That still helps. The way they do it is they break it up into a lot of littler chunks. Imagine you have a giant cake, too big for you to eat by yourself. So you cut it up and share it out, and between you and your friends, you eat the cake.
Basically, proteins are key to many diseases (ex: cancers, Huntington's, CJD, etc.). We don't completely understand how proteins work, or more specifically how proteins fold (or assemble). Modelling such is extremely intensive, and typically is done on supercomputers designed with such intensive tasks in mind. However, if you have a large number of regular computers running a simulation at once, you can mimic the operation of a supercomputer. It doesn't matter the power of your own computer, it can still run as one part of this whole. Or, if metaphor is your forte, what Person above me said.
Snicket wrote:i see. Well i don't think i'll be of much help if they wanted my help. All i got is a little laptop
Actualy they break the work out for the type of chip running it. Certain jobs get sent to the GPU's because they perform them the best, the CPU's get another optimized set of tasks, and the PS3's yet another type of work units that they do best.
If you leave your computer on for long periods of time this type of program is a nice way to keep it usefuly working. It comes down to your personal preferences in how you use your computer.
2xGPU clients (GTX 465/GTS 250); 2xCPU clients
<Aura> Our army of teenage girl artists couldn't draw penises without fits of giggling. Does that count?
its seems possible, but i use a lot of resource hogging programs for my classes, plus the thing gets shut off and turned on a lot. Will that be a problem?
Snicket wrote:its seems possible, but i use a lot of resource hogging programs for my classes, plus the thing gets shut off and turned on a lot. Will that be a problem?
Ah, thats a question I don't know the answer to. Someone with more experience with the F@H client running on a computer can answer your question about cycling the computer on and off fairly frequently. The client is different for a PS3 than a computer.
2xGPU clients (GTX 465/GTS 250); 2xCPU clients
<Aura> Our army of teenage girl artists couldn't draw penises without fits of giggling. Does that count?
My computer is always on and typically doing "easy" tasks, so I may be able to contribute. However, last time I tried running F@H it interfered with some programs, so I stopped using it after like a week. That was probably 3 or more years ago though, so I'll give it another go and keep it going depending on how transparent it is.
I left it overnight on my PS3 and finished a workunit
Going to leave it for a long time now
Snicket... DId your avatar become bigger? I noticed a while ago but...
Bara wrote:
Snicket wrote:its seems possible, but i use a lot of resource hogging programs for my classes, plus the thing gets shut off and turned on a lot. Will that be a problem?
Ah, thats a question I don't know the answer to. Someone with more experience with the F@H client running on a computer can answer your question about cycling the computer on and off fairly frequently. The client is different for a PS3 than a computer.
i'm quite sure the computer needs to be on all the time. Having a computer that has to restart every once in a while is pretty much useless.
I wouldn't say useless but extended periods of not running the client can make the work unit so late that it gets reassigned to someone else. I know from reading the PS3 FAQ standard computers processing on their main CPU are given more time since the work they are assigned is tailored to their general utility and flexibility.The example I remember is that what a PS3 can do in 2 calculations might take a standard CPU 20 calculations, but the PS3 is more limited in they type of computations it can do and the regular old Intel or AMD CPU can do a wider variety and complexity of calculations.
Some more info I dug out of the Genral FAQ:
What if I turn off my computer? Does the client save its work (i.e. checkpoint)?
Periodically, the core writes data to your hard disk so that if you stop the client, it can resume processing that WU from some point other than the very beginning. With the Tinker core, this happens at the end of every frame. With the Gromacs core, these checkpoints can happen almost anywhere and they are not tied to the data recorded in the results. Initially, this was set to every 1% of a WU (like 100 frames in Tinker) and then a timed checkpoint was added every 15 minutes, so that on a slow machine, you never loose more that 15 minutes work.
As proteins become more complex and run longer, it is better to have more frames in a WU so that you don't loose so much progress if you have to restart - - hence WUs that have 400 frames instead of 100. That still doesn't take the speed of the machine into account. A fast machine completes a frame in a few minutes while a slow one may take hours, and the donor with the slow machine still doesn't want to lose 99% of those "hours" yet the fast machine doesn't really want the overhead of writing the checkpoints every "few minutes" - - and neither of them wants the upload time associated with results containing many frames.
Starting in the 4.x version of the client, you can set the 15 minute default to another value (3-30 minutes).
Are there any limits to how long my machine can take to finish a work unit (WU)?
Yes. Work Units are serial in nature. When a completed WU is sent back, a new work unit is generated from those results. This must happen many times over within each project (group of work units). A generation 1 work unit must be turned in before a generaton 2 work unit is created and sent out.
To keep these generations moving along, we have to set expiration deadlines in the event a work unit is not uploaded in a timely manner (lost, deleted, whatever). These unfinished work units "expire" and are reassigned to new machines. You will still receive credit for all WUs completed and uploaded prior to the preferred deadline. However, after the preferred deadline, your contribution is not as useful scientifically because another copy of that work unit had to be sent out to another contributor. Even if you eventually complete the work unit, that other contributor still had to process duplicate work to assure the science moves forward. And it would be unfair not to also credit that second contributor.
Even so, full credit is given up until the final deadline. After the final deadline has expired, the client will automaticlly discard the work unit and download new work. If you have trouble completing work units before the preferred deadline, it is recommended to either run the FAH client more hours each day, or to run the client on a faster computer.
As we move to larger and longer WUs, we will extend the expiration time as needed. Deadlines vary on the order of a few days to a several weeks, depending on the nature of the WU. Turn in a work unit just before the deadline is not the goal. It is most helpful to the project to return work units as quickly as possible. And how these deadlines are determined is explained a few answers below.
2xGPU clients (GTX 465/GTS 250); 2xCPU clients
<Aura> Our army of teenage girl artists couldn't draw penises without fits of giggling. Does that count?
Seroanth wrote:
Snicket... DId your avatar become bigger? I noticed a while ago but...
yes i wanted to see if i could make Hanako like she how was in the last one. (I mentioned a few times that i found the pic on 4chan) And since it turned out ok i used it as an avatar.
Bara wrote:I wouldn't say useless but extended periods of not running the client can make the work unit so late that it gets reassigned to someone else. I know from reading the PS3 FAQ standard computers processing on their main CPU are given more time since the work they are assigned is tailored to their general utility and flexibility.The example I remember is that what a PS3 can do in 2 calculations might take a standard CPU 20 calculations, but the PS3 is more limited in they type of computations it can do and the regular old Intel or AMD CPU can do a wider variety and complexity of calculations.
Some more info I dug out of the Genral FAQ:
Alright that answered my question. It looks like i can't help ya guys. Since i run several resource hogging programs. (sometimes two at once) Plus when not in use its either off or in sleep mode.
