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Movieman
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There are times when you have to stand up and say what is on your mind

I have been running WCG since August 2006 and have seen all the little glitches that come and go BUT this current situation in the FAAH program with the VINA WU is the last straw for me.
I have asked politely elsewhere and can get no reasonable answers as to why the credit system for these WU is so far off from the autodock WU or for the credit received with other projects.
An example: I have here a dual socket Supermicro Workstation with 2-E52670 V2 10 core Ivy Bridge cpu's running at 3047MHz that should produce app 150,000-160,000 WCG PPD. It runs WCG 24/7/365 on 40 threads
Running anything BUT FAAH VINA WU it is awarded at that rate but with the VINA WU the award rate drops to a rate of app 67,200. No one has any answers and I see no way to stop the VINA WU and keep the autodock WU so as of today I am stopping FAAH and suggesting to the XS team and anyone else that will listen to do the same. OUR job is to do the work, YOUR job is to provide a good working and level playing field for all and point awards between projects shouldn't take place and if they do then it is YOUR job to fix then and you have failed at doing this.
My apologies if this upsets anyone but enough is enough. Find the problem and fix it! I have run the FAAH program since inception and have over 70 years computer time and over 166,000 completed WU on this project but no more until you fix the problem.
Thanks for your time.
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[Apr 26, 2014 5:42:18 AM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
poppageek
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Re: There are times when you have to stand up and say what is on your mind

Points are not the most important to me but I have to agree with MM, this has been very frustrating. I've got 46 years in FAAH so doing MCM is fine with me.
[Apr 26, 2014 6:20:08 AM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Former Member
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Re: There are times when you have to stand up and say what is on your mind

Have to agree with Movieman, I too have gone to 100% MCM, I did try and abort all Vina ones, but that was micro-manage too far! wink
[Apr 26, 2014 6:32:25 AM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Former Member
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Re: There are times when you have to stand up and say what is on your mind

......one thought would be for WCG to make the Vina a 'different' project, then it would allow us to choose..........also with another badge to hunt you may get more deciding to run it! biggrin
[Apr 26, 2014 6:37:34 AM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Movieman
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Re: There are times when you have to stand up and say what is on your mind

Something I need to add so there aren't any misunderstandings: Point's per se aren't important to me and people that know me can verify that I've put my machines in others names to the tune of well over 10 million WCG points.
What does matter and to me is a big thing is fairness and equality.
I've seen small flocculation's between the projects over the years and never said a word but this is different and needs to be addressed.
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[Apr 26, 2014 7:59:07 AM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Former Member
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Re: There are times when you have to stand up and say what is on your mind

........nice word flocculation -
noun: the process of flocculating; forming woolly cloudlike aggregations biggrin
[Apr 26, 2014 8:44:55 AM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Former Member
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Re: There are times when you have to stand up and say what is on your mind

There was a post that suggested to use app_config.xml to limit the running of faah to one with the <max_concurrent> tag so you could run all fahv and basically obstruct faah to just one core. You can do the reverse too, but given the weight in the feeder, that will be a lot of aborting on your 40 core device as you can't stop fahv from coming. I took the original advice and applied to a 4 core. It's running 21k points average on fahv with the occasional faah slipping through. The good excuse is, on linux these fahv run so much faster, it generates about 60% more work than on windows, really demonstrating how snail slow the autodock application is. Once a day I go in with boinctasks. The summary view reduces all ready to start on a per application basis to a single line. Select, delete key or right key and abort. The buffer is set to 1.2 days, so when deleting and new work arriving the faah are always the newest. Based on the fifo principle faah hardly get the chance, only fahv running, long as doing the daily visit.

Personally i think it presumptuous on part of wcg to not allow app level selection. Somewhere saw a post talking about code freeze, deep freeze it seems as this is now how long the situation being the excuse not to change this? In the newest beta uplinger was talking about flex, lengths of tasks. Maybe they've gotten closer to offering more regular runtime tasks matched to the power of a device. It will require a substantially different logic than the present 'stupid' project averaging method where any runtime outlier from present mean is being penalized, the 3 to 80 per hour variations you get to see. Since there are so many batches and experiments in circulations for fa@h, nothing consistent. This volunteer contributed chart shows the variations of recent. See how from smooth runtimes it's gone roller coaster from about the start of march? This is at project level, which hints at how much worse down at the individual device the situation is.

Ps, running dedicated per device, with an external project as zero weight backup. Only work is fetched there when the buffer is empty. Not the random backfill when one or the other wcg project feeder has a hiccup. Dedication has it's limits.

Oh, the indian with the pillow is still roaming the hallways but not allowed in, or out if you will.
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[Edit 1 times, last edit by Former Member at Apr 26, 2014 9:32:36 AM]
[Apr 26, 2014 8:57:34 AM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
twilyth
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Re: There are times when you have to stand up and say what is on your mind

For what it's worth, I took FAAH off almost all of my machines a while ago but that was mainly because I'd read here that certain versions of the code ran poorly on Windows. I didn't see any point in running a project that was essentially going to waste electricity by running poorly on my machines. So I switched all but one to just do MCM.

So it's really not just a points issue but, possibly, also an efficiency issue. If the code runs more efficiently on Linux machines then isn't it a waste of resources for Windows machines to run them. And as was suggested, if they can't be split into two different projects, then maybe Windows people shouldn't run the project at all.
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[Edit 1 times, last edit by twilyth at Apr 26, 2014 9:14:44 AM]
[Apr 26, 2014 9:13:48 AM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Sgt.Joe
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Re: There are times when you have to stand up and say what is on your mind

I'll just throw my two cents worth in here. Movieman makes some good points. Since this is a volunteer effort, everyone is free to pick and chose the WU they run. Any results produced I'm sure are appreciated, whether it is 1, 10 or many more.
That being said, with the FAAH project there continues to be great disparity in how efficiently the units run. I believe Movieman runs his system on Windows, although he has dabbled with Linux a bit. From what he is saying, under his setup the autodock units run more efficiently than the Vina units. Under Linux, just the opposite is true, for the most part. Under Linux the autodock units run pretty steady at about 20 PPH plus or or minus a couple of points. The Vina units continue to be all over the map. Some as high as 80 PPH and some as low as under 10 PPH. I know just enough about programming to be dangerous but not proficient. I can understand why this point disparity is so, but that does not seem to make it "fair." But as long as the scientists are getting the results they need, I guess I am OK with that. This is complicated stuff and I am pretty sure when they code these programs they are more concerned with the validity of the results, rather than tweaking the code to run with greater efficiency on any particular hardware/software combination.
Really would be nice to have some consistency though.
Cheers
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Sgt. Joe
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OldChap
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Re: There are times when you have to stand up and say what is on your mind

I too believe this is an issue that needs attending to. I have 45 years on the project and as such feel that I have done my bit. Now it is time for someone to figure out why Intel's latest and greatest processors seem to struggle with certain types of VINA wu's from FA@H but excel with others.

Where the argument is that there should be equal points awarded for the same amount of work, ergo each wu is worth a certain points value. This plainly falls down when there are zero redundancy wu's and the claim calculation from the machine working is off

It is the 10 fold and more difference between Fa@h wu types that concerns me and makes me feel that something needs attention. This situation seems to make the very principle of points worthless

Edit: My big rigs run Linux and the 8c/16t runs windows 7. All are equally messed up by this. and yes MM, it does seem well and truly flocked
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[Edit 1 times, last edit by OldChap at Apr 26, 2014 1:26:29 PM]
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