Running FAH on school computer..... Humm

[Flying freak]

So iv been thinking. My college has upwards of 1 000 pc's that sit idle about 12 hours a day.

If there was a way to get them all to fold overnight every night. They arnt very fast computer but even if they only fold 1 WU/night each that's over 7k work unites per week.

This would obviously pull a huge amount of power but living in Canada the school uses tons of power to heat the building in the winter. Would the extra power used by the pcs not offset the electrical bill for heating making it effectively 'no loss situation'.

Im just kind of thinking out-loud here and hoping that someone might have some input, Think it might work?

[PatonB]

No, and ifact against the F@H terms

You must have written permission if you do not own the pc.

[Flying freak]

This would obviously not be done without the knowledge of the school. If it were to happen I would table the motion with the student union who would take care of all the computer usage issues and things of that nature.

I guess my question more revolves around the physical possibilities. Could lets say an older dual core dell complete a single work unit in 12 hours?

[jimh425]

It's questionable if a dual core could complete a work unit overnight. I have to wonder why they stay on. Are you sure they aren't going to sleep?

[BIOShazard]

I am doing this on the servers at my school, with permission of course. The servers are to be used for a datacenter we are building as a class project, but as this datacenter is not finished yet the computers are not on all the time, which is why my PPD isn't all that high.

It works for me, but these are modern computers boasting 6 real cores... I have my doubts about whether one of the computers you speak of can complete a work unit in 12 hours. However, I know my old Athlon x64 completed work units in about 24h, but this was back in '07. You might be able to, but even if it does take 48h you would be getting 3.5k work units per week, which translates to at the very least a million points.

I am more concerned about actually keeping the computers folding. F@H is a volatile program, so I am having to RDP into my school to keep the computers folding. Doing this on 7k computers may prove challenging. However, you might be able to make a program that monitors the F@H software, checks PPD and such and tries to make fixes if something is off. I am actually working on something like this myself, but it is not yet ready to be released.

[Maniac]

I thought of proposing that to my college when I went to school there, but I never got around to doing it. I would say it's worth a shot, the worst they can do is say no. Make sure to point out the benefits of the program....

[_MtM_]

My laptop cpu ( T5450 ) run's smp wu's in little over a day. My Dell optiplex with an E2160 is slower ( don't remember exactly ) and therefore runs uniprocessor. I occasionally get unit's which are much shorter then average, but also get unit's which are much longer then normal. There is no configuration option to opt in for short or long work unit's, so it's hard to use older hardware in situations where you're not sure about actual up time and other processes running.

If you are sure of uptime and other processes, giving some details about that and the actual hardware would allow comments on the feasibility without resorting to guessing.

[Flying freak]

Originally Posted by _MtM_

My laptop cpu ( T5450 ) run's smp wu's in little over a day. My Dell optiplex with an E2160 is slower ( don't remember exactly ) and therefore runs uniprocessor. I occasionally get unit's which are much shorter then average, but also get unit's which are much longer then normal. There is no configuration option to opt in for short or long work unit's, so it's hard to use older hardware in situations where you're not sure about actual up time and other processes running.

If you are sure of uptime and other processes, giving some details about that and the actual hardware would allow comments on the feasibility without resorting to guessing.

95% of computer are likely free for about 13 hours a day and the other 5% having at least 10 hours a day free.

The idea is not to run FAH while students are in the college running at night it would be to run fah at home at night while everyone isout of the school.

As for hardware I cant really comment. Every department has different computer. Some physics labs have old pentium machines. Some engineering labs have new, high end i7 rigs with qquadro cards. And there are computers between both of these extremes.

[Spartacus]

The question is who is going to go about installing the software, the electric isn't the only cost they have to look at, they'll have to pay their IT people to install the software. As they likely are not going to give you free reign to install F@H on them. Then monitoring and making sure that the F@H only runs when its supposed to, they will likely want it to idle if someone gets on the comp etc. its a big endeavor it will be tough to get it approved.

[Flying freak]

The way i see it you would need to use the already integrated server. HAve it setup as an account that when signed into would allow fah to run. On all other account it would not be installed. This would mean that when student log in fah will shut down.

Yes it will be expensive but my student union handles approx 380 000$/year and seem to like to spend that money protesting and going on strikes. This might be a way for them to do somthing productive with the money.

[_MtM_]

For every system the exact hardware and time available to fold NEED to be known before advice can be given, but I'm repeating myself.

Without this it would have to be: install and run, check if it's making deadline's if not adjust installation ( switch from smp to uniprocessor for instance which has longer deadline's ) or uninstall.

The I7's should be able to complete an smp:8 over night with ease, but a pentium might even struggle with some of the uniprocessor wu's if the system is not a dedicated folder.

The quadro cards can run gpu wu's which are short compared to (most) cpu work unit's, they should easilly be productive even if ran for short amount of times. Just don't let them download new work if they will be offline for longer then a day ( which is actually not going to put work over the deadline as the average deadline is 2.2 days iirc and a high end quadro should finish a work unit in 3 to 5 hours total ).

@Spartacus

Many schools have ran f@h, and there are methods to ensure clients run when allowed if needed. Most schools however run uniprocessor instances which have deadlines which will not be problematic if a system is turned of often and which are less noticable then smp even if both run at iddle priority ( meaning any other process would get priority over them ).

Additional Comment:

Originally Posted by Flying freak

The way i see it you would need to use the already integrated server. HAve it setup as an account that when signed into would allow fah to run. On all other account it would not be installed. This would mean that when student log in fah will shut down.

Yes it will be expensive but my student union handles approx 380 000$/year and seem to like to spend that money protesting and going on strikes. This might be a way for them to do somthing productive with the money.

Fah can be run as a service for any client except the gpu clients. This means you can run it regardless of logged on user, and you can remotely manage starting and stopping the service. Isn't that more efficient then running it only on a seperate account? How would you handle student logging of leaving the system idle without logging back into the f@h account, or would you only log into the f@h account when there are no students? F@h was originally focused on 'spare cycles', and typical student usage still suits this. It's cheaper to have the utilization higher during times the pc would be running anyway, then extending the run time to fold exclusively.