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Will I be able to select to run work units only on my CPU, or only on my GPU, or both?

There are separate and independent settings for World Community Grid to run on either your CPU or on your GPU.

By default, World Community Grid is set up to only run work using your CPU and not using your GPU. The CPU preference is available on the Device Profiles page under the custom options section. This option is labeled "Allow research to run on my CPU?" You may select either "Yes" or "No."

To run World Community Grid work units on your GPU, refer to "How do I configure my settings so that World Community Grid uses my device's GPU?" for details.

How is "run time" calculated?

"Run time" is simply a measurement of how long a volunteer's device spends running World Community Grid tasks. You accumulate run time for running tasks on your device's GPU, CPU, or both.

How will statistics be updated for GPU participation?

World Community Grid will award run time based on the elapsed time from when a work unit is started and when it finishes running. Credit and result counts will be awarded in the same manner as CPU participation.

Why does the World Community Grid software only use 60% of my CPU time?

When World Community Grid was started in 2004, we heard isolated reports of computer instability while running the software at 100%. Because of this we changed the default setting to only run at 60% of the unused processor time. Members are able to modify the cpu time from 10% to 100% to suit their own needs by making a change to their device profile. However, anyone making the change to more than 60% should monitor their device to ensure that the change has not had an adverse impact. If it does then they should revert back to the default settings.

Could running the software cause my computer to overheat?

A few machines have not been designed with sufficient cooling, fins sometimes fill with dust, and some fans run slower with age. This could be a problem whether you are running our software or not. However, we have found that some recently designed machines deal with the slight increase in CPU temperature from running at higher utilization percentages, by slowing the system clock rather than speeding up the cooling fan as needed. This could cause everything to run slower on such a machine. To keep this from happening, the software’s default CPU throttle is set to around 60%.

How do I get the software to use 100% of the available CPU?

The software has a default setting of 60%. You may change the CPU utilization setting to 100% CPU utilization, we certainly welcome the additional contribution this setting brings to our projects.

• To change your preferences for all computers under your member name, sign on to our website and go to your “Settings” page. Select “Device Manager”, then “Device Profiles from the left hand Navigation. Click the Profile Name that you want to alter and select “Custom Profile”. Under “Disk Usage” change your setting to reflect: “Use no more than: 100% of total disk space” and select “save”. The new settings will take effect when the agent software next communicates with the servers.
• To change the preferences for a particular computer under your member name. Double left click on the World Community Grid, or BOINC, icon in the system tray of the appropriate computer. Select Preferences from Simple View. Then check “I want to customize my preferences for this computer only” and the information panel should reflect “Use no more than 100% of the processor” and “save”. The setting changes made here take effect immediately and override those in the device profile above.

I have received the error message "Suspending computation - CPU usage is too high" in my Message Log. What action can be taken to fix this?

This message means that other applications on your device are using your processor to do work. In order to allow those applications to run as fast as possible, the World Community Grid software is suspending the research until your device is once again idle.
If you wish to change the level of processor use that is required before World Community Grid stops running the research application, then please take the following steps:

My computer seems to be running slow since I installed the World Community Grid agent?

If your computer seems to run slower when running the agent, then you may have relatively little memory in your system. Using 100% CPU alone will not slow things down because the agent runs at lowest priority so that it yields to any other work. Otherwise, it consumes the unused CPU which makes the total go to 100%. However, if your system has relatively little real memory (usually about 512 meg or less) and you are running other memory hungry applications, then there might be disk paging delays. To solve the problem, you could set your agent to run in screen saver mode only. Then, while you are actively using the machine, the agent will stay out of the way.

How can I change the screensaver resource limits on my computer?

You will need to modify your Device Profile on the website. On your Settings page, select Device Manager, and then Device Profiles. Under Profile Name, select which Profile you would like to change (Default, School, Home, etc.). Then select the Custom Profile radio button. Under Advanced Options, scroll down to the Graphics section. The defaults are set to 7 frames per second and 5% cpu usage. If you would like the screensavers to refresh quicker, change the frames per second to 30. If the screensavers are taking up too much CPU power, decrease the percentage from 5% down to 2% to keep the screen saver usage to a minimum. Click Save at the bottom of the page to save your changes. The next time your computer communicates with our website, the preferences will be updated.

How much computing power does this project need, and why?

Based on the molecular dynamics simulations that the researchers have done up to now, using a cluster of 20 nodes (160 CPU cores) for a couple of months at a time, they estimate that to extend the simulations to water-flow velocities typical of practical nanotube filters, they will require another factor of 400 or more in compute time. And to simulate a representative range of membrane pore sizes would require a further factor of 10, for a total of order 106 thousand single-core-CPU-years. Add on to this a wide variety of contaminants they would like to add to the water in the simulations, and the sky is the limit!

Of course, the researchers will have to go one step at a time, and a lot of the computing effort will be to verify previous results at each stage and to make sure the results are reliable.

What are the advantages of running World Community Grid on a computer's GPU?

GPUs can perform certain types of computations significantly faster than the central processing units (CPUs) that power computers. When the manufacturers of GPUs realized this, they extended the capabilities of some GPUs so that they could run tasks that were written in a specialized development language. As a result, applications that are modified to use this specialized development language–and can leverage GPUs' specialized capabilities appropriately–can potentially run many times faster on GPU than on the CPU. 

If you run a World Community Grid project that is modified to use GPU power on a device that has a GPU, and you adjust your settings accordingly, that device can complete work units more quickly than a device using just a CPU. 

However, GPU processing is different than CPU processing on World Community Grid. Specifically, GPUs don't have operating system capabilities that allow us to ensure that running work units doesn't interfere with your use of your computer. Many GPUs can run World Community Grid without any interference; however, some will cause your computer to be slow in responding to you. GPU usage for World Community Grid is therefore opt-in only; by default, World Community Grid will not use GPUs. You can opt in through the Device Profiles page - please refer to "How do I configure my settings so that World Community Grid uses my device's GPU?" for details.

I am running SETI@home on my computer? Will I be able to run both SETI@home and World Community Grid?

Yes and no. Any non-grid.org agent, such as SETI@home, will be able to continue to run on your computer after you download and install the World Community Grid agent. However, while you can run both clients at the same time, SETI@home runs at a higher priority than the World Community Grid agent, so SETI@home will receive all the extra available CPU cycles and will starve the World Community Grid agent. Because of this, you should only run one or the other at any given time.

Why does my device show high CPU use?

The CPU in computers and other computing devices is actually highly utilized no matter what is going on, except when it is powered off, or stopped. There is a hidden "idle" task running in the background that runs at lower priority than everything else in the device, even lower than the World Community Grid software. The idle task counts up the percentage of the time it runs and calls this "idle time" and reduces the reported CPU utilization figure accordingly. Neither the World Community Software software nor the idle task will run if your device has other work to do. However, since our software runs at a slightly higher priority than the idle task, the idle task won't run at all and thus report that your computer will be 100% utilized*. Having our software run in the background along with other applications is usually not a problem unless you have a system with relatively little memory. For such systems you may want to change your preferences to meet your requirements.

An overview of the various performance settings may be found here.

* Note: If you set the throttle in the BOINC agent (called: Use no more than: % of processor time) to 60%, the agent will run at 100% for three seconds, and then at 0% for two seconds.

What's the benefit of running OpenPandemics - COVID-19 work units for GPU?

AutoDock-GPU (AD-GPU) could increase the project's chances of finding a molecule with anti-viral properties even further. 

Compared to AutoDock 4 (the current CPU version of the software that is used for OpenPandemics - COVID-19), AD-GPU is much faster, which should provide a nice boost to the already amazing rate of docked results. 

Furthermore, AD-GPU has an improved search algorithm that exhibits a greater probability of finding strong interactions between the molecules and viral proteins, and is well suited to dock larger or more complex molecules. This means that scientists can use AD-GPU to not only screen more molecules, but also to enable the search of more complex molecules.

How can I help reduce the energy usage associated with my computer?

The World Community Grid software and the workstation power management software may work in a complementary fashion. A World Community Grid participating computer may be set so that when it is in active use, the World Community Grid software harvests the unused CPU time. When a computer is not in active use for more than ten minutes, then power management software may be activated in accordance with the user's setting to enable energy saving. This may be enabled by going to your Device Profiles and selecting your 'Default' (or appropriate) profile and then selecting the 'Power Saving' option. There's plenty of computing power in the majority of our member's computers – enough to do their job, be productive, contribute to humanitarian research and still conserve energy at the end of the day.

By utilizing the Power–Saving Capability, we can all actively work towards reducing our energy use. And if you also participate in World Community Grid, you will be contributing to valuable humanitarian research.

How are points calculated?

Points are calculated in a two-step process which attempts to give a consistent number of points for similar amounts of research computation. First, the computational power/speed of the computer is determined by periodically running a benchmark calculation. Then, based on the central processing unit (CPU) time spent computing the research result for a work unit, the benchmark result is used to convert the time spent on a work unit into points. This adjusts the point value so that a slow computer or a fast computer would produce about the same number of points for calculating the research result for the same work unit. This value is the number of point credits "claimed" by the client. More information about that formula is available here.

Second, research results returned to the servers are validated in a manner which depends on the research project. Then the claimed points for valid results are examined for anomalous (excessively high or low compared to other machines computing the same or equivalent work unit) values and adjusted accordingly. The servers assign the resulting adjusted point values to the member (and team) for each of the returned work units. This process eliminates the ability for malicious users to tamper with results and artificially claim higher points for their work.

What is validation?

World Community Grid is a volunteer computing grid. This means that work is being sent to computing devices that are outside the control of World Community Grid. Most devices that perform this work are reliable. However, there are a few devices that are not reliable due to things such as users over-clocking their machines, memory errors, disk errors, CPU errors or viruses being present. This means that the results returned need to be validated to make sure that they represent the correct answer.

We perform three different types of validation at World Community Grid:
 

• Redundant Computations: In this type of validation, two copies of the work unit are sent to members devices. Once both results are returned, they are compared to ensure that the results are identical. If they are, then the result is accepted. If they are not identical, then additional copies are sent until several devices agree on what the result should be. This policy establishes a very high level of confidence in the reliability of the results. Mapping Cancer Markers and Uncovering Genome Mysteries are examples of projects that use this technique.
• Single Validation - Type 1: In this type of validation, only one copy of a work unit will be sent to a device if the device is "trusted", that is, if it has been participating long enough and returning good results. If the device is not trusted, then it will still be assigned the work unit, but a second copy will be sent to another device and the rules for redundant computation above apply. As a precaution, the research code computes certain items that allow us to quickly check on the server if the computation is likely to have finished correctly. Additionally, trusted devices are randomly sampled to have their results double-checked. These techniques provide a very high level of confidence in the reliability of the results. FightAIDS@Home and Outsmart Ebola Together are examples of projects that have used this technique.
• Single Validation - Type 2: This is similar to Single Validation - Type 1 except that due to the fact that different results are generated each time the work unit is run (due to the research techniques applied in the application), we send out many copies of each work unit. We currently do not have any research projects utilizing this technique.

Why is protein structure prediction so difficult?

Two factors that make protein structure prediction challenging are the nature of the energy functions, and the vast search space.

The environment of a protein is populated with many other atoms and molecules. If the program were simulating a process that happened in vacuo or even in a non-polar solvent (instead of the aqueous environment of the cytoplasm) it would be much easier. The presence of polar and polarizable solvent molecules make accurate calculation of electrostatic forces extremely difficult. In addition, the main "force" in protein folding is the hydrophobic effect. This arises from the interactions between atoms within the protein, their interactions with the solvent atoms and the interactions between the solvent atoms. In simulations such as Protinfo, Human Proteome Folding, and Rosetta@Home, the effect of these solvent dependent interactions is approximated in the statistical energies. The development of better solvent models and simulations is another active area of research that will eventually address these problems.

The other limiting factor is the number of possible structures, or conformations, that need to be sampled for a protein. Even with a completely accurate energy function, there is still a need to sample the possible conformations finely enough to find the right one. Not only is the number of possible conformations huge (see Levinthal paradox), it is made even more difficult by the extremely complicated energy landscape. Most of the usual global optimization techniques that could be used with a well behaved function will fail when applied to protein folding. Luckily, of the two problems, this is probably the lesser. With increased CPU power and improved sampling techniques generally some accurate structures are usually generated - but without the completely accurate energy function we are not always able to identify them.