New gpu core on the horizon!

[warmon6]

Seams something is brewing behind the doors at F@H

New core will be under testing soon

by proteneer » Tue Jan 29, 2013 3:15 pm

Hi,

Looking for some peeps to test FahCore_17. It's currently set to internal, so I'll need to give you a config.xml and a special project-key. Hit me up on #fah on freenode IRC for all the deets.

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=23564 (you need an account on the F@H forum to see the link")

now, this is for beta testers only, so were not able to try it out our selves (unless your on the beta team), but it something to keep watch of.

Just to clarify what core_17 is, it a gpu core that is suppose to works on both AMD and Nvidia gpu's. (Which by watching the beta testers asking what hardware they're looking to test with, I seems to be the the amd/nvidia combo gpu.)

Now one of team members from my team mention about that this core on both AMD and Nvidia gpu's working on the same WU will earn similar points.

(just to make it the quote below clear, I didn't realized that this new core was the amd/nvidia gpu core. I just new it was a gpu core but didn't know if it was for AMD or Nvidia.)

EXT64 01-29-2013 at 06:01:47 PM

"I think that it is a joint AMD/NVidia OpenCL core, but that is largely a guess. proteneer has been working on the GPU Folding benchmark which was a CUDA/OCL core for AMD and NVidia (and could be glitched to sort of work on CPUs). That is the core where NVidia and AMD cards worked on the same WU and got nearly the same points. In that thread, I am pretty sure he said future cores would use OCL as it was more effort than it was worth ensuring CUDA dependences were met (not sure why this is harder than it is now - possibly because of CUDA 5?). But regardless of what it is - this is exciting progress! Hopefully testing will go well."

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/pa....html#t2757163

As of now, I cant confirm that myself if that is true or not but if it is, I know many people with amd gpu's will be very happy.

I'll try to keep you guys posted if anything happens!

[Morfy]

Please do that, i am very interested in what is going on here :D

[warmon6]

Well just a quick update about the core,

seams like on the Nvidia side, anything that is pre-Fermi (GTX 200, 9800 GTX, ect) is not supported. :(

Re: New core will be under testing soon

by proteneer » Wed Jan 30, 2013 1:39 pm

Yes - G80s are not supported for new core

EDIT: nor are G92s - basically anything pre-Fermi isn't supported yet.

[davidjkuhr]

I seem to remember talk of work on a strictly open GL based core last year. I don't recall when they were planning to have it ready for testing but this could very well be the case since I believe they would like to streamline the projects to all use the same cores as well and eliminate the need to program projects separately based on one GPU or the other.

[Whaler_99]

Yes, I have been reading similar as well... I heard "AMD users" are in for a big surprise....

[gasho]

I'm happy to hear that ! keep us posted !

[warmon6]

Just heard of an Update from a friend of mine that's on the beta team.

"Big news everyone - Core 17 and GPU QRB* have hit beta.

The * by QRB is to note you won't be seeing PPD anywhere near the old QRB numbers for a while. These are explicit WUs and thus GPUs are chopped down quite a bit. PPD will improve as the core matures.

To give you a rough idea of PPD, my cards are getting:

7970 - 42.7k PPD

7870 - 21.8k PPD

5850 - 8.6k PPD

Clearly, single larger cards are better than multiple smaller cards. And of course all of this is preliminary and likely to change."

"For all of my AMD cards it is a big improvement over core 16. For NVidia, the top cards see a PPD improvement but the lower cards actually see a drop (with these prelim numbers)."

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/page-268010_28_7600.html#t2785607

Here is the first WU the beta team is trying out with the new Core and QRB on the F@H forum.

New GPU Core17 Project 7661

by proteneer » Mon Mar 04, 2013 5:42 pm

Project Description:

This project will study the folding and high-energy intermediates of the FF domain, a model protein folding system. What makes this project exciting is that FF has been subject to extensive cutting-edge NMR spectroscopy studies that hope to experimentally reveal folding pathways at atomic resolution, the work of renown experimentalist Lewis Kay. Previously, atomic resolution detail has only been accessible to simulations, like those performed on FAH. Therefore, this provides a unique opportunity for these two methods to benchmark each other -- agreement between both methods would lend a great deal of confidence and scientific credibility to both methods, since each are fairly new and are rapidly pushing the boundaries of what is considered possible in the scientific community.

This project is the explicit-solvent version of p7660.

stats-cred = 1600

deadline = 5.5

timeout = 4.3

k-factor(QRB) = 0.75

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=23845

All this should mean that in the next few weeks to at least 1 month from now, We should be seeing this new core and the QRB for public use.

I'll keep you updated if anything else comes up. ;)

[Whaler_99]

That's great news - thanks for the update. Finally my AMD's will be able to really hit their mark. :)