Folding Forum

The homepage attracted me by saying that the software uses idle computational power and I wont even notice. This is false and misleading (at least in my very personal case).

I downloaded the software yesterday and since then it never stopped using 100% of my quad core processors . Without even asking. The fan is running continuously since. I closed the application and restarted the mac, and the CPU was still 100%. No login items, no processess to kill, no application to terminate, no uninstaller provided, no FAQ for un-istalling only for Windows users. I tried to ZAP away the two applications from the Application folder. Guess what? Still running at 100%...There is not even an option to limit CPU consumption. Google Search? fail!

Even seeking the process manually is unsuccessful. I'm thinking about a generic average user attracted by the fancy messages on the home page that ends up trapped!

Did I do something wrong here? Maybe it is not compliant with osx 10.8...

Sorry I didn't read the general rules for troubleshooting before posting, my bad .

Computer Specs: Specifically CPU type and speed, RAM amount and number of CPU cores, especially. Don't forget your GPU type if you're folding with it.
Network Connection: DSL
Operating System: MacOsX 10.8
Overclocked?: What is overclocked? By how much? - No
Stable?: //
Software: I deleted the files I dont know how to check it, i deleted all possible files. I downloaded the client yesterday (21jan) from the official homepage


PS: In activity Monitor I don't see any strange process, but "iStat menu" is showing me a 100% CPU consumption operated by FahCoreWrapper .

Welcome to the fourm, adv4nced.

I'm not very well-versed on the OSX v7 client, but apparently the best way to remove it is through an uninstaller located at the bottom of this page. I would agree that this is not in a very obvious location and it should be linked on the main page. To me, it seems like OSX often gets less attention than Windows and Linux, probably because of the paucity of active clients.

I think you and the Pande Group have different definitions of "idle computational power." There are few consumer applications that really tax your CPU anywhere near its full computational capacity, and with the advancements in CPU architecture and scheduling, there's a lot of idle processing power even when you're actively using the computer. There's also the fact that FAH almost exclusively uses the Floating Point Unit, a module that is not used as much by other applications. Even if the software you're running uses the Integer Unit a lot, the FPU is usually mostly idle, and FAH will take advantage of that.

Were you assuming that "idle" meant "when I'm not at the computer, and the screensaver is on"? That feature is scheduled to be added in a future update to the v7 client, though no one knows exactly when it's going to be released. Until then, the client by default will tax 100% of you computer's processing power whenever possible, and will back off if other software needs the resources that FAH is using. As to the notion that you won't notice the client running, the idea is that you won't notice any lag. The scheduling software in modern OSes is usually able to avoid lag when FAH is running full-blast on a CPU. This isn't always the case on a GPU, but seeing as how they're not supported right now on anything other than Windows, you don't have to worry about that.

The client currently by default installs as a service that runs in the background and uses all available CPU resources. It is set to run at the lowest priority, so any use you make of the computer will be done before the folding process. That is what they mean by using idle computer resource. You can adjust how much of your CPU is given to folding using the Configure portion of FAHControl, directions for using that are here. You also use FAHControl to start or stop folding using the Fold and Pause buttons respectively. Deleting FAHControl will not stop the processing, and the background process will restart on its own if killed. The process can be set to not restart, but that requires FAHControl to do that without using the command line in Terminal.

Since you have already deleted parts of the F@H software, to get things back under control you should use the uninstaller. Hopefully it will be packaged with the installer in some future release. The OS X Uninstaller can be downloaded from the bottom of this page.

I hope you decide to reinstall folding. Using the Configure function of FAHControl the CPU usage can be lessened. You did not mention the type of Mac you have, the default is to use a SMP setting of -1 which uses all cores/threads available. For example, on a quad-core i5 that would be 4. With a quad-core i7 that would be 8. You can set the number lower to 2, 3 or higher even number. You can also change the folding slot from SMP to be a uniprocessor slot, that will use only one core.

You can find additional information on folding with OS X in the V7.2.9 OS X (Beta) forum. Or ask here. The (Beta) is because the client has some features needing to be brought up to parity with the Windows and Linux versions. Future releases are planned with easier initial setup and selectable performance levels instead of installing to use all available resources.

thank you guys. I still see 100% consumption but I'm able to use my laptop smoothly anyway. So, even if this is a counterintuitive concept of "idle", I think it makes sense. I wouldn't mind leave it open as a service 100% of the time, but when running on battery, it really sucks energy up. Thank you for the uninstaller link. I'd suggest to add it on the FAQ pages .

Welcome to foldingforum.org, adv4nced

There is a setting called "Pause-on-battery" which can be set to "true" and is useful on laptops. There are also some other advanced settings that can be considered to reduce the 100% to some other values. If you're interested,we can talk about them.

As has been said, FAH is designed to 'use all unused resoruces" which means 100% of your CPU will go first to whatever you normally use your computer for (say X%) and the rest (100-X%) for FAH. I'm confident that you have not seen any loss of responsiveness due to the CPUs being fully used, which has been the normal basis for defining "won't even notice.' The fans are another matter, of course.

If a future enhancement to FAH were to reduce the word "all" to some other value, I wonder how what kind of limit the Development Team would need to establish for the "fan" issue that you're talking about? 95% max? 75% nax> 50% max?

The screensaver, of course, will probably be the right solution for you whenever it comes out. (...and I certainly can't promise that your answers to my questions will ever change anything. I'm just curious.)

The last time I looked, pause-on-battery set to true was the default. That may have changed, I have not looked at the setting since I set it to false on my MacBook a while ago so folding would not be stopped if the Magsafe connector came off inadvertently while moving it around. I do manually pause folding if I am going to be using the laptop on battery for a period of time.

adv4nced wrote:The homepage attracted me by saying that the software uses idle computational power and I wont even notice.

I think the original poster is right that the text on the main page is misleading to the average user in this regard.

Kornflake wrote:

adv4nced wrote:The homepage attracted me by saying that the software uses idle computational power and I wont even notice.

I think the original poster is right that the text on the main page is misleading to the average user in this regard.

I hope you can see the argument on both sides. As others have pointed out, it depends on definition. On some systems (my desktop for instance) you really have to listen carefully to hear the fans, and there's no screen lag at all, so there that statement is entirely accurate. What alternative wording would you suggest?

Out of curiosity, what does ps ax | grep FAH give you, if anything?