Folding Forum

How does F@H decide whether a work unit is okay or faulty?

The client performs a number of checks, such as ensuring that the simulation produces valid and sensible mathematical results and that all the files are present and working correctly. Additionally, the server performs a number of sanity and validation checks on the returned workunit. For example, is the client sending an actual F@h workunit, does the workunit have all the expected files, does the workunit follow the correct format, was the workunit processed with the correct FAHCore, are all the atoms in sane locations, and so on. If these checks fail, the workunit is marked as faulty and the server will reassign it to someone else. If the workunit fails for several different people, it notifies one of the research labs that something is wrong that particular trajectory that cannot be explained by glitches, user action, or unstable hardware.