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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Active Research
Forum: OpenPandemics - COVID-19 Project
Thread: Work unit availability |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 822
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Unixchick
Veteran Cruncher Joined: Apr 16, 2020 Post Count: 988 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Thanks for the clear communication on the forum, Knreed. I had pulled myself out of the OPNG since others could do them faster and there was a shortage of them. I had no idea my CPU participation was also hindering others from getting tasks as they seemed so plentiful. It looks like the ARP is the best usage of my CPU time. I'll also continue to do MCM as well.
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kwolff88
Cruncher Joined: Dec 31, 2004 Post Count: 19 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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The obvious solution, suggested many months ago, is to eliminate the CPU work units. There will still be more than enough GPU power to handle the work. Some of the CPU users will switch to other WCG projects, a net gain for them of course, and some will drop out, reducing energy usage. And since the GPUs are more energy efficient than the CPUs, there is only a net gain. +1 I realize that some people want to contribute but don't have GPUs... however, sad to say, those contributions are counter-intuitive. GPUs are 100% the way to go for any project that can take advantage of them; meanwhile, plenty of other projects - both in WCG and elsewhere - cannot, and they are worthy of your CPU time. |
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Grumpy Swede
Master Cruncher Svíþjóð Joined: Apr 10, 2020 Post Count: 2204 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Yup, running a CPU app, compared to a GPU app, is like throwing money out of the window. The GPU app, is hundreds of times more efficient than the CPU app.
I'm only interested in Open Pandemics, and getting OPNG now is like trying to squeeze blood from a stone. So, I've stopped crunching, until there are more OPNG WU's available. |
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kittyman
Advanced Cruncher Joined: May 14, 2020 Post Count: 140 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Well, the kitties have chosen to continue to run covid research on their CPU alongside the GPU work.
----------------------------------------Whether or not some here think it is worthwhile to do so. Meeeeeeeeeeeeow!  |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Actually i would really like World Community Grid to increase GPU work units for Open Pandemics and start GPU work units for the other projects and any new projects that will come out in the future.
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nanoprobe
Master Cruncher Classified Joined: Aug 29, 2008 Post Count: 2998 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Actually i would really like World Community Grid to increase GPU work units for Open Pandemics and start GPU work units for the other projects and any new projects that will come out in the future. WCG has absolutely no control over what platform (CPU/GPU) is used to do research here. It is 100% controlled by the researchers. Contact the researchers for each project and submit your suggestions to them keeping in mind that most of the type of research that is done here is not conducive to running on GPUs. That’s why only 2 of 31 projects here have been ported to GPUs.
In 1969 I took an oath to defend and protect the U S Constitution against all enemies, both foreign and Domestic. There was no expiration date.
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yoerik
Senior Cruncher Canada Joined: Mar 24, 2020 Post Count: 413 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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A quick note about workunit availability for the project. As noted in the post about the outcome of the stress test the researchers have a limit on how fast they can process results and make use of them. We are currently working with them to target about 500 batches per day (this is combined between CPU and GPU). It is a little tricky to manage to this because even though there is a consistent number of ligands per batch, the number of workunits created per batch varies based on the estimated difficulty of the ligands. Thus we have to tweak the rate we send out workunits. Right now the 7 day average of batches for GPU is 727 batches/day and CPU is 185 batches/day. This is above the 500 batches/day goal. As a result, we reduced the GPU pace 2 days ago from 3000 workunits/day to 1700 workunits/day. We have been attempting to reduce the pace of the CPU work as well. Unfortunately, there is a fairly large set of users who only have OpenPandemics selected and thus we are not able to shift as much of the CPU power to our other projects as I had hoped. We will continue to adjust things where we can to support the 500/batches per day goal and to shift work to GPU as much as possible without making the CPU work intermittent. I would ask that if you are someone who has only OpenPandemics selected, please consider adding Mapping Cancer Markers and/or the African Rainfall Project in addition to OpenPandemics. OpenPandemics will continue at the same pace regardless of how much CPU power is allocated to it as the GPU side will pick up any slack left over from the CPU side. Thank you for the additional information. Hopefully more users follow your request - but perhaps a news post would be more worthwhile - given it'll reach more users than buried in the forums.  |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I will remove 240 threads from OPN as I have no interest in the project. Will focus on MIP and ARP until MIP ends. Stopped OPNG when no tasks were available.
----------------------------------------However, don't quite understand why a group would put forth an effort to create a GPU version if you don't have the staff to take advantage of it. All that trouble only to throttle it back to CPU speeds. What a waste.... [Edit 1 times, last edit by Former Member at Jun 12, 2021 3:23:56 AM] |
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Dayle Diamond
Senior Cruncher Joined: Jan 31, 2013 Post Count: 452 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Individually removing our computers from Open Pandemics CPU tasks is pointless. The tasks are created and will be assigned to somebody. If you don't waste your threads, somebody else will.
----------------------------------------Knreed wrote about avoiding OPN becoming an intermittent project. I thought that was a curious thing to say. Maybe feast-or-famine tasks are harder on the system, or harder to manage, or even result in too many forum posts to moderate as people discuss getting work, constantly bicker, and troubleshoot out-of-work messages? In every recent project update, there is less than a month of MCM batches in the queue. I've been saying from the start that we need to shift 100% of this project to the GPUs to free up massive CPU computation for other projects. Now that the Microbiome Immunity project is ending, we're talking 280 years of crunching power a day, with one project big enough to absorb the demand. But maybe it's not big enough; maybe that would be enough to make MCM batches become intermittent? Is that a problem worth avoiding? Would WCG staff, or crunchers mind if every project backlog ran dry? Do we mind so much as to be willing to run millions of low priority work units to keep the supply stable? [Edit 1 times, last edit by Dayle Diamond at Jun 12, 2021 5:35:44 AM] |
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yoerik
Senior Cruncher Canada Joined: Mar 24, 2020 Post Count: 413 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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the point would be to encourage computers only crunching OPN1 to begin accepting WUs from other projects as well, Dayle? So the grid can shift more OPN WUs over to GPU, and not completely lose or waste the CPU capacity, by carrying it over to other projects?
----------------------------------------That's why I pointed out that it might be a good idea to send out a news post to everyone, encouraging people to select multiple projects. It's a delicate situation - there is no perfect solution. However I think it's a stretch that *every* project backlog runs dry. As of today, only a few dozen crunchers at most will read this message in the forums - and even if it is just in sum a few hundred threads that we transfer over to another project, that can make some sort of impact by reducing CPU's demand for OPN WUs - by letting those WUs flow to people who *only* selected OPN1? It's marginal, but it's something - and the best we as individual crunchers can do right now? |
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