Overclockers Folding@Home Team Spotlight #92

Our Overclockers Folding@Home Team have been running member spotlights for quite some time. This is the 92nd feature in our series of Folding Spotlights! Please give a warm welcome to Jmtyra!  Overclocker, Team 32 Folder, Rosetta folder and news writer!

Dfonda: When did you start folding Jmtyra?
Jmtyra: Hello. My name is JT, and I’m addicted to folding <smile>. Originally I started folding about four years ago for team MintIRC (#51258). It was just as addictive then as it is now, but a career move and relocating across the country ended my folding about eight months later. It was a sad day. The folding bug came back to bite me again last year, around August, as I starting looking for a new forum to call home. That’s when I stumbled across OCF, registered, and the rest is history! EOC stats

D: What do you do for a living?
J: My current job role is travel-heavy, unfortunately. It’s an IT services role, managing the delivery side of project engagements at the customer’s site. Basically, I travel to a customer’s location and manage a team of technicians to deploy client-side equipment. We setup the new equipment, migrate the user’s data and then remove the old equipment. Trust me, it sounds much more glorious than it really is! Sometimes I’ll get a fun assignment, like a data center collocation project or computing cluster setup.

D: If there was something recent that you did that you wanted your fellow team members to know about, what would it be?
J: Hmmm…Well, I recently snagged a few more SR-2 boards that I hope to bring online soon. However, I’m still waiting for the hex-core Xeons to become more affordable so I can get them all setup.

D: You recently did a fantastic job of organizing the “Folding Stickies” can you give us a summary of that work?
J: A conversation “developed” (within this thread) a few months prior to the consolidation of the stickies. Before long, I found myself volunteering for the job, thus learning that posting and drinking just don’t mix, haha! All joking aside, it was really just a lot of general formatting while expanding some items and summarizing others. The content was already there, as we have an awesome Team 32 membership base, so it was just a matter of putting it all together. Add in Harlam’s guidance and timeless wisdom, along with a few weeks of editing, and you get a Team 32 Super Sticky.

D: What Part of the world do you live in, and if you don’t mind telling, what town?
J: Currently I reside in Irving, which is in the Dallas, Texas area. Previously I was living in the San Diego area, but moved late last year due to business travel logistics and to be closer to my family.

D: How did you initially hear about F@H?
J: Strangely enough, I heard about it while researching SETI. The idea of distributed computing was very interesting to me, so I spent lots of time researching the concept as it pertained to SETI. Then someone mentioned F@H as another DC project in comparison to SETI, which sparked my interest further, and led me to my love of folding today.

D: After starting, why do you continue to fold?
J: Initially, I didn’t. It didn’t seem very “important” and there wasn’t an active F@H community at my original folding home. Later down the road, I learned more about F@H striving to help the human race, and how it related to those with cancer. Considering the number of people I know who are afflicted with some form of cancer or other ailment, it seemed silly not to fold. Now I fold for those affected by cancer, and for the future of the human race.

D: What do you do for fun?
J: Usually I’ll hang out with my friends and family, catch up on my Hulu/Netflix queue, or just enjoy being home. I don’t like to travel for fun, due to the amount of travel associated with my job. When I’m feeling a bit nerdy, I’ll work on a mod of some sort, as there is always something that needs tweaking or fixing. If it ain’t broke, take it apart and fix it!

D: Is there anything special you do in your spare time that you can share with us?
J: Spare time? What is this spare time you speak of? No, I keep things fairly low-key when I’m not working, so I’m currently not doing anything special.

D: Ok, give us the lowdown of you folding farm!
J: Let me be the first to say, I certainly don’t have a SFU-sized folding farm. It’s more of a “work in progress”, but here’s what I’ve got so far: 4x SR-2 motherboards, 4x Seasonic X650 Gold PSUs and 4x sets of 6GB HyperX T1 RAM (6 x 1GB). Currently, however, only one of the four SR-2 boards are online; the others are pending CPUs, for when I can afford some hex core Xeons. The single SR-2 that is online runs a pair of E5620 Xeons. I’ve also got a solo 1156 socket i5 on an Asus P7P55D-E Pro with dual GTS 250 cards. That system is temporary, and will be pulled offline and sold once the other SR-2 boards are online.
All of these systems are mounted to OSB (like particle board) squares, which are sitting on the shelves of a metal-wire storage rack. The entire power infrastructure is ran through a high-end SurgeX SA1810 industrial surge eliminator/power conditioner before going to the UPS. Said UPS is a custom job, using an enterprise-grade 3U APC rack-mount UPS that is powered by 4x deep-cycle marine batteries, each of which are rated at 115 Ah. The resulting maximum load capacity is 3 kVA/2.25 kW with a run-time of roughly 12-14 hours at full load. I’ve also built a custom humidifier for my current dwelling, which keeps my gear in the 30% – 45% humidity range to prevent ESD from frying anything. You never know.

D: How about some favorite parts…Motherboard, GPU?
J: I’m a huge fan of the SR-2 boards. They seem to require more work to get going, but they’ve got so many options to play with and offer the potential for so much PPD output from a single board. Some members of the tech community have coaxed ~180k PPD out of their rigs, which was previously not possible from a CPU-only folding rig.

D: What kind of overclocks are you getting on them?
J: Currently, the two E5620s are running at roughly 4Ghz each; they run at 2.4Ghz stock. Depending on the WU, this pulls around 65k – 80k PPD.

D: How do monitor your farm?
J: Good ol’ HFM.net of course! I also use LogMeIn (free) to connect and check things out, especially when I’m away from home. In the future, I’ll be adopting the –oneunit/restart after every WU method that SFU currently uses. That seems to keep things a bit more stable.

D: What new “Tech” are you looking forward to?
J: Two items come to mind. The first item is the continued drive for smaller fabrication tech, which results in more cores per processor as each new series is released. Second, the new FAH client; between the ease of use for installs to the centralized management, it’s going to be easier than ever to get folding. Hopefully this will encourage more individuals to join the cause, as they would be able to get up and running much easier.

D: What are your future goals? What do you most want to accomplish with your life?
J: For folding? Beat the snot out of SFU! It’s a crazy goal, but hey it’s something to work towards. For life? Meh, I’d like to eventually settle down, have a wife and kids, house, the usual. After a few more years of this travel gig, I’d like to transition into a non-travel or very little travel job role. Being away from home 80% – 90% of the time really wears you down after a while, sadly enough. Totally OT, but the house will have a small data center, so I can get my nerd on. <evil grin>

D: If there is something you want to tell the team, then spill your guts! What have I missed in my questions that could help the team learn more about you?
J: You’ve been pretty thorough! I can’t think of anything else to add. Actually…I do want to say “Thank You” to the Team 32 community. We’ve got the best group of members out there as far as I’m concerned. I am honored and feel proud to call Team 32 home.

D: How about some Pics of your farm your home your hobbies…or even you!