queue program

[MuEagle05]

Seti at home has a great program called SetiDriver, which basically queue's as many WU's you want. Is there anything out there like this for FAH? That's the only reason I haven't switched from SAH to FAH, b/c i haven't been able to find anything.

 

[Fast420A]

Nope, most of the work units have a deadline of 1 to 3 or so weeks plus I know I have an always on connection so no need for it.

 

[Arkaine23]

Actually there is. It was made for genome@home, but can be made to queue folding wu's. IMO, its better to just run a second instance if your CPU is fast enough. There are enough assignment servers so that being stuck unable to get a WU almost never happens. Or rather it happens about as often as the power goes out at the Pande group's building at Stanford.

 

[Cuda]

How fast does a machine have to be to run two instances, and is it really worth it?

 

[Arkaine23]

Depends on the WU really. Anything above 2\700mhz can probably do it, especially SSE CPU's.

It just makes each instance run twice as slow as it otherwise would. So if there is a short period where all the assignment servers are down, it is less likely your F@H clients will need to connect to get a new WU in that particular window of time. It also means that if one client finishes and needs to get a new wu during a time when none are available, that the other client will keep going, and will speed up to 100% useage instead of 50%.

It usually worthwhile. Though for AMD systems that get hit by the SSE bug, more clients = more chance of getting hung up. Also, if you are concverend about the amount of free ram, you may not want to run more than one instance.

 

[Fast420A]

The machine doesn't have to be a certain speed to run multiple instances, it just takes longer to do both than it would be doing 1 at a time. With the new beta client you can run up to 8 instances at once instead of just 4 like the last client.

 

[Arkaine23]

Yes, but try making the deadlines on a 500mhz celeron running 6 or 8 instances.

 

[Fast420A]

Well of course...You have to be smart about it. If you know how long a machine takes for 1 WU, then it will take 8 times as long to do 8 at one time give or take a few hours.

 

[MuEagle05]

Well the problem is right now I'm on 56K dialup. I have a Barton 2500+, so any idea how long a typical WU would take to complete?

 

[Fast420A]

You should easily complete the average Gromac WU in 12 - 15 hours with that rig using SSE.

My 1700 Tbred B @2.3 Ghz is looking at 14 Hours for the WU it has right now.

My 1700 Pally at stock is looking at 21 hours 36 min. right now.
My 1800 Pally at stock is looking at 20 hours 40 min. right now.

 

[Arkaine23]

You can do between 1 and 2 WU's per day if folding gromacs. On such a fast CPU, you could run multple instances and it would be good to cover yourself in case the assignment servers are down. Your box would still connect to download/upload just as often as it would running one instance.

http://forum.folding-community.org/viewtopic.php?t=2765

^ That's for how to queue WU's.

 

[MuEagle05]

Sorry i've tried diving into FAH, but am still trying to get a feel for it. I def. want to switch over from SAH though, it's just taking a little time.

So the avg. Wu would be, lets say 15 hours. Runing two would be like 30 hours then. I know with SETI the program only uses idle resources, so when you're gaming or something the computer power isn't hogged. Does FAH work the same way, or does it hog the processor power?

Thanks for all the help w/ this guys

 

[Arkaine23]

It is the same as running Seti. It gives up CPU time to everything else and takes only what's left over.

 

[MuEagle05]

cool. does EMIII work with FAH 4 yet?

 

[Arkaine23]

It does, and has from the beginning. It has always spit out an error message if the client is not named FAH3Console, but you can just ignore the error and it works fine, or rename the client.