Is there any possibility that we may be able to encourage any more SOTA operators to join and contribute to our Summits On The Air team progress? You do not need to have a high powered computer set up - every little counts.
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I’ll switch my gear over to the SOTA team. Having the machines running during the day takes the chill out of the office now it’s getting almost cold in Sydney haha.
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I read about the folding@home project here for the first time. I never knew it before.
My first reaction was skepticism - I was afraid for my dates.
At some point I took the time to inform myself in more details. Now I am convinced!
I’ve been on it since last weekend.On the weekends I’m in Freiburg (black forest) and there I have an i7 computer in the shack. Here in Lörrach I use my 16 years old thinkpad on weekdays. The difference in performance is huge (factor 20!).
I wrote to some friends and drew their attention to the project. It is quite unknown. Therefore it is good if it is made known better.
73 Armin
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The question is, do I buy an IC-705 or the Nvidia 3080 when it ships for those sweet CUDA cores? Ironically “but we’re doing COVID compute” might swing the YL 
For now, running two very measly AMD 570 RX cards still turns out pretty impressive performance given these are practically bottom of the barrel GPU’s and OpenCL to boot.
While I’m on a coal fired gird I feel better about donating power to a project like this rather than a cryptocoin where I struggle to see the tangible benefits to humanity for the amount of power we sink into it. Since we’ve been folding I’m drawing somewhere on the order of 700W constantly. It would be a manageable load to move off grid but while we are renting it’s impossible. I guess that is another project for the list!
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I just switched to the SOTA Team. Have a machine that runs 24x7 in the shack.
Tim N9PUZ (tpmcd1956 on folding)
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Some time in the last 24 hours our small team broke into the top 3000 teams of 254112.
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Congratulations to the SOTA team. Soon you’ll be in the top 1% of all teams world-wide.
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Anybody got any ideas? Is it possible to be active with two computers in the same account at the same time?
In my apartment for the weekdays, I just let my old Thinkpad continue running over the weekend against Covid-19 and went to my sweetheart’s place for the weekend today. Here I have a better computer in the shack and I started it immediately… also to let it be active against Covid-19.
It did not work. On both computers I am logged in as DL6GCA in the team SOTA. Is that the problem?
I have deleted the F@H program, installed it new and registered myself as DL6GCA/P … and it works !
???
73 Armin
Yes. But what is important is that you must obtain passkey and install in on both computers. I am not actually sure about the way user ID’s work but I think that Folding at Home does not seem to recognise your folding ID as unique, and it is possible for other people to use that same ID. A passkey links your two computers so that their contribution is combined and unique to you. Some thing like that. Maybe someone else can explain it better
Hi Armin,
I’m doing this at the moment and it’s working fine, I used the same ID and team number but as Jim says also used the same passkey for both machines.
It seems that when you add another machine you have to do the ten WU’s on the new machine to start getting the “bonus” points - (I hope - points have been very slow to accumulate on the second machine, though it is only my daughter’s somewhat aged cast-off gaming laptop). I suppose the servers have to get to know the new “slots”.
Good luck,
73 Paul G4MD
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It seems likely that the F@H servers monitor your PCs performance and allocate WUs based on that. I have the impression from the data that I see in Advanced Control that my Laptop receives higher value WUs that my desktop as it has a much better GPU.
In fact even more off topic in an already off topic thread, I just read recently about the importance of a good GPU to windows 10 performance,
You may have to register to read this.
Just a heads-up to anyone wanting to shut down folding on a particular slot or computer after completing the current WU - the “Finish up then stop” button on the Stop Folding bar on the Web Control is not working (a known bug). You need to use the “Finish” buttons on the Status tab of the Advanced Control display, which is working properly.
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User IDs can be anything you like and they are not unique - as radio amateurs are fortunate to have unique identifiers in the form of our call signs but others are not so lucky and often use their names as user ID. The F@H programme’s unique identifier is the passkey and everyone should get one as, apart from being unique to you, it is also required for bonus points. If you have multiple PCs folding then they should all use the same User ID/passkey combination.
Yes, I am sure that this happens. In particular your record on completing WUs is taken into account. If you repeatedly fail to return completed WUs then that’s a bad mark for sure! If you take on a WU then you really should finish the job, otherwise it has to be reissued to someone else and that can only happen after the WU timeout, thus delaying the science.
I think F@H also monitors how quickly WUs are returned over a period of time and if, like me, you have a number of high performance GPUs returning WUs very speedily then before long you start getting more “valuable” WUs that might run for several hours even on a fast GPU. Some of the WUs I get now are yielding 300k points or more for around two hours work.
Here’s an interesting thing: I have three GPUs chuntering away on F@H, a 2060 Super, a 2070 Super and a 2080 Super. In terms of points per GBP spent, the 2060 outperforms the 2070, which in turn outperforms the 2080. I have heard, anecdotally, that those that run the 2080Ti often see idle time, waiting for WUs. It may just be that there are fewer WUs that can make use of all that GPU power. So when the 3080 comes out you may be better off getting several, by then quite cheap, 20x0 GPUs.
I wrote a more detailed expose on this a while back for the Club Log folder team.
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A valid point indeed.
Currently, the wife and I have two machines with a single RX 570 each. These seem to chug through a solid 400K PPD each and cost wise are bargin basement. I think we spent the equivalent of 140 GBP each a couple of years ago.
I’m feeling like a curmudgeon being very happy with 1080p and not pushing for 4K hundreds of hz shenanigans but price for graphics hardware in this bracket is awesome.
Our SOTA team continues to climb in the rankings just crossing into the top 2000 today
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Thanks Jim, and also total number of team work units completed (pieces of analytical work done by team) = 9915 as of today date and climbing. I see the number of team members is up to 32 now too.
If anyone else would like to contribute please feel free to join the SOTA team on this worthwhile project by worldwide research organisations on Covid-19 by joining Team number 265845 Summits on the Air
Don’t forget you will need to get a passcode by email when you register.
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Those “Summits on the Air” Folding@Home team members who like stats might be interested that we finally “qualified” to have our individual stats tracked here.
The historical team stats are all there already but after some time has passed to accrue a bit more data, it will allow you to view your individual analysis too.
…and for those of you who might be interested in using your spare computer time for good research causes (like fighting Covid-19), look here.
Just make sure that when you set your user ID, you also apply for and use a user passkey (it will get you more points) and sign up to the Summits on the Air Team (265845).
Thanks and enjoy…
Hi folks
The 2nd Corona Wave is fully on line! And still there is research being done.
Disinfection, distance and masks are important in everyday life.
Nevertheless - maybe someone has still some computer power in reserve and supports the research with us
Team: Summits on the Air - Team number: 265845
73 Armin
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