Changes to BIG ADV

[Keywork]

Read it and weep people:
Folding@home

Starting January, BIG ADV WU's will require a minimum of 16 cores .

[dandelioneater]

all the more reason to put together a dual socket machine

[Dead Things]

I think this is the right thing to do. I also think it is the right time and the right way to do it, before people could invest much in SB-E thinking they would fold bigadv with it.

No doubt PPD numbers will come down across the board, but so far the only team I've seen whining like little girls over the change is EVGA because they are, in fact, whiny little girls. Otherwise, people generally seem to understand the rationale for the change, even though it hurts.

PS: I josh. I <3 u, EVGA!

[matsta31]

I am sure EVGA reps are not whining... What do you think this will do for SR-3 demand ?

[lowfat]

I wish it would have been 12 cores/threads. I was going to be buying an i7-3930k within the next few weeks. Going to have to rethink things, again.

[LarkStarr]

dual 1155s now :D - No need to invest in SB-E! :P

[chrisk]

I would have liked 12 cores/threads too, but I have heard on the folding forums that Stanford did not really want HT being counted as real cores in the first place, so maybe thats why they went 16 cores.

It is experimental and a beta program, so really we just need to suck it up and just keep folding for the cure!!

[mikellini]

Yes, well it does read 16 cores, not threads... Does anyone else think they might be shooting themselves in the foot with this though? I mean, there will be way less total work actually being done; not thinking about the points perspective, but just in that the WU's will be smaller and less complex. Plus extra time taken to send and receive data when it could be used for folding (admittedly not that much).

I understand the point of bigadv units is that they give point bonuses because they're actually "worth" more from a research data standpoint. And they want less of them coming in?

EDIT: Also, if Stanford has trouble with Intel's hyperthreading accounting for extra threads, I hardly think they should view an AMD Bulldozer module as two cores.

[sswilson]

Hrmmm... does this mean that GPU farms will be coming back into vogue???? If so, then once again I'll "slide" back into fashion just by virtue of never changing in the first place..... ;)

[Xeven]

It's gonna cost an arm, a leg, my next newborn, my newborns next son and half my left nut if it's 16/32 threads. IF it's actually 8/16 then I might just make it.