Possible surge in folding traffic soon

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bikeaddict
Posts: 187
Joined: Sun May 03, 2020 1:20 am

Possible surge in folding traffic soon

Post by bikeaddict »

World Community Grid has just announced that they are temporarily stopping sending out work units while they transition from IBM to the Krembil Research Institute.

https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/abou ... icleId=757

There may be a number of people like me who do CPU tasks for WCG alongside GPU tasks for Folding@Home. I will probably switch over to folding on CPU if my processors aren't abysmally slow.

It looks like there are a good number of jobs currently available, but the people at F@H should probably keep an eye out next week to make sure the rate of new jobs matches any increased demand.

https://apps.foldingathome.org/serverstats

The server admins should also make sure the servers are prepared to handle an increase in requests for new WUs and uploading of completed WUs.

I imagine the scientists will be happy to see their results coming back more quickly for a while.
pcwolf
Posts: 36
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2020 4:49 pm

Re: Possible surge in folding traffic soon

Post by pcwolf »

I have been on BOINC for eleven years, and also use my CPU for WCG because it seems not worth the effort to use it for F@H

Can you explain a little deeper about what these changes mean?
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MeeLee
Posts: 1375
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2019 10:16 pm

Re: Possible surge in folding traffic soon

Post by MeeLee »

I don't see any significant increase in WU processing from IBM.
I do WCG as well, but it's balanced out with other projects; which means, if WCG is down, other projects take over.
Also, like pcwolf said, CPUs aren't the most optimized to run FAH on.
And WCG doesn't have any GPU WUs.
I think most people run multiple projects, and thus the boinc manager will reallocate resources to other projects, without any downtime.
Very few, if any, run just 1 project. They always have a lower priority project running as well (or more than one).
JimF
Posts: 652
Joined: Thu Jan 21, 2010 2:03 pm

Re: Possible surge in folding traffic soon

Post by JimF »

Somewhat OT, but I have been adding Ryzen 5000 series machines to do the FAH CPU work for several months. I like the science, though I have a bunch of GPUs (GTX 1070 on average) on FAH too. But the peptides (similar to small proteins) do well on the CPUs, and they can accomplish a lot of interesting work; just look at the descriptions.

All of my CPU machines are on Ubuntu 20.04.3. I have:
Two Ryzen 5700G (they include a GPU, which I use for remotely monitoring over the LAN, but don't crunch on), with 16 virtual cores. I get an average of 300 kPPD.
A Ryzen 5900X (to be followed by another very shorty) with 24 virtual cores which gives me around 500 kPPD.
A Ryzen 5950X with 32 virtual cores, which gives me a little more than the 5900X, but does not increase proportionately to the cores increase.
I also use a Intel i9-10900F with 20 virtual cores, which does about as well as the Ryzen 5700G's.
(I reserve one core on these latter machines to support a GPU also on FAH).

I do a lot of BOINC CPU work too on my Ryzen 3000's, but as you know there is not much GPU work there in the biomedical field.
(I use the Ryzen 5000's on Folding, since their greater QRB reflects the greater value to the science).

My general impression is that the CPU projects have been providing a greater variety of interesting science in the last few years, so it will be a while before I upgrade GPUs.
MeeLee
Posts: 1375
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2019 10:16 pm

Re: Possible surge in folding traffic soon

Post by MeeLee »

JimF wrote:Somewhat OT, but I have been adding Ryzen 5000 series machines to do the FAH CPU work for several months. I like the science, though I have a bunch of GPUs (GTX 1070 on average) on FAH too. But the peptides (similar to small proteins) do well on the CPUs, and they can accomplish a lot of interesting work; just look at the descriptions.

All of my CPU machines are on Ubuntu 20.04.3. I have:
Two Ryzen 5700G (they include a GPU, which I use for remotely monitoring over the LAN, but don't crunch on), with 16 virtual cores. I get an average of 300 kPPD.
A Ryzen 5900X (to be followed by another very shorty) with 24 virtual cores which gives me around 500 kPPD.
A Ryzen 5950X with 32 virtual cores, which gives me a little more than the 5900X, but does not increase proportionately to the cores increase.
I also use a Intel i9-10900F with 20 virtual cores, which does about as well as the Ryzen 5700G's.
(I reserve one core on these latter machines to support a GPU also on FAH).

I do a lot of BOINC CPU work too on my Ryzen 3000's, but as you know there is not much GPU work there in the biomedical field.
(I use the Ryzen 5000's on Folding, since their greater QRB reflects the greater value to the science).

My general impression is that the CPU projects have been providing a greater variety of interesting science in the last few years, so it will be a while before I upgrade GPUs.
You're still as fast with that 105W CPU (150W with PBO enabled equals about 200W system power draw), as a 1060 6GB, 1650 Super, or a mobile RTX 3050, which is probably the absolute lowest you can buy nowadays on GPUs.
For the price of the AMD CPU system, you can buy a cheap Celeron system with one of these GPUs instead, or a faster one, get more PPD, and waste less electricity.
JimF
Posts: 652
Joined: Thu Jan 21, 2010 2:03 pm

Re: Possible surge in folding traffic soon

Post by JimF »

MeeLee wrote:You're still as fast with that 105W CPU (150W with PBO enabled equals about 200W system power draw), as a 1060 6GB, 1650 Super, or a mobile RTX 3050, which is probably the absolute lowest you can buy nowadays on GPUs.
For the price of the AMD CPU system, you can buy a cheap Celeron system with one of these GPUs instead, or a faster one, get more PPD, and waste less electricity.
I have everything from GTX 1060's up through GTX 2060's, and most in between.

My point was that I like the CPU work. The points are relevant as between CPUs (or between GPUs), but not between CPUs and GPUs insofar as I am concerned.
They do different types of science.
tvdsluis
Posts: 36
Joined: Mon Apr 24, 2017 11:12 am

Re: Possible surge in folding traffic soon

Post by tvdsluis »

bikeaddict wrote: There may be a number of people like me who do CPU tasks for WCG alongside GPU tasks for Folding@Home. I will probably switch over to folding on CPU if my processors aren't abysmally slow.
That's what i will do as well.
I also have GPU for FAH and CPU for WCG as there are not much interesting other projects in the biomedical field running on CPU's. (i also ran RAH but that project is not consistent in giving out work anymore)

So yes, i will direct my CPU to FAH as well, and i have read others will do the same.
WCG will be out at least 2 months (they take the relaxation road instead of the urgency road) so that would be a good amount of work, and maybe some will stay here with CPU because there are a lot of interesting biomedical CPU projects here.
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