Change in BA requirements

texinga said:
Flecom, I would just hope that the thread itself can be left open even if you feel the need to moderate an individual's comments. HardOCP is like my other home (next to EVGA) for Folding information and commentary. This whole Bigadv change thing is very much active and still unresolved. I very much appreciate reading what this team has to say about these changes and would like to continue doing so. Thank-you. :cool:
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no it will be via infractions

Adak said:
What IS 7im's position on the FF? I thought he might be an ex-moderator, perhaps?

I'm not sure what he is, but I know he's not a moderator.
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ex-mod IIRC... haven't been to the FF in years though so I don't know
 
A major announcement:

VijayPande said:
We’ve put a lot of time into reading the comments about the BA experiment and have come to some conclusions regarding how we should proceed. BA was originally conceived as an experiment to push FAH as close to what you could run on a traditional supercomputer as possible, doing calculations that most researchers thought could never run on a distributed computing platform. In order to make this possible, the requirements for BA would have to be pretty extreme and constantly updating (much like how supercomputers are constantly being updated to the latest hardware). In recognition of this extreme set of requirements came a very large PPD.

BA was embraced by donors with powerful machines. It also encouraged donors to buy and build powerful machines, which are naturally expensive, in turn leading to donors naturally becoming upset when requirements change. However, updating BA is important. Without updating to keep BA amongst only the top machines in FAH, there would be a huge point inflation (turning off non-BA donors) and also limit what we could do with FAH outside of BA-needed projects.

In the most recent announcement of an update in BA, the reaction was particularly negative. This was far from our intent — we’re here to push our research forward and also to help bring donors together in this important cause we’re all fighting for. The BA update did the opposite. It turned people off from Folding@home and served as an obstacle to our ability to push our research forward.

We’ve listened to the donor comments (including those running BA and those who are not) and come to the following plan to be sensitive to their concerns but also to avoid this sort of issue continuing over and over in the future.

1) The posted change in BA requirements will be revised. The only change in requirements going forward will be to require 24 cores (with according changes in deadlines) and that will occur on May 1, 2014. Why change the minimum core count? In general, FAH works best when we have fewer longer trajectories rather than more slower trajectories, which is why we need to change the BA requirements periodically. Given the amount of BA work we would like to do, the cutoff has to be raised above the current level. While, 32 cores would be ideal but we can still get work done at 24 and, in recognition of donor needs, we will set the level there.

2) The BA experiment will permanently end on January 31, 2015. On that date, the servers will be set to accept only and we will have no plans for future BA WUs. This would allow donors to continue to use their machines and recoup more of their investment than the previous plan. This decision would also work to avoid future issues and strife within the FAH community associated with BA. We understand that many donors will be very disappointed about this decision. This was a judgement call I had to make and this decision is, in my opinion, the right thing to do for the long term good of FAH, even though I know there will be many upset donors right now.

In leading FAH, my approach has been to push the limits, try new experiments, but also keep an eye to the future such that FAH outlasts and out performs other distributed computing projects. Starting with establishing FAH itself over 13 years ago, to pushing to GPUs, true SMP, Playstation 3, and most recently to supercomputer like nodes with BA, we have constantly been trying new directions to see how we can further and further advance our research. All experiments come to an end, sooner or later. I think my team and I have learned a lot from reading the recent posts and it’s time for us to concentrate on the core parts of FAH and improve them and not bite off too much.

Going forward, the next steps will include a discussion of the change of the QRB formula and possibly an update of the benchmark machine. Our plan is to seek more input from donors for both changes. While a distributed computing project cannot be run effectively through polls, I think there is a lot of room for us to improve in terms of connecting to donors and incorporating their concerns. I’m very excited about the future of FAH. I think my team has learned a lot with BA and hopefully we can take that going forward to make FAH even better.

Thanks to all for their contributions and participation in FAH. Working together we have done and will continue to do great things!
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I'm considering upgrading a 2p machine to 2011 or 1356 for the lower power draw - no point burning more watts than needed.
 
If they revamp qrb, our 4p rigs might not be obsolete just yet. It would be premature to sell them now
 
We'll see how it ends up , it is still 54 weeks until that BA-stop date! As I understand BA will disappears in the form we know today , and all 2P/4P servers can then download smp or whatever PG will let us have, which in practice means that the PPD / Watt for us with such machines drops to 1/3 or less of what it is today.

I've experienced this before when the previous generation BA machines were made to scrap by PG almost over night. Then I was left with 2 pcs . i7-980X and 4 pcs . i7 2600K machines that I could no longer use as before. The investment for this machines where $8,400 at the time, and those machines were sold in parts for a few $. It's practically the same thing that is happening now, just at an even greater cost for the individual BA-donor. For my own part , we are talking about over $30,000 invested hardware that you definitely can not sell after today. Meanwhile, PG have now also announced that no one is going to build 2P/4P for dedicated folding in the future. It will be interesting to see what is happening from now on. I do not think that there will be a full stop from several of the major BA - folders, but it is not impossible. Although I am very unsure of how long I still participate in the big picture beyond the summer. It depends on what the rest of the top 20 list-donors is doing, and I will certainly think very carefully about it.

Edit: Corrected (misreading) error in time until BA stops!
 
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Well, that is one way to keep people from arguing about points inflation. GPU QRB is causing too much controversy - let's get rid of that too. Points in general are a problem - let's just drop them completely. No points = no arguments, right?

I'm not feeling bad at all about pulling all of my machines off of F@H a few weeks ago. This ensures that they will never go back - fuck you too, Pande Group!
 
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musky said:
This ensures that they will never go back - fuck you too, Pande Group!
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I think this sums things up perfectly and does not leave much more to say. I will be doing the same. I was about to buy a couple of 4P machines to get back into things, but there is no point.
 
haha @ musky's edit

I understand some people taking this news and walking out the door with their middle fingers in the air. However, I would say again that we don't know what the future will bring (do we ever with FAH/PG?). QRB changes or some other permutation could change everything again before BA goes EOL. I will be taking a wait and see approach, and I would encourage my friends here to do the same.
 
jebo_4jc said:
haha @ musky's edit

I understand some people taking this news and walking out the door with their middle fingers in the air. However, I would say again that we don't know what the future will bring (do we ever with FAH/PG?). QRB changes or some other permutation could change everything again before BA goes EOL. I will be taking a wait and see approach, and I would encourage my friends here to do the same.
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+1, everybody have a beer and relax, let's see what shakes out. Wise words, jebo_4jc, wise words.
 
Zink said:
What if the fix is to get rid of SMP and move all WUs to a point scaling that matched bigadv? Fast machines would still be rewarded throughout an increased QRB and the current bigadv WU would only be assigned to machines that had enough RAM and were returning lighter WUs fast enough. That way the machines wouldn't loose ppd arbitrarily, only get obsoleted by newer more efficient machines.

I guess the problem with a system like this is there is no motivation to put in enough RAM but this at least could be delt with by a small incentive based on a very concrete need. It would also devalue past work but that is probably better than another 5 years of Standford messing with us and could me mitigated by carefully choosing the QRB scaling so that current SMP machines' PPD is minimally affected.
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I think the announcement could turn out even better than before, bigadv machines becoming obsolete was a bad idea. Too bad VJ didn't wait for his new PR hire to word it a bit nicer than a termination date for bigadv. Really it could be more of a merging of bigadv and SMP if they set QRB right and let researchers with big WU assign them to the fastest machines.
 
jebo_4jc said:
I understand some people taking this news and walking out the door with their middle fingers in the air. However, I would say again that we don't know what the future will bring (do we ever with FAH/PG?).
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If this was the first time this happened, I would agree. Repeatedly being screwed over ( or raped in the @ss ) just does not work anymore.
 
" Want to fix it? OK . It's done. No more BA. " --- nice .. :D

some smartie*ss loses his hope for the PR position .... :D

I'm glad i moved all my rigs to wcg :D
 
WTB: Cheap 4p rig for a workstation upgrade :)

seriously guys how many times has this happened?
 
FLECOM said:
seriously guys how many times has this happened?
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Has what happened? PG discontinuing a program I have been running for the past four years? I'm going to say, once in the last 4 years...
 
Zink said:
Really it could be more of a merging of bigadv and SMP if they set QRB right and let researchers with big WU assign them to the fastest machines.
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Isn't this what everyone has been bitching about (setting QRB right)? That hasn't happened in well over a year now - I wouldn't hold your breath.

The more I think about this, the angrier I get....wasn't this just a discussion on BA core count increases coming up, which didn't affect me at all?
 
jebo_4jc said:
haha @ musky's edit

I understand some people taking this news and walking out the door with their middle fingers in the air. However, I would say again that we don't know what the future will bring (do we ever with FAH/PG?). QRB changes or some other permutation could change everything again before BA goes EOL. I will be taking a wait and see approach, and I would encourage my friends here to do the same.
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Agreed, i'll still run F@H, with everyone saying they'll quit I might even have a chance at the top 5:D
 
jebo_4jc said:
haha @ musky's edit

I understand some people taking this news and walking out the door with their middle fingers in the air. However, I would say again that we don't know what the future will bring (do we ever with FAH/PG?). QRB changes or some other permutation could change everything again before BA goes EOL. I will be taking a wait and see approach, and I would encourage my friends here to do the same.
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I like this philosophy best. It's over one year before BA goes away and who knows if they'll change their mind between now and then. Taking action (stop folding) a year before things change is rash in my opinion.

That's not to say I won't consider switching some clients to WCG or another BOINC project as my farm grows... ;)
 
Probably - I think I have a PCI-e slot available. Intel Sandy Bridge @ 3.1 should be decent for single-thread performance. Windows Server may be an issue, although Windows Server 2012 is just as painful to use as Windows 8, so that may not be much of a loss.
 
bigted said:
i'll just leave this link here: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1801908

Gilthanis worked hard on that list and there are plenty of projects there that can use your cpu cycles :)
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If [H] should jump away from F@H we better do it as a team and find one common project to roll over with ultimate CPU and GPU power :)

My guess is that it will be "easy" to move disgruntled members over to WCG and fold for the various projects there under the HardOCP banner :)
 
runs2far said:
If [H] should jump away from F@H we better do it as a team and find one common project to roll over with ultimate CPU and GPU power :)

My guess is that it will be "easy" to move disgruntled members over to WCG and fold for the various projects there under the HardOCP banner :)
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DIMES (non-BOINC) non-CPU intensive + WCG (BOINC) cpu intensive + WUProp (BOINC) non-CPU intensive = works pretty well. :)

I will give a shout out to the DC Vault too for those who like a little more diversity. WCG doesn't have GPU work right now and we don't want to exclude anyone....
 
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