Anandtech vs Tom's Hardware Folding@Home Coronavirus Race thread

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StefanR5R

Elite Member
Dec 10, 2016
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Both my systems can't get work. Both still have a WU that won't upload and will expire on the 25th.
My logs are all saying No WUs for this configuration. So are the servers up but out of work?
a) Can't get work
This is currently a very common problem. It is because Folding@home's COVID-19 work was featured in various media by now, and a huge number of individual users as well as several IT companies have brought clients online. The F@h servers can't distribute work as fast as it could be taken on by contributors right now. The F@h project has already added more work servers during the last days, and presumably is in the process to add even more.

The client automatically retries the requests for work. But the more tries, the longer the delay between each try. If these delays get too long for your taste, you can either shut down and restart the client, or pause and unpause the client, or pause and unpause the individual slot. The next retry delay will then be ~1.5 minutes or less.

b) Stuck uploads
This is a common problem. I had some of those myself during the last few days, and am having one right now. Just let the client retry to upload them; this does not interfere with the requesting of new work or the execution and upload of other work.

If such an upload gets stuck for long, there are arcane ways to get rid of them already before their expiration.
Edit: See @biodoc's answer below.

c) No WUs for this configuration
Could be one of the error messages which are caused by a). Or you may indeed have a slot configuration to which none of the currently available work fits. Is this a CPU slot? If so, how many threads are configured for it?
 
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biodoc

Diamond Member
Dec 29, 2005
6,257
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Both my systems can't get work. Both still have a WU that won't upload and will expire on the 25th.

I had a similar situation several hours back and rebooting solved the problem on the "stuck" upload. The "pause" then "fold" trick didn't work in that case.
 
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StefanR5R

Elite Member
Dec 10, 2016
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I had a similar situation several hours back and rebooting solved the problem on the "stuck" upload.
Indeed. I rebooted the one computer of mine which had a stuck upload right now, and it uploaded fine right away.
 

blckgrffn

Diamond Member
May 1, 2003
9,110
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www.teamjuchems.com
I was reading somewhere else (here?!?) that they are struggling getting work servers setup and scaled out to handle the amount of work can be scheduled & reconciled.

I am certain there are parties of people working desperately to resolve this because they know this might be lightning in a bottle moment in terms of engagement and throughput and don't want to have it slip through their fingers.

Given a choice, I am choosing to believe in this earnest effort existing and wait patiently (I mean, only making the rounds to pause and start again in the hunt for work a few times per day) for their efforts to pay off.

In terms of racing, this is like rain :) We are all disadvantaged and I don't think there is a Senna working any magic here :D
 

Endgame124

Senior member
Feb 11, 2008
954
669
136
Maybe a second challenge should be issued to Tom’s for Rosetta? That way the race is less bound by WU availability.

I don’t know what points look like on Rosetta, though, so someone really in the know should be able to bake up an equation to make them comparable. Then the contest could be Rosetta points + folding points.
 

ZipSpeed

Golden Member
Aug 13, 2007
1,302
169
106
I'm actually increasing CPU resources towards Rosetta. I encourage others to do the same. You'll be able to fight on two fronts! GPU for F@H and CPU for Rosetta.
 

Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
25,482
14,434
136
I'm actually increasing CPU resources towards Rosetta. I encourage others to do the same. You'll be able to fight on two fronts! GPU for F@H and CPU for Rosetta.
Did you mention that Rosetta is doing covid-19 research also ? and that it has produced results, weeks ago ?


I have over 300 cores now on Rosetta, will switch over more later. And 12 video cards on F@H. The electric bill will be back at $800 this month and for the foreseeable future, untill this horrid situation abates.
 

borandi

Member
Feb 27, 2011
138
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116
I was reading somewhere else (here?!?) that they are struggling getting work servers setup and scaled out to handle the amount of work can be scheduled & reconciled.

I am certain there are parties of people working desperately to resolve this because they know this might be lightning in a bottle moment in terms of engagement and throughput and don't want to have it slip through their fingers.

Given a choice, I am choosing to believe in this earnest effort existing and wait patiently (I mean, only making the rounds to pause and start again in the hunt for work a few times per day) for their efforts to pay off.

In terms of racing, this is like rain :) We are all disadvantaged and I don't think there is a Senna working any magic here :D

They're working with Microsoft and Github who are donating resources and expertise.
Three Azure servers were spun up a few days ago each with 100 TB storage, and most of it is gone already.
The bottleneck right now really just is storage bandwidth.

 
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Nov 18, 2016
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sigh, i got hit by the "no work available" all day today. can't switch to rosetta either, my CPU is really not suited for that, and i still need it for other tasks that don't involve the GPU. well, i guess having work getting done so fast there isn't any anymore is not a bad problem to have :smile:

may also be due to timezones... we're 6 hours ahead of the US, and i do imagine that's where a lot of the current computing power is located. no wonder i can't get work in "my" morning/early afternoon, if all of the US is fired up working on their night hours. had no problem getting work in "my" late afternoon/early evening.
 

Howdy

Senior member
Nov 12, 2017
572
480
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sigh, i got hit by the "no work available" all day today. can't switch to rosetta either, my CPU is really not suited for that, and i still need it for other tasks that don't involve the GPU. well, i guess having work getting done so fast there isn't any anymore is not a bad problem to have :smile:

may also be due to timezones... we're 6 hours ahead of the US, and i do imagine that's where a lot of the current computing power is located. no wonder i can't get work in "my" morning/early afternoon, if all of the US is fired up working on their night hours. had no problem getting work in "my" late afternoon/early evening.

Pretty sure it's a common issue, I am in the U.S and cannot receive WUs. For that matter I cannot upload the ones that are completed, even using all the "trickery" of pause, reboot and what not. With that said, I'm rolling over to Rosetta and hoping it continues to be working properly----- Either way, the F@H and BOINC community are trying their best to boost the chance of finding a vaccine for this quickly----
 
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Nov 18, 2016
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oh by the way, stanford apparently updated their web control interface. it is now possible to see what project we are contributing towards, including COVID:

Capture.JPG

if you're wondering about the low score, it's because i had to recover my identity and i am still not getting bonus points. would have been around a million by now if not for that... :/:/:/:/:/
 
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Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
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Last 24 hr.

Team Anandtech 104 m
Toms Hardware 82 m

me 7m . Stefan's script keeps abort due to various random errors. Not sure if that box is overclcoked, I will look into that.

But a definite downturn for everybody today.
 
Nov 18, 2016
42
39
91
Last 24 hr.

Team Anandtech 104 m
Toms Hardware 82 m

me 7m . Stefan's script keeps abort due to various random errors. Not sure if that box is overclcoked, I will look into that.

But a definite downturn for everybody today.

i'm also losing at least 10% of my earned points because the WU either won't upload or will but at crawling speeds, i guess we also have to take that into account.

update: yep, the servers are getting hammered again. took 20 minutes and a lot of fiddling to upload 20mb, and i lost almost 30% of my points for that WU. and now i'm stuck again without suitable ones. guess we can't really count on medians anymore, throughput at this point is probably just a function of their server uptime.
 
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StefanR5R

Elite Member
Dec 10, 2016
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Stefan's script keeps abort due to various random errors. Not sure if that box is overclcoked,
Nope, just my own bugs which I put into the script. :-)

But a definite downturn for everybody today.
Relative drop in credits from Sunday to Monday:
TeAm AnandTech: -25.5 %​
Tom's Hardware: -26.5 %​
PCMR: -29.8 %​

TeAm AnandTech:
March_23_TeAm_AnandTech.png

Tom's Hardware:
March_23_Toms_Hardware.png

PCMR:
March_23_PCMR.png

So, relatively, we and Tom's are holding out well, compared with the PCMR n00bs for example. ;-)

Edit,
a primary factor is that a certain other team of n00bs increased their capacity a lot on Monday.
 
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Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
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Whats disgusting to me, is that PCMR's biggest user does 19.5m ppd, and I can do over 21m ppd if all cards are running.
 

StefanR5R

Elite Member
Dec 10, 2016
5,459
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This user had 32 M and 29 M on two recent days, but was down to 14 M yesterday. That's not as much impacted as you were, but still.

I am guessing that I am down at ~50 % of my actual capacity too (counting only GPUs).
 

borandi

Member
Feb 27, 2011
138
117
116
Isn't that Anonymous, so anyone who doesn't have a user name?
I suspect just the Anons could do 30-40m ppd if they could run 100% too
 

StefanR5R

Elite Member
Dec 10, 2016
5,459
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Isn't that Anonymous, so anyone who doesn't have a user name?
Right --- I was fooled by the fact that this "user" has a numeric ID at EOC stats.
Looks like EOC (or F@h?) is assigning pseudo user IDs to anonymous contributions based on team affiliation. We've got our own Mr. Anonymous too of course:
https://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_summary.php?s=&u=33106

The globally most productive one among all members of the Anonymous clan is the one without team affiliation, naturally:
https://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_summary.php?s=&u=811139
 

JC

Diamond Member
Feb 1, 2000
5,824
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I have a stuck WU that shows over 100 attempts to upload...and maybe it's just a coincidence of no work available, but it seems that slot can't get any new work. Should I just leave it and assume it will eventually upload? I've paused/restarted the slot and client several times.