EOC Folding @ Home - Stats News & Updates

It's that time again for the annual Chimp Challenge! Maximum PC, Overclockers.com, [H]ardOCP, and Overclockers Australia are racing to see who can reach 5,000,000 points first! The race actually started yesterday, I'm just a little slow to post the news. You can read more about the details & rules at Overclockers Forums.

A special Chimp Challenge page has been made (very hastily I might add) to keep tabs on the four teams as the race to 5 million.

On a different note... I had to swap out the (rather new) motherboard for the new folding stats processing server. It seems only rev 1.1a supports a full 12 ranks of memory, all the earlier versions are limited to 8 and have "issues" if you try to do certain memory combinations. So I figured I would get it swapped out while I still could under warranty incase I ever add more memory to the system. While doing that I also re-installed the OS modifying the partitions some and making a few other adjustments.

It's slow going with the coding, testing, and tweaking. I can't even begin to give an ETA of when things will get switched over, a lot longer than what I imagined at first. But also I'm adding in a lot of new features that were not originally planned. This is more or less a complete re-write from the ground up.

Been pretty busy this week, but after the last of the parts came in on Tuesday I was able to test out the system and make sure everything was working.

Yesterday I spent the better part of my day trying to get Linux (CentOS) installed. After a few unsuccessful tries changing various settings (thinking it was not detecting the RAID controller) I decided to install Windows XP. XP installed without a hitch, and even detected all 8 cores (though the 32bit version only detects 4GB of RAM). Next I tried FreeBSD 7.0, and that went through without any problems.... So by this point I was getting really frustrated. I even took out the RAID controller and hooked the drives up to the on board SATA and used the adaptec (fake?)raid mode... still nothing.

Finally it dawned on me... During the Linux setup, it was asking me for the install source, which I just chose CD-ROM without even thinking. BUT this is the kicker, it shouldn't ask that unless you are doing like a network install or minimal boot. For some reason it would not detect the DVD drive / channel for the main install portion. Weird I know... So I just did the install over the network and everything went smooth. *whew*

So now the system is up in running in a bare state. I still am waiting for the new Seagate 15K.6 drives to become available, crossing my fingers that should be soon. The best thing about this sytem is how quiet and cool it is. Idle it *only* consumes 100W (When the two 15K drives are installed you can probably add another 15-25W). Running at near 100% CPU usage it only went up to 175W (so maybe like 200W after the 15K drives are in)! Compare them apples to the Dell which used 350W IDLE and over 470W loaded!!! Yeah, the difference is like night and day.

So today I'm going to install MySQL & PHP and do whatever other configuring needs to be done on the new server. I might even start loading the folding data too.

I will try to take some pictures later today and get them online. I'm really surprised with the retail Intel heatsinks the system is still extremely quiet. I'm not even sure I want to bother with some huge Thermalrights.

UPDATE: Here's a picture of what the server looks like. The middle fan I had to switch airflow so it would blow cool air down on the RAID controller because it gets very hot.

If you haven't noticed, the individual stats have not been updating for about a day now. Stanford is aware and working on the issue so please don't email me about it as it is beyond my control!

According to them it should be resolved within the next 12-24 hours. Until then we all just have to sit and wait. Sorry.

The last of the parts should be arriving on Monday & Tuesday... I ordered a couple retail LGA771 Intel heatsinks to hold things over until I can get the Thermalright ones. They were only $12 a piece, plus I like to always have some spares on hand just in case.

The only thing I haven't got yet are the Seagate 15K.6 drives because they won't be available for another week or two. But that's not a big deal, when I do get them I can just drop them and mount them to the DB directory and move the database over.

I spent Saturday looking at cases online. While I really liked the Antec Solo, it looked like it was going to be a tight fit, plus since the heatsinks had to be rotate 90 degrees it looked like they would have clearance issues with the 5.25" drive bays. Also I kind of wanted a case with a side fan to keep the RAID controller cool. So better safe than sorry and just skip that case. So then I was going to use an old Chenbro/Chenming/Antec/whatever case I had. It's that classic style that every case manufacturer used for a while. They are solid cases and well designed. So I started pulling out the existing components and when I was done I looked at the HD cages and realized I had only one fan bracket. Ugh... I suppose I could of just put the SAS drives in there and ran the WDs without a fan, but I really wanted the additional airflow. Then I started looking online and Aspire still sells that case, slightly updated. But before I bought anything I decided to go down to the local Best Buy and see what they had for sale and if they had any cases on display. After that I was planning on traveling down to the local Fry's... Anyhow, so I go to BB and what do they have? The full tower Rocketfish case on clearance still for $50! I took that as an omen and bought it... lol.

Even though it has two features I do not like (PSU on bottom and HD cages turned 90 degrees) I figure I can live with it. The case is very spacious and includes all the 120mm fans. It would of been nice for one additional fan on the top and/or on the door, I might have to do that mod myself one day. It does have a little fan bracket that sits over where a video card would usually go, in my case where the RAID card sits. So it should keep things cool. If not I have an old "Card Cooler" that I can use.

So, without further delay... Here's the assembled system so far (click on picture for full size).

Wow, the emails just poured in overnight! There were a lot of people that verified the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme does fit in the Antec cases... ;) Thanks for that, please no more emails on that subject... hehe..

Also got a lot of suggestions and comments on the hardware, and on new site features. Still working my way through those. If you are planing on emailng me, please make sure you use a valid email address, otherwise I can't reply back to you!

Finally, some of the parts have been shipped (or should be shipped out today). The CPUs, RAM, PSU, WD HDs, and MB are all on their way (supposedly). I talked to Thermalright about heatsinks that would fit (both the dual socket board & case), and they are going to send me a pair of the HR-01 X's hopefully early next week. They are waiting on the "new and improved" Xeon retension bracket. I don't mind waiting a few extra days for that... don't want the heatsinks falling off the processors. I still have a few more miscellaneous bits to order because I didn't get a chance to yesterday.

OH! Almost forgot... One reason you might have noticed the points are lagging behind Stanford's so bad is/was due to the Daylight Savings time shift. The Stanford server doesn't observe DST so what *was* a 2 hr time shift is now 3 hrs, which pushes it back an extra update. One way around this (that someone suggested) was to delay the update by 20min to ensure that stanford writes the new files. I'm going to sit and watch this afternoon when the files do indeed get updated on the stanford site. Then I need to make some tweaks to the prefetch code since it currently expects to pre-process some before the top of the hour. But basically I'm going to delay the process times some (probably 15-20min, depending on how long it takes for stanford to get the files updated) so that the updates will not lag behind that extra update. This is just during daylight savings... come this fall I can push the update time back.

P.S. Don't forget to mail in your income taxes today! (I mailed mine off yesterday.)

Sorry for not getting any updates sooner. I've been patiently waiting for Dell to credit my account for the server that I sent back to them. It *finally* went through Saturday so immediately Sunday afternoon I started re-ordering parts.

This time I have very carefully done my homework, and I'm also very thankful for suggestions that people have sent in. This time around the server will definitly be much quieter and a lot more energy efficient!

I priced up several different configurations, from a single socket desktop motherboard, a single socket "server" board, and a dual socket server board... In the end the price to jump up to the dual socket was really minimal, and since I realized I already had a single quad-core pegged in performance it was probably the way to go for the additional headroom as I optimize code and the data grows.

While the Intel 5400 chipset is their top of the line, the 5100 chipset is for the more "energy efficient" crowd, as it doesn't use FB-DIMMs, just regular ECC Registered DDR2 RAM. So I chose the Supermicro X7DCL-I motherboard (that uses the 5100 chipset) as the base of the system.

Next up were the CPUs... Again, looking at the single socket quad cores pretty much the baseline was a 95W TDP. Intel just released some "Low Voltage" Harpertown chips that have only a 50W TDP! So I was able to find a pair of L5420 (2.5GHz) quads at an extremely reasonable price. The 2.5GHz seemed to be the butter zone for price / performance for even the regular E (80W) models.

To cool the CPUs, I'm going with some nice big Thermalright heatinks w/120mm low-RPM fans. Yeah, that's right, I said Thermalright. For those familliar with their products, you know that their latest designs use a pretty universal heatsink, and you simply use the proper retension clip to hold it in place. Fortunatly they make a LGA-771 clip, and even have a complete model (heatsink, socket clip, and fan clip combo) just for people with dual 771 setups.

For RAM I'm going with 2 x 4GB sticks of Crucial. It was a little premium over 4 x 2GB, but the higher density should equate to some power savings (especially not being FB-DIMM) and also for more expansion should it be necessary in the future.

For a power supply I chose the Corsair 750TX. Since there are no high-end video cards in this sytem, using a PSU with split rails designed for multi GPU setups would be kind of pointless. The 750TX is a massive single 12V rail, and under my expected power usage the fan should never have to rev up so it will stay nice and silent. I could of gone with a slightly smaller size, but not being 100% sure where the power consumption will end up at I didn't want to undersize it to where the PSU fan would start to get noisy. Also there was a nice $40 Mail In Rebate @ NewEgg (Expires Today!).

Final bits... I'm going to use a pair of the WD 1TB GP hard drives in RAID-1. These drives spin slower (use less power) and are also quieter. These will be used for just the core OS, backups of the database, raw stats files, and whatnot. The database will be running on a pair of 15K RPM Seagate Cheetahs in RAID-0. I'm trying to find their new 15K.6 models, I found one place online that *supposedly* has them, I'm going to call today and see if indeed they do or if it's just a pre-order thing. I haven't decided on the RAID controller yet, there's a few I'm looking at.

Lastly is the case... I have a couple around here that I can try out. I was looking at the Antec P182, *but* the issue with that case is the PSU is at the bottom, and the power connectors on the MB are at the very top! The given MB dimensions are a hair too small, and I'm not sure if the Thermalright heatsinks will clear with the door closed. If anyone has the P180 or P182 case and uses a Thermalright Ultra-120 or HR-01 heatsink, let me know! I'll probably do some googling in a bit to see what I can find.

So that sums it up... Most of the parts I ordered yesterday afternoon. The rest I'm hoping to get ordered today. When they arrive I will be sure to let you guys know!

In the mean time I've been tinkering with the stats code on my current linux box here getting ready for the new server. One thing I would like to hear from you guys, is what sort of information you would like to see (changes / additions / removals). I think one of the bigger things that people want is having adjustable time-scales for the graphs (hours / days / weeks / months). The "new members" will probably be put back on the main page but list only like the newest 5-10 with a link to the full list. I was also going to adjust the 24hr average to use a little longer time frame for individuals. I'm not so sure about the Weekly Points... I think rather switch it to a rolling total like points last 7 days (or week, verbage to be decided later). I was also going to add links to longer historical production so you aren't limited to the "last 7..." and maybe have some graphs with that data too. I want to add the ability for people to set time/date in their preferred format (sorry, I'm not going to change time zone info on the fly, that would just wreak havok with the numbers). Also adding in the ability to set your default team / username would be nice. Then I could generate some additional comparison pages and add quick links on the side to go directly to the pages you want.

Not sure what else I had planned, I really need to write my ideas down because I keep forgetting things (buy usually remember them sometime down the road).

Anyhow, your feedback would be greately appreciated since these stats are for you guys. ;) Just click the "Contact Us" link in the upper right corner, and send your message to me (Jason Rabel).

Yes that's right, I came into the office on a Sunday afternoon to do some work for you guys. I managed to hack the code into a working state to work with the current DB and make it SMP capable and run some time trials.

Scaling up incrementally from 1 to 4 threads showed almost the same improvement as before, there was a lot more "umph" to begin with since these have been the fastest processors I've used on the stats. The stats even scaled up to 6 cores, but I just wasn't that impressed with the improvement in performance from 4. Beyond 6 there really wasn't much happening, I think it finally hit the bottleneck of the 15K RPM hard drives.

Even though the code is kind of in a rough state for SMP usage, and it's not running the latest version of MySQL, I think a single quad core will suffice and give the best "bang for the buck". That greatly simplifies things and gives more options for hardware to buy.

I also did some testing with the Dell by removing some of the FBDIMM modules to see how power usage changed. Each FBDIMM uses a minimum of 10W idle... Yeah, so you can see how 12 DIMMs x 10W = 120W of power usage right there! The AMB chip in each module is responsible for at least half the power consumption, so using higher density modules could drop usage considerably, but the cost also goes up considerably. But since I don't think I will be going with a dual-socket board, I will not need to use FBDIMMs. I just thought I would post that as some "food for thought".

So today I'm going to call up Dell and return the server. Once they credit me I can order parts for the new (v2) server.

On a different note, I've gotten some complaints from people about a long delay in their points showing up in the stats. This is not a problem on my end, this has something to do with Stanford's back-end. I can only process the numbers which are provided in the files they generate for us. I emailed Vijay this morning and will let you know what he says as soon as I get a reply.

UPDATE: I got a reply from Vijay, "There was an unusual situation this weekend, where 2 servers weren't being credited over the last few days." The issue should be resolved, I'm not sure how long it will take for the points to all show up (if they haven't already).

Before getting into the good and the bad, I wanted to post a pre-notice about a change to the stats that will affect anyone using sigs or XML. I'm going to be re-numbering all the users since there are a lot of gaps and waste when users were getting added and deleted. Also I must get an email a week from someone who is confused about this number and how it relates to everything. So I think it would just be best to eliminate it from the user side and stick to the same format as the FAH client: User Name / Team ID. Eventually the web pages will all reflect this too, so links will show the user name instead of an arbitrary number. I'm going to update the sig page hopefully tomorrow or Monday to remove the number based id info, but it will still work for a while. Like I said this is just a pre-notice, I don't want to finalize anything until I get the new stats coded.

First for the good news... We finally have our Internet back up and running at the office. It was actually switched on a day early (Wednesday), after two and a half weeks of down-time!

Now for the bad news... The Dell server is just too hideously loud and generates too much heat (even when idle), so it has to be returned. When re-building the office we just didn't plan for *that* much capacity in the closet, otherwise we could of added additional cooling and noise-insulation, heck even made the room bigger. I guess the saying still holds true, hindsight is always 20/20. I called up Dell and there is no problem sending it back (no restock fee or anything). She gave me a couple options and I have a few days to make a final decision. We considered making some modifications to the closet to add a temp-controlled vent fan, but still the high-pitched server fan noise permeates throughout the whole office. It's kind of hard to make major modifications now since all the wiring and equipment and such is finished out on the walls in the closet, so we can't pull the walls down to insulate them better either. I've purchased servers from Dell before, admittedly not this powerful, but none were *that* noisy or space heaters. :(

So, in the mean time since the Internet came back up I've been trying to help someone out with a F@H problem, so the server has been crunching away to gather some useful data for them. I've gotten the server up to 470W under load with FAH, but even that was only really utilizing 75% CPU capacity, they still have some tweaking to do for the SMP cores I guess. I expect the folding stats to peg all processors though, and then some, but we shall see. I also spent part of today prepping the server for the multi-threaded tests, I installed MySQL, compiled PHP, loaded some old data (from Sep I believe, it was the first file I found so I used it). There's no reason I can't see exactly how well it will scale for up to 8 cores before having to ship it back. ;) I found my old multi-threaded code, I just need to bring it up-to-date then I can test it out on Monday. Changing the amount of cores for the code to use is as easy as modifying one variable, so I can also see how MySQL will respond with its thread concurrency setting and find out the best balance. Essentially, instead of one team getting processed at a time, the code basically splits it up and hands out one team to each core to be processed, as the process finishes it gets another team, and so on.

Since I'm sending back the Dell server, I've been doing a lot of research and calculating to what I can do to keep the performance I need, but keep it within a reasonable power budget. Yes, this time it's going to be a home-built system. Another experiment I want to do with the Dell is pull out most of the FB-DIMM modules and see how much power drops. Once I see that first-hand I can better determine if the system will be a single quad-core with regular DDR2, or a dual socket w/quads (like it is now - and I would have to use FB-DIMMs) but utilize higher-density modules and have less RAM too. DDR3 is out of the question, its price is way to high (especially for 8GB) right now.

I realize this post might be a little long, but please read all of it so you know a little background and can understand what's at stake.

Lately I've been getting more and more questions and requests from people whom I don't process stats for (because their rank is below the cutoff). It would be nice if I could process everyone's stats but the amount of processing on my server prohibits it. As a matter of fact the current load is getting rather intense and lengthy, and has been putting quite a strain on the main EOC site & forums during updates.

I've been slowly working on the next major overhaul of the stats, most of it is back-end changes, but there are a few visual tweaks to the pages. One thing I decided to do was process the stats on a local development server in my office, which would in turn upload the DB changes to the main site which would only take a couple minutes at most to update. This would alleviate a lot of the load from my web server that has been causing the sites to bog down, and give the ability to speed up processing the FAH stats.

I considered just upgrading my server package at my hosting company and moving all the sites over, but to be honest that is a major pain and a major undertaking. Not to mention the increased monthly costs would double what I'm currently paying, and the additional computing requirement is really only needed in bursts so all that extra power would be sitting idle most of the time. So instead of spending all this extra money each month I figured it would be more cost-effective to buy a new server that can sit here in my office and would just be a one-time expense and a lot cheaper in the long run.

While my development server here is decent (just an A64 3200+ w/2GB RAM), I haven't loaded all the old fah data yet to see how long it will take to process regular updates. But I'm not expecting to see any huge gain and it might even take longer. So before making the official switchover I would like get a halfway decent Intel server with one or preferably two quad-core processors, at least 4GB of RAM, and preferably the fastest hard drives possible (10K or 15K drives in a RAID 1 or 10 configuration). The beauty of the stats is that processing teams can be in parallel, greatly reducing the overall processing time as long as you don't have any big bottlenecks.

I did some quick browsing at the Dell website looking at some of the poweredge servers, and while they have some that cost more than a car, I think a more realistic system can be built for $1,500 - $2,000 USD.

So now if you read this far, here's my plea to you. I would *really* appreciate some donations to help fund this new server. The easiest and preferred way would be to use PayPal (there is a link on the left sidebar).

If nobody bothers to donate then I guess you guys will just have to live with whatever speed the stats process at. I probably won't be able to do any expansion on the teams / individuals being processed, and might even have to reduce the numbers back down to what they were before.

3/5/08 - 2pm Update: Since posting this yesterday afternoon, already several people have sent in a total of $100 USD. Thanks Guys!

3/5/08 - 7pm Update: Wowza, since putting the link at the top on all folding pages I guess a lot more people took notice! I've tallied up a little over $1,000 in donations thus far! A few people emailed me that do not use PayPal and would still like to make a donation. If you would like my address to mail a donation just email me please.

3/6/08 - 10am Update: Eureka! With over 80 people donating anywhere from $5 to $100 we've collected over $2,000! I'm still going to end up spending more than what was donated, in case some extra donations come in, and also so I can say I chipped in my share. ;) I'm going to post a list of the teams / individuals (don't worry I won't put full names) that have donated later today. A HUGE thank you to everyone that has sent in some money, I honestly can't say thank you enough! The only bad news is that the Dell promos with the discounted 2nd proc & free PERC RAID card expired yesterday. I still have to wait for some e-checks to clear, hopefully they will have another promo soon. Either way, by the end of next week I'm going to place the order.

3/7/08 - 11:00am Update: HOLY COW! I just checked my PayPal account and it is almost at $3,100!!! I counted up all the emails and there were about 125 individual donations made (thus far)! I was surprised at how many donations still came in overnight, I'm truly touched by everyones support. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside knowing how much you all are willing to help out, the folding community is really a special group of people.

I do check each of the paypal notifications, thanks to everyone who left some words of encouragement. Also, thank you for all the emails, I'm still trying to reply to everyone!

3/8/08 - 2:00pm Update: Man you guys are keeping me on my toes. Every time I check my email there are always more donations! I just checked and the total is up to almost $3,800!!! I've totally lost count of how many people have donated, lets just go with "A LOT". I thought initially trying to raise just $1,500 was going to be a challenge but you guys just blew me away with your charity and support.

I think most of the inflow has subsided, and the target goal has been surpassed, so I'm going to go ahead and order the server Monday morning. Once I do, I will post all the specs. Obviously when it arrives I'll be sure to post some pictures. I can tell you now that more than likely it will be a Dell PowerEdge 2900 III.

3/10/08 - 7:30am Update: Monday morning has finally rolled around. I updated the list of teams below with even more donations that came in over the weekend! I'm planning on ordering the server a little later this afternoon once my coffee has kicked in. ;)

3/12/08 - 9:30am Update: I finally got the server ordered yesterday. Should be in sometime next week. I'll try to post the specs this evening, but I can tell you the system is super sweet and should last for years to come. I'm in the process of moving my office (same office complex, long story about that) and somehow the phone company has totally screwed up moving the phone and my DSL. The phones were supposed to be moved yesterday, and as of this morning they are still in limbo. I have no service at my old office, and no service in my new office. You call the number and it says 'no longer in service'! So after I do this I'm going to have to call them again and make some poor person cry and hate their job because I am NOT happy. The DSL is *supposed* to be up and running Friday, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm on my laptop using one of the other tenants Internet so I can get a few things done this morning, but I need to get back to work moving stuff and unpacking everything in the new place.

3/20/08 - 8:30am Update: I have good news and bad news. The good news is the server finally arrived Monday or Tuesday I think it was. The bad news is I *still* do not have Internet access at my office. The phone company (AT&T/SBC) keeps giving me the run around saying there is some error with the system and until that gets fixed they can't put the order through for DSL. They can't give me a time frame for WHEN it will be resolved, or even WHO is in charge of fixing the problem. If it's not up and running tomorrow (Friday) I'm calling Comcast Cable and they can have my business, then I'll be calling AT&T and telling them they can stick it where the sun don't shine because this is beyond ridiculous.

I installed CentOS on the server from DVD, I have never seen an install go so fast! But without Internet I'm kind of stuck dead in the water beyond that point. Today I'm going to take some pictures of the server. The rough specs are:

• 2 x Intel Xeon E5440 (2.83 GHz) - I chose these because they were the fastest that were offered in the "E" power range (80W TDP). The next two processors were X models which means 120W TDP and I really wanted to keep this server somewhat energy efficient.
  
• 24 GB RAM (12 x 2 GB modules) - I was originally going to get 16 GB (Remember there are 8 cores that will be running simulatenously plus regular services needing memory) but figured to fully populate the slots out (they go in sets of 4) since the cost was not that much more and was part of the splurge that I chipped in for. Jumping up to 4 GB modules would of been more energy efficient, but wasn't really cost effective (at this time).
  
• 4 x 146 GB 15K RPM SAS hard drives - These drives are running from a PERC6/i in a RAID-10 configuration. There wasn't much of a cost difference between the 73 & 146 GB, the 300 GB drives are still very pricy. I chose RAID-10 over RAID-5 or 50 because I'm not using that many drives, and also RAID-10 still gives the best write performance which is key for the stats updates.
  
• Redudant Power Supplies - a little upgrade, but well spent since the power supply is not your standard ATX form factor. I didn't want to be dead in the water if it kicked the bucket.
  
• DRAC-5 card - this is a remote access card that essentially is like hooking up a monitor and keyboard directly, but it is done over the network. Another little splurge from my pocket. Since the system will be in the networking closet I didn't want to have to lug in a monitor and keyboard every time I needed direct access, or lug the server out drag it all the way down to my office.
  

That's about the bulk of the server specs, everything else is just little stuff. Running idle the server consumes a little over 350W of power, I haven't had a chance to stress test it yet but I'm willing to bet that number will jump to at least 500W under stress. The server weighs (according to the shipping tag) 148 lbs, and it sure feels like every last pound is there! I'm glad I got the caster wheels for it, as it would be near impossible to move around on my own. Final cost after tax, shipping, and everything was just a hair under $4,900. There have been in excess of $4,000 in dontaions and I would of felt bad if I didn't put it all towards the server. As you can see from the specs above it is smoking fast. I'm really excited to see what it can do once I get my Internet back up at the office.

Well, time to go to the office, keep your fingers crossed that my Internet is working today.

3/21/08 - 10:00am Update: After getting transferred around a few times this morning with the phone company, a person *finally* thinks they have figured out the problems with my DSL. *Apparently* it is still showing service at my old address, so they have to clear out that from the system before I can re-order new service at my new address. Problem is it will be Tue or Wed before the old info clears out and I can re-order, which then will be another couple days for it to become active. So best estimate (assuming they aren't lying to me again) is next Thu or Fri (27th or 28th) before I have Internet back again. I found a card that has a local manager's phone number when they hooked up the regular phone. I'm about to call him and give him a piece of my mind.

The list below should be current as of 3/21/08, I think I found all the emails that everyone sent since last update. If you made a donation and you don't see your team on the list (and would like to have it included), please send me an email and I will be sure to add it!

• 2CPU.com Folding@Home
  
• ABXZone.com
  
• Adire
  
• Alliance Francophone
  
• AMD Zone
  
• Arch Linux
  
• Badcaps.net Forum Members
  
• Beefysworld.com Forums
  
• Bleedinedge
  
• Bleeping Computer
  
• Blu-ray.com
  
• Castlecops
  
• ChaosChaos
  
• ClubLexus
  
• CustomPC
  
• DIY-Street
  
• DL.TV
  
• Dutch Power Cows
  
• EOC Folding@Home Team
  
• Fighter Ops - Folding@home Team
  
• fold4life.com
  
• Folding For Ancient
  
• Folding@Malaysia
  
• Gentoo Linux Users Everywhere
  
• Guru3D
  
• [H]ard|OCP
  
• Hardware.no
  
• HWC (Hardware Central)
  
• Knoppmyth
  
• MacCentral.com
  
• Macrumors.com - Team Folding
  
• MajorGeeks.com
  
• Manic Folders
  
• Maximum PC Magazine
  
• MicroMart-UK
  
• MozillaZine
  
• MSI HQ Red Rockets
  
• NCIX.com Forum Folding Team
  
• NCSU Wolfpack
  
• OcUK
  
• Overclock.net
  
• Overclock Intelligence Agency (OCIA)
  
• Overclockers Australia
  
• Overclockers Club
  
• p2p-community
  
• PC Games Hardware
  
• PC Perspective Folding Frogs
  
• pcmech.com
  
• Phoenix Rising
  
• Pholding Phreaks
  
• PitCrew @ PCPitStop
  
• Planet 3DNow!
  
• PlanetAMD64
  
• Poland
  
• PS3Forums.com
  
• Rechenkraft.net - Germany
  
• SilentPCReview Folding@Home
  
• Slickdeals
  
• Stevens Institute of Technology
  
• Sudhian Media
  
• Team 2ch
  
• Team AnandTech
  
• Team Cancer Killerz
  
• Team Engadget
  
• Team Firefox
  
• Team Hack-a-Day
  
• Team Helix
  
• Team ICT
  
• Team MacOS X
  
• Team PimpRig / pcApex.com
  
• Team Rage3D
  
• Team Takoda
  
• Team Ufie
  
• Team XPS - Folding@Home
  
• TeamWTFonline
  
• Tech Support Forum
  
• The Genome Collective
  
• The Longevity Meme
  
• the motherboards.org team
  
• The New Xtreme Resources
  
• The Outcasts
  
• The Tech Report
  
• The University of Texas
  
• Toms Hardware Guide Community
  
• Transform The Planet
  
• Userbase.be
  
• www.overclockers.com
  
• xtremesystems.org
  

Long time since the last update, so hold on to your seats!

First, I am now processing the top 3,000 teams (instead of 2,000). This really has a minimal impact on processing time and hopefully will allow smaller teams to start tracking their progress much sooner.

Second, since changing the processing style over from the indivual files to just the master team / user files I am no longer limited to the top 800 teams for user processing. Users can be added before the 800 mark if their team rank is above 1,200 and the team has moved up at least 5 spots within the past 7 days. This has a slight impact on performance but again this helps the smaller teams out that are really putting forth the effort.

Third, team & user colors! There is a new color, PURPLE which I'm using in the lower part of the scale. The last time the colors were changed was in May, 2004!

The OLD Team scale was:

0 / 1+ / 2.5k+ / 5k+ / 15k+ / 30k+ / 50k+ / 75k+

The NEW Team scale is now:

0 / 1+ / 1k+ / 5k+ / 10k+ / 25k+ / 50k+ / 100k+ / 200k+

Likewise the user scale has been changed.

The OLD User scale was:

0 / 1+ / 100+ / 200+ / 400+ / 800+ / 1.2k+ / 1.6k+

The NEW User scale is now:

0 / 1+ / 100+ / 200+ / 400+ / 800+ / 1.5k+ / 3k+ / 6k+

These numbers might be tweaked some later this week after the numbers settle back down from the hiccup a few days ago. I wanted to go ahead and make at least some change while I was in the process of other things, hopefully it will get some peoples attention and they will check this main page for updates. There were way too many people "red", due to improvements in the FAH client (like PS3, GPU, and SMP support), along with the general increase in processing power. Numbers in the lower parts of the scale didn't change much for users, I didn't want to discourage the people that only fold on one or two machines. Excluding the inactive users (87% of processed users), when you look at the active people, almost 39% have between 1-99 points 24/hr avg, and almost another 20% have between 100-199 for their 24/hr avg. So rather than up the scale across the board and bump more people into a lower group I simply tweaked the higher numbers for the smaller percentage that are super-competitive.

I am sure many people noticed the stats being down the other day. I was doing a copy of the user history table to a separate archive table, it just took WAY longer than I expected (almost 24 hours to process) and really bogged down the server. Along with that I pruned out all historical data older than Jan 1, 2007 to help speed up the stats processing. I'm going to be pruing out some extra non-essential records and adding back in some data but all that will be processed on a different machine and updated accordingly. The stats will probably go down for an update or two when I make that big update.