Folding Forum

Sorry for being such a n00b but I can't seem find what WU and PPD means after searching around. I know they stand for work unit and points per day but what exactly do they tell you? Thanks for bearing with me.

GoldenMonkey wrote:Sorry for being such a n00b but I can't seem find what WU and PPD means after searching around. I know they stand for work unit and points per day but what exactly do they tell you? Thanks for bearing with me.

Welcome to the forum.

A Work Unit is one puzzle or unit of work for your computer to solve. It will have a Project number, which has a size and point value, and Run, Clone, and Generation numbers of that project. Project point values (credit) are at the "Project Summary" link at the top of this page.

Points Per Day is simply how many points your computer generates in one day. If you run a folding client that completes a WU of a certain number of points, and takes one day to do so, then your PPD will be that number.

The WIKI link at the top of the page is also loaded with lots of useful information including a Glossary of Terms.

Thanks for your reply.
Correct me if I'm wrong here but when I put my cursor over the icon in the system tray it says 150/1500. Does that mean 150 is 150 points and a WU is 1500 points? Is it also the same for GPU2? For example 7500/15000, that's 7500 points and 15000 points per WU?

The bubble that pops up when you scroll over the systray icon is the number of steps in that WU. The number of steps does not equal the number of points for that WU, nor is there necessarily a direct correlation. Steps are time steps, and are usually on the order of nanoseconds. A WU with fewer steps isn't necessarily shorter, however, as the size of the protein affects the simulation time. A very large protein that's only being simulated for 20 nanoseconds could take longer to run than a small protein going for 100 nanoseconds.

If you want to know how many points the current WU is worth, you can go here http://fah-web.stanford.edu/psummary.html and scroll down to whatever project you're working on (not sure if systray tells you the project). Another way to find this information is to install a monitoring client like FahMon, which will tell you all sorts of stuff about the WUs you're currently working on.

The only thing useful that you can deduce from the system tray flyover value is that 150/1500 means that the current WU is 10% finished.