Please check that joystick again ... no work coming ... from ANY project

Hi Everybody,

These quick work units seem to involve the little fragments that I made by splitting other compounds into 3 or 4 small pieces. Since AutoDock uses a genetic algorithm, these little fragments tend to converge on their best docked position and conformation quicker than the bigger compounds.

The work units that I will start creating and submitting for the next several weeks will involve larger compounds, and they should take the usual, longer time to complete.

FYI,
Dr. Alex L Perryman

They should have flushed from the system and normal length workunits should be back in circulation. Fetched some new 'IndazoleNO2', so will report if they are not and still short.

There was a little mishap with the flop estimate of the new HPF2 jobs that have 18 day deadline, causing the estimates to be overall to be way to low after processing 1. These last FAAH show an hour in the Time to Complete column here.

Edit: hmmmm may have to retract the story on FAAH. Yesterday's job average was 2.37 hours. Way too low!

That's still very short. Normal Faah work units run 12-14 hours. A 3-hour job length has 4-5 times the network overhead of a 14-hour work unit, since 4-5 work units must now be downloaded to get the same run time as before.

OK, let's do a few calculations...

56Kbps = 56K bits per second; 1 byte (character) = 8 bits

The "frame" bits and other communications overhead consumes a significant amount of capacity, so let's assume that 48K bits are actually available.

48K / 8 = 6K per second = 360K per minute.

Let's assume that the average Faah job creates 180K of network overhead. Then each Faah job claims the full capacity of a 56K line for 30 seconds.

If the Faah job runs 12 hours, then that's 1 minute of network overhead per day, about 30 minutes per month.

If the Faah job runs only 2 hours, that's 6 minutes per day, 180 minutes (3 hours) per month.

Users who have to sit there for 6 minutes each day (and several times longer if they only connect once every few days) just staring at the screen while Faah gobbles up their network connection will spend that time entertaining the thought of departing Faah and uninstalling BOINC.

Distributed computing projects are guests on other people's computers. As a guest, it is wise to minimize the extent to which the host will be annoyed by your presence, especially if (as with Faah) you hope to stay forever.