Many users running Folding@Home clients are currently facing a critical shortage of work units. So far as we can tell at present, the shortage seems to be confined to the SMP, SMP2, and some uniprocessor clients. There are barely any A1 or A2 core units currently in circulation, and the supply of A3 units is also very low; several attempts to pull one in are often necessary before being able to obtain a WU.
As far as the uniprocessor client is concerned, the supply shortage does not seem to be a problem for those running with the -advmethods flag enabled, but beware of running any Protomol core units on a non-dedicated, production machine. The uniprocessor client remains affected, however, when run without special flags. The older clients (v4 and v5, and v5 OSX PPC) currently seem to be completely out of units.
No official explanation for the shortage has been given, but the team has promised new projects "within days". The first served will likely be SMP2 users, since Peter Kasson has plans to develop several new A3 projects very quickly. The situation for uniprocessor users is somewhat more complicated, as most of the newer cores do not work with the older clients (v4 and v5). Additionally, the problems posed by Protomol (checkpoint errors, unreliable performance, and incompatibilities with certain CPUs) only serve to exacerbate the problem.
We will keep you informed of new developments, so watch this space for additional information when it becomes available!
KaySL
On: 04/16/10
