Important Folding SMP update

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theAnimal

theAnimal

Diamond Member
Mar 18, 2003
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If you are folding SMP WUs make sure you update your clients (but not in the middle of a WU). The update includes a bug fix & also allows use of the soon-to-be-released SMP2 core.

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=12997

Edit:
Anyone running the VM & LinuxFAH can update with the following commands:

wget http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/folding/release/FAH6.29-Linux.tgz
mkdir old
cp fah6 mpiexec old
tar xzf FAH6.29-Linux.tgz
 
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Assimilator1

Assimilator1

Elite Member
Nov 4, 1999
24,120
507
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Ooo, SMP2 core?:) Been out the folding loop for a while, what's the main differences with the newer core?

Think I'll jump back to F@H when I've hit 2 million pts in S@H.

Thx Animal :).
 
biodoc

biodoc

Diamond Member
Dec 29, 2005
6,261
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Hmm..SMP2 is threaded vs MPI??:hmm:

Sounds like they could move to BOINC...if they want to!:eek::eek:
 
GLeeM

GLeeM

Elite Member
Apr 2, 2004
7,199
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Assimilator1 said:
Mpi ?
Click to expand...
I think that is some old Microsoft tech.

The new way should even out the ppd differences Windows vs Linux

I wonder if it will allow quick return BONUS on all WUs (test to see if I can edit this)?
 
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Assimilator1

Assimilator1

Elite Member
Nov 4, 1999
24,120
507
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Yea what is MPI though?

(And why the hell won't the 'MPI' in my 1st post stay on capitals??? :confused:)
 
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petrusbroder

petrusbroder

Elite Member
Nov 28, 2004
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Thanks for the explanation, theAnimal!

BTW: Did you pick your alias for the character in "The Muppet Show"? If so, I really like it! ;)
 
biodoc

biodoc

Diamond Member
Dec 29, 2005
6,261
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Assimilator1 said:
Thx animal :)

Biodoc
Why do you think threaded will be worse?
Click to expand...

Not worse, but a bit more like other DC projects, depending on how they roll it out I guess. I need to find out more about it. Anyway, MPI has been used in the scientific community for a long time for cluster computing. DC is also a flavor of cluster computing (cluster link). MPI is open source software for distributing and handling jobs submitted to a cluster (bunch of computers or "nodes" working together as one). This was all developed on unix many many years back and works well on unix and unix-like OS's (linux, macOS) but not so well on windows. As most of you know, SMP on windows is a pain to set up and the ppd is about half vs running smp on linux.

So this is probably (definitely?) good news for windows users running FAH. Here's some info from the FAH SMP FAQ:

Why use MPI? Why not threads?

None of our engines are written to be thread-safe or multi-threaded. The only parallelizable codes (Gromacs and AMBER) both use MPI. Making Gromacs use only threads for parallelization isn't possible right now (we talk with the Gromacs developers frequently on this issue), so MPI is the only solution.

How well does MPI work?

The short answer is pretty well on Linux and OSX and not so well on Windows. MPI was originally developed on UNIX, so this is not a surprise (and it's a great feat in many ways for it to even run on Windows). The Windows specific quirks we're seeing are due to MPI-Windows interaction, and we're trying to hunt them down, as well as try out other MPI possibilities.
 
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