and betray our donor base, so it's something we take very seriously around here.

but in the end, we're here to push the science and that always takes precedence.

I don't think anyone has any problem with this. However, you are also correct that the donors cannot see the day to day decisions.
They only see the results of those decisions.

As 7im has implied, I read the forums much more regularly than most people (99.99% of the 300K folders)
Yet, I could not predict the status of either the Linux client fix, or the intended future availability of BIGADV WU for Road-runner.
Thank you for your response. While it might not have been the answer he was looking for, it was at least candid.

My conclusion:

For a project of this size a dedicated liaison person would be well worth the investment.
As you eluded, even MODS don't have sufficient access to know the status of various issues.
Educated guesses and conjecture is not really a substitute for reliable inside information.

I know there was a few posts regarding a "help desk".
I had hopes that this was a move in the direction of a dedicated liaison person. (A person who's primary responsibility,if not only responsibility, would be to communicate to donors; not involved directly in research or programing{yet have intimate access}.)

.02c (adjusted for inflation, maybe .01c):

I'm too new to FAH to have much of an opinion on specifics of WU differences or points, but I'm not new to the problems of organizing a group of competitive people. Besides the business environment, I've spent over 3 decades racing, and helping organize races, which might be similar.

Can you imagine setting up a race, and the biggest trophy doesn't go to the top class, or some people are forced to run their Porsche's on a dragstrip?

A big drawback to organizing either racing and "dedicated rig" distributed computing is that it's not just a car or a computer. It's a personality behind both of them. Ego always sounds like a negative term, but without it, there is no competition. Looking at the home page stats, it appears a high percentage of the teraflops are people competing. How do I come up with that? Over half the teraflops are GPU, and the average production per machine is very high. I would say well under 1% (WAG) of computers sold come with a GPU that would make the average output of those FAH gpu clients. That doesn't even include the teraflops by "dedicated" CPU rigs.

The good news is it's cheaper to fix a problem with the driver or the folding at home dedicated rig owner than it is to fix the car or the computer. For drivers it's seat time, and for FAHDRO's it's progressive payout for upgrading their hardware.

Treat it like a race, and you'll get "pro racers". Treat it like a commuter traffic on the 5, and you'll get something else. (not to say that's a fair analogy )

I certainly don't envy what PG has on their plate:
Molecular scientists
IT scientists
Production work
Papers
QC
etc, etc, etc.

But what drives competitive people has a science and history all to itself, which predates computers or even the idea of molecules.
Awards, trophies, races, and the study of how to make them work is thousands of years old.

Not absolutely sure what it is called in the academic world, perhaps Behavioral Science/Psychology? Perhaps there are resources at Stanford outside the PG that could be drafted into action? Just like you can tune a subroutine for max effect, you can tune a driver every bit as effectively. Think about this, you can get XX% gain by optimizing code at the expense of XXX manhours. You can also get XX% gain by optimizing the FAHDRO output at the expense of XXX manhours. Which is cheaper, I cannot say. But average code on a blazing fast machine gets the same output as optimized code on an average machine. Same ends.

This is a measurable science when you're on such a grand scale as FAH. Theory can be validated, and relatively quickly on a "science" timescale. There might just some scientist chopping at the bit who would love to prove their theories by engaging in such a challenge.

It seems that quite a few folks are building purpose-built machines for bigadv WUs,
perhaps not recalling the days of the QMD WUs and their sudden demise.

Folks with relatively short time with F@H may not be aware, but old-timers should remember well.

Qinsp: you make some very good points. I'm not a racing fan, but the problem I see being debated must have a proper way to describe it in racing terms.

You have different classes of competition for good reasons. If all the high-powered rigs can't get on the track because low-powered rigs are filling the track, then there needs to be less incentive for the low-powered cars to enter the high-powered class, especially when you discover that there isn't room on the track for everybody and the low-powered rigs have unintentionally manged to block the finish line so they're the only ones that finish "in the money" My suggestion: adjust the prizes so that low-powered rigs have good reasons to compete in their own class.

For those of you with i7s, I apologize for calling your equipment a low-powered rig. It's a powerful machine in it's own right. And while it's a fine 8-cylinder race car, it shouldn't be out there on the track trying to competing with 24-core monsters that can finish the race in half or a quarter of the time. No amount of "it's for the science" discussion will help as long as they give trophies to everybody who finishes before the end of the day.

I too get frustrated when I look at my dedicated i7 920 (4.0GHZ) folding regular smp units, but I have to remind myself that it was, and still is, a beta program.

The risk was mine, by setting up a rig that depends on a beta program continuing on in its current format.

Not trying to minimize your complaints, as we are all donors. I, like yourself, just want my rig to be getting the most science done, with the hope of getting maximum points for our teams and our friendly competitions we have with each other.

codysluder wrote:Qinsp: you make some very good points. I'm not a racing fan, but the problem I see being debated must have a proper way to describe it in racing terms.

You have different classes of competition for good reasons. If all the high-powered rigs can't get on the track because low-powered rigs are filling the track, then there needs to be less incentive for the low-powered cars to enter the high-powered class, especially when you discover that there isn't room on the track for everybody and the low-powered rigs have unintentionally manged to block the finish line so they're the only ones that finish "in the money" My suggestion: adjust the prizes so that low-powered rigs have good reasons to compete in their own class.

For those of you with i7s, I apologize for calling your equipment a low-powered rig. It's a powerful machine in it's own right. And while it's a fine 8-cylinder race car, it shouldn't be out there on the track trying to competing with 24-core monsters that can finish the race in half or a quarter of the time. No amount of "it's for the science" discussion will help as long as they give trophies to everybody who finishes before the end of the day.

I guess we need a 64 core rig then to do the regular old WUs, then we can say get the 24 cores off the track...

Though the bigadv may be beta I asked long ago about it...

kasson wrote:We've been very pleased with the results so far. These have really allowed us to do a class of computations that weren't previously feasible with Folding@Home. Right now we're working on the science end for the next set of projects and also on some updated cores. I would expect bigadv or something similar to continue for the forseeable future.

viewtopic.php?f=55&t=11619

road-runner wrote: Though the bigadv may be beta I asked long ago about it...

kasson wrote:We've been very pleased with the results so far. These have really allowed us to do a class of computations that weren't previously feasible with Folding@Home. Right now we're working on the science end for the next set of projects and also on some updated cores. I would expect bigadv or something similar to continue for the forseeable future.

viewtopic.php?f=55&t=11619

ok, good point. However, note that post from Dr. Peter Kasson was a year ago (Oct 2009). Also, please keep in mind that in the end any such decisions are mine in the end, and other group members are giving their best estimate given the information at hand at the time (eg last year). You make a good point about communication here and I'll remind my team try to be more clear in these sorts of situations. In the end, they are human so there will be misunderstandings from time to time.

But this is all moot since big adv is not ending. We are working on new big adv WUs. Just that there can be shortages from time to time as the science we do changes.

Also, note that bigger WUs != more science all the time, but often more challenging systems from a computationally point of view. Some science problems are big systems and some are small. Alzheimer's peptides are small, CJD prions are big. One could debate which is a worse disease, but big here is just different in some ways, i.e. allows us to go after different systems with similar techniques as we'd look a smaller ones.

codysluder wrote:Qinsp: you make some very good points. I'm not a racing fan, but the problem I see being debated must have a proper way to describe it in racing terms.

You have different classes of competition for good reasons. If all the high-powered rigs can't get on the track because low-powered rigs are filling the track, then there needs to be less incentive for the low-powered cars to enter the high-powered class, especially when you discover that there isn't room on the track for everybody and the low-powered rigs have unintentionally manged to block the finish line so they're the only ones that finish "in the money" My suggestion: adjust the prizes so that low-powered rigs have good reasons to compete in their own class.

...

Classes are the norm for most kinds of competition, but racing even more so. Land Speed Racing has at least a couple thousand classes.

But what is really needed perhaps is scantily-clad girls and champagne. Works for Formula One and NASCAR ...

note: that is humor-light, all the joke with only half the punchline

Qinsp wrote:But what is really needed perhaps is scantily-clad girls and champagne. Works for Formula One and NASCAR ...

That works for me. I've pulled my x6 off the track!