As already announced, some changes are ongoing in the "BigAdv" project: the minimum number of required cores is increasing and the deadlines will be shortened accordingly to reflect the need of faster return of these new projects. Vijay Pande posted some explanations about these changes:The "BigAdv" project has been developed on purpose to address the fastest machines available, which is of course a moving target. This project uses the highest-end machines involved in Folding@Home on projects that are unusually big (related to the memory needs or the upload/download requirements) and which require a large amount of computing power. Luckily over time, the CPU computing power is increasing and the high-end systems follow the same dynamics. Scientific researches enabled by the folding donors are exciting and have an impact at both computing power and fast return needs. As a result, having 50% of computing power running "BigAdv" projects wouldn't help so as if older or bandwidth limited machines kept running these projects where fast return of result is very sensitive.
As announced previously, Pande Group objective is to tighten the "BigAdv" projects deadlines. As a result, only machines with a minimum of 16 cores will be able to receive these projects. New projects are being designed for this new phase of the project that we will call "BigAdv-16". This design took a bit more time than expected, but researchers have completed internal tests and they are now starting the beta test phase. A new server has been set up to deliver these projects. Since it is an early release, points and deadline are monitored closely. You may expect some adjustments during the test phase.
Once the new "BigAdv-16" projects will be stable, older "BigAdv-12" projects will be converted as "BigAdv-16". The schedule for these changes remains unknown. On the other side, the old "BigAdv-8" projects will be definitely abandoned (even if they are almost gone already).
To conclude, the Pande Group is well aware that the number of cores is not a perfect measure for system performances. In the future, the team will attempt to design a better measurement. We will keep you informed about the changes when they will be announced.
Happy folding and thanks for your continuous support to the project.
Adapted from: Vijay's Blog
toTOW
On: 03/01/12
