Search Results for: what are my points good for
If I change my username, will I lose my points?
No, changing your member name will not affect your points or any other contribution that you've made to World Community Grid.
How do I calculate my FLOPS (Floating Point Operations Per Second) based off my World Community Grid points?
BOINC provides a reference about credit and its relation to FLOPS here. However, you should know that seven (7) World Community Grid points are equal to one (1) BOINC credit.
Therefore, your total World Community Grid points divided by 700 gives you the number of GigaFLOPs and your World Community Grid points divided by 700,000 gives you the number of TeraFLOPs.
What are points?
Your device's contribution is shown in three measures: points, total run time and results returned. The term points is simply used as a way of measuring the amount of computation your device has contributed. For instance, if your device works for three days on one work unit, or in those same three days completes five work units, you will accumulate the same number of points assuming that your device worked at about the same level of effort in each scenario.
How are Team Points and Personal Points Distributed?
Points that you earn are only credited to a team if they are earned while you are a member of that team. Additionally, if you quit a team or join another team, then the points that you earned for your previous team will stay with that team. You cannot transfer credit you previously earned to a new team.
Any points you earn whether you are on a team or not will always show up under your personal statistics.
You can view the points that you have earned for different teams at the bottom of your My Contribution page.
What other technological applications will be relevant to this project?
Another technological application that will spawn from this project is the study of molecular electronics, where molecules are used for building electronic components. A good organic semiconductor for solar cells would also be good for potential applications in molecular electronics such as transistors. This means that The Clean Energy Project (CEP) has a potential to extend Moore's Law.
The CEP also plans to host a range of other calculations for cleaner energy capture and storage such as solar concentrator and polymer fuel cell. It is only with your help that researchers will be able to pursue these pure and applied directions of research.
Why don't my statistics show up on the web site?
Your results are not counted until they are validated. You may read about result validation here.
Also, World Community Grid points and statistics are updated twice a day. This occurs at 00:00 and 12:00 UTC. This includes all statistics on World Community Grid except for Team Statistics.
Team Statistics are updated once a day at 00:00 UTC
Why did my device stop processing a research task? And what is a trickle down message?
Using the information your device intermittently sends to us during the processing of a research task, we determine the likelihood of your device finishing the task before the completion deadline. If we determine that you are very likely to miss that deadline or you have already missed the deadline, we would send your device a trickle down message to instruct it to stop working on that research task and we then pass it along on to another volunteer.
There are two types of trickle down messages:
- Soft stop: Instruction for your device to continue until the next milestone before stopping the computation of the current research task. This happens when your device is not making sufficient progress on the current calculation. We would then hand over your partial result to another volunteer to continue working on.
- Hard stop: Instruction for your device to stop working on the current research task immediately. This happens when you have already passed the processing deadline without sending in the final full result or that there may be a communication error in sending us your progress. In this case, we would hand over the research task from the point of your last intermediate milestone to another volunteer to resume working on.
In either case, you will be awarded credit for the work you completed up to the point of the last checkpoint.
This mechanism allows work to be completed quicker and for the researchers to receive valuable results sooner.
What is a Team Challenge?
A Team Challenge is essentially a competition between teams to see which team can return the most results, or generate the most points or run time in a given time period. A Team Challenge can be open to all teams on World Community Grid, or limited to only teams invited by the challenge creator.
How do I create a Team Challenge?
As the captain of a team, you may create as many Team Challenges as you want; the only requirement is that they have different names so members can tell them apart from other Team Challenges.
To create a Team Challenge, go to My Contribution and click on My Team in the lefthand navigation. Just under the Team Information, you'll see the Team Control Panel with an Issue Team Challenge button. Click the button to be taken to the Issue Team Challenge page.
Once on the Issue Team Challenge page, you start by picking a name for your Team Challenge. After that, decide if you want your Team Challenge to be open to all teams, or if you want to choose which teams to invite. If you want an Open Challenge, check the box next to "Open Challenge?"
Next up, pick the dates for your Team Challenge. The Start Date must be at least one day in the future, but not more than 30 days away. The End Date must be at least one day after the Start Date, but not more than 180 days after the Start Date.
Once you've chosen the dates, select what type of Team Challenge you'd like. The choices are Points, Run Time, and Results Returned, or an Increase in one of Points, Run Time, or Results Returned. For more in the "increase" challenges, read this FAQ.
Next choose whether or not you want to allow Late Joiners; that is, allow teams to join the challenge after the Start Date. This applies to teams that are invited as well as for Open challenges. Teams that join a challenge after the Start Date will only receive credit for statistics after they join the challenge.
Last but not least, you may invite other teams to participate in your Team Challenge. You may invite teams even if your are issuing an Open Challenge. If you are issuing a Closed Challenge you must invite at least one team.
To invite teams, just search for the name of the team you want to invite, and click the link to "Invite This Team." For more general searches, only the first 25 teams are returned. If this happens, try being a little more specific in your search.
Why is my computer not getting as many work units for the Africa Rainfall Project as I want?
Due to the large file sizes of the input and output for this project, the number of tasks sent out per day will be much less than typical projects. For launch, we started out slow, and while the total number of tasks sent out per day may increase some as we get further in to the project, at this point we anticipate those increases to be minimal.
Why is my device uploading result data (intermediate upload files) while a research task is still in progress?
We are using a mechanism called intermediate uploads whereby at certain processing milestones, your device would send us back partial results for the research task your device is currently working on. This allows us to validate the work you have completed up to that point and helps the researchers examine and interpret the results being returned by the volunteers.
How is my individual member rank calculated?
A member may see their individual stats on their My Contribution page for run time, points, and results returned. Your individual rank is based on the total number of members that have returned a result. You may see how many members there currently are on the Global Statistics page.
How is my team rank calculated?
A member may see their team stats on their My Team page for run time, points, and results returned. Your team rank is based on the total number of teams that have returned a result. You may see how many teams there currently are on the Team Statistics page.
What ports do I have to open on my firewall to let the software connect to the server?
Open ports 80, 443 and 31416 outbound.
How are points used?
The calculation of Points is the method World Community Grid uses to measure your contribution to individual research projects running on World Community Grid. Points are one method for competitive comparison on the stats pages.
Why are points on the agent and the web different?
World Community Grid in the past ran two types of agents. A United Devices (UD Windows) agent and a BOINC (Windows/Linux/Mac) agent. Today, World Community Grid only runs the BOINC agent. Points contributed by both of the agents will be part of a member's total on the website. However, only points contributed by BOINC agents will be shown on the BOINC agents. The points previously earned by a UD agent only appear on the website. Additionally, due to differences in how the agents computed points, BOINC points are multiplied by 7 when they are imported into the website. Thus if you earned 5 BOINC points, you will see 35 website points.
What kinds of actions might be taken?
There are various methods that can be adopted to reduce nutrient and sediment loads reaching the Bay. These are collectively known as “Best Management Practices (BMPs).” For example, farms can leave buffer areas between planted fields and bordering streams. They can minimize their use of fertilizers, plant cover crops in the winter (to absorb excess nutrients), and provide for the proper removal of animal waste. Municipalities can provide for separate storm water runoff systems and increase the frequency of street cleaning. Even individuals can affect change through household practices (reducing lawn fertilization, planting trees and shrubs) and limiting automobile driving. These types of actions are called non-point sources because they collectively contribute to the nutrient and sediment problem but are not individually measurable. Manufacturing, power generation, and other industrial contributors are point sources and these are regulated through existing policy and laws.
In Advanced View, on the BOINC Manager, under Statistics, what do the figures on the y-axis represent?
The figures represent BOINC credits. A BOINC credit is equal to 7 Points on our website. Additional information on the BOINC Manager - Advanced view may be found here.
What is a World Community Grid team?
Once you register with World Community Grid, you have the option to join an existing team, or create a new team. (Please note: to create a new team you are required to have a username.)
When you are on a team, you may compete with other teams for total run time, points, and results returned. Joining a team does not affect your individual member statistics.
What is a trickle up message?
A trickle up message is when your device sends a message back to World Community Grid at certain processing milestones to inform us that you’re still making progress on the current research task. Along with intermediate results sent to us by your device, we use this information to:
- Validate your work up to that point and grant credit accordingly;
- Determine whether sufficient progress is being made by your device or whether the task should be handed over to another volunteer.
How does a molecular dynamics simulation work?
Newton wrote down simple equations of motion to describe how balls fly through the air or apples fall. The world of atoms and molecules is subject to quantum mechanics, which is a good deal more complex than classical Newtonian mechanics. Yet it turns out that by making certain approximations and simplifications, it is possible to simulate the molecular world by letting large numbers of atoms or molecules interact according to Newton’s laws.
So the idea of a molecular dynamics simulation is to let things evolve using a computer program which can track every detail of what happens to each molecule over time as it is buffeted by all the surrounding ones. But to get a statistically meaningful picture from such simulations it usually requires repeating the simulations thousands or even millions of times with slightly different starting conditions. It is this computational challenge that this project addresses, by getting volunteers to provide more than a thousand times the computing power that a typical research group would have access.
What will World Community Grid's calculations produce?
The calculations done on World Community Grid will predict which small molecule compound, out of the millions contained in our library database, should be tested for their ability to inhibit the flavivirus protease. This is a major step towards our ultimate goal of discovering new drugs to stop flavivirus infections.
Phase 1 of this project will predict how each small molecule might bind to the active site of the viral protease. This phase also produces preliminary "energies" that coarsely rank the strength of the intermolecular interactions between the compound and viral protease.
Phase 2 will accurately predict free energies of binding between each compound and the viral protease. This calculation utilizes the binding orientations calculated in phase 1. Due to computation time required for each free energy of binding calculation, only compounds with "good" scores from phase1 will be selected for phase 2 calculations.
As analogy, phase 1 will tell us how two people might hold hands, whereas phase 2 will tell us whether or not they want to hold hands.
Right now, this project is looking for potential treatments for COVID-19. Will there be future phases of the project?
There's a good possibility that OpenPandemics may have additional phases. From what scientists have learned from past outbreaks, they expect pandemics caused by newly emerging pathogens to become more and more common. That's why the project is being designed to be rapidly deployed to fight future diseases–ideally before they reach a critical stage.
In order to help address future pandemics, researchers need access to swift and effective tools which can be deployed very early, as soon as a threatening disease is identified. Using the knowledge and data from looking for potential COVID-19 treatments, the researchers plan to create a software infrastructure to streamline the computational research process of finding potential treatments for other diseases. And, in keeping with World Community Grid's open data policy, they'll make their findings and these tools freely available to the scientific community.
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 do the Mapping Cancer Markers project graphics show?
While your computer carries out work for the Mapping Cancer Markers project, you may see the project’s graphics either on the World Community Grid screensaver, or within the World Community Grid software.
The graphics show a representation of the 23 pairs of human chromosomes in the right hand panel. Each chromosome is a DNA molecule containing genes and other information. The 23rd chromosome pair determines sex and comprises two “X” chromosomes for females or an “X” with a “Y” chromosomes for males. Genes are located at specific points along the length of these chromosomes. As your device analyzes certain combinations of genes, the approximate locations of those sets of genes within these chromosomes are highlighted in red.
When are points and statistics updated?
World Community Grid points and statistics are updated twice a day. This occurs at 00:00 and 12:00 UTC. This includes all statistics on World Community Grid except for Team Statistics.
Team Statistics are updated once a day at 00:00 UTC.
What is my BOINC account key and where do I find it?
The BOINC Account key is a unique identifier that is used by the BOINC client and the BOINC server to uniquely identify you and the devices registered under your member name. You may find your BOINC account key on your My Profile page.
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 are points not updated even though new work units have been downloaded?
Points are awarded for results when they have been successfully processed on your device. They are awarded after they have been returned to our servers and successfully passed validation. You may learn more about validation here. If you want to check the status of your result(s), you may view your results status page. Additionally, point totals are only updated on the website twice a day, so there can be up to a 12 hour delay between when your result is validated and the points appear on our website.
How do I contact my team members?
Team captains may e-mail (email) the members of their team and team members may send e-mails to their team captain. To use this feature, just go to your team page and click the "e-mail team" or "e-mail captain" button.
Team e-mails will be sent to any member of the team who has opted-in to receive the e-mails. If there are no members opted-in, there is a warning message for the captain, and there is no button to send the e-mail. The same applies in reverse if the captain has not opted-in.
To opt-in to team e-mails, you may go to My Profile and select the option to receive team e-mails. You will also see that you can enter in an alternate email address that is used only for team emails.
Some teams have a URL pointing to their site where they have created a special forum for team members to chat. As an alternative, you might go to the World Community Grid forums by selecting Forums from the global navigation bar. The forums contain Team forums expressly for team activity. You might consider reaching out to other members from your team in one of these forums.
We recommend that you do not divulge any private information in the forums as they are public forums.
What will World Community Grid's calculations produce?
The calculations done on World Community Grid will predict which small molecule compounds, out of the millions contained in a library database, should be tested for their ability to inhibit the flavivirus protease. This is a major step towards the ultimate goal of discovering new drugs to stop flavivirus infections.
Phase 1 of this project predicted how each small drug molecule might bind to the active site of the viral protease. This phase also produced preliminary "energies" that coarsely rank the strength of the intermolecular interactions between the compounds and viral protease.
Phase 2 will accurately predict free energies of binding between each drug compound and the viral protease. This calculation utilizes the binding orientations calculated in Phase 1. Due to computation time required for each free energy of binding calculation, only compounds with "good" scores from Phase 1 will be selected for Phase 2 calculations.
As an analogy, Phase 1 will tell us how two people might hold hands, whereas Phase 2 will tell us whether or not they want to hold hands.
Phase 2 of our project is designed to reduce the number of Phase 1 false positives (i.e., dead ends) that are tested in our laboratory. Phase 2 will take several thousand Phase 1 hits, run each hit through computationally demanding free energy calculations, and remove many of the false positives from the hit list. Phase 2 is expected to produce an updated list of hits that contains ~80% true positives. Testing Phase 2 hits in the laboratory will be much more productive, efficient, and rewarding than testing Phase 1 hits. For instance, to find 25 small molecules that stop dengue virus replication in the laboratory, we would need to synthesize and test either 250-500 Phase 1 hits or ~30 Phase 2 hits.
What if my computer stutters while World Community Grid is using my GPU?
Due to the nature of running research applications, it is possible that running World Community Grid on your GPU while you are using your computer could interfere with the normal use of the device. If you encounter this, then we suggest that you try the option to only allow World Community Grid to use your GPU when you are not actively using your computer. This option is available on the Device Profile page under the custom options section. This option is labeled "Do work on my graphics card while computer is in use?". Select "No" and save.
This sounds too good to be true. Am I missing something?
Everything benefits! Members who volunteer their unused processing power benefit by not only making their devices more productive, but also by helping make scientific inroads on humanitarian problems. Research organizations benefit by having access to huge amounts of computing power at no cost, enabling them to make more effective use of critical funds. The scientific community benefits because the project results are shared and made available in the public domain. The world benefits because humanitarian research is advanced.
Plan Ahead for Team Challenges!
It's a good idea to make the Start Date of your Team Challenge at least a week in the future so that other teams will have a chance to join your challenge before it starts. Remember, after the Start Date, no teams may join your challenge, unless you opt to allow Late Joiners, so try to give the other team captains adequate time to get in!
Why rice?
Rice, maize and wheat are the three main cereal grains in the world, accounting for 43% of the world's food calories. The rice genome is the only cereal genome that has been sequenced. While the rice genome is different from the human and other mammalian genomes, it is a good model for the other cereal grains. Lessons learned about how the functions and interactions of rice genes interact are likely to be useful in understanding the genetics and biology of other major crops.
How are project updates created?
We work closely with each research team to create project updates. Since the scientists are detail-oriented and want to provide good updates for the volunteers, they often take a few weeks to create just the first draft of updates.
World Community Grid generally adds any explanation or background to the updates to make them easier for the general public to understand, which can take additional time. Also, we often work with the scientists to create graphics, videos, presentations, or to find photos for the updates.
How do I find out what type of GPU is installed in my computer?
To see which GPUs BOINC recognizes on your computer, please view the top lines of your Event Log by following these instructions:
- Open the World Community Grid/BOINC Manager software application.
- From the top main menu, select Tools and then Event Log and scroll to the top.
If your computer has been on for a long time, restarting it will allow you to view the top of the event log more easily.
My team page contains the words "BOINC Team ID." What does that mean?
World Community Grid has members who participate through BOINC. On BOINC, these members have a layer of team statistics as they are able to participate in multiple distributed computing projects. BOINC Team ID" refers to an identifier found on the BOINC site for this purpose (http://www.boincstats.com/). For more information about BOINC, please go to the Help facility and search on BOINC.
I tried to recover my password via email but did not receive it. What is wrong?
The most common reason for this happening is that the email address in your profile is not correct. When registering, you were asked to provide an email address and you may have mistyped your email address, or your email address may have changed since then. If the email address is incorrect, and you no longer have access to the old email address, please use the Contact Us form to receive additional assistance.
The software installer keeps giving me an error and asks me to check my Proxy settings.
You need to be connected to the Internet at the start to have the agent connect to the server to get work. Check to see if you can get to some web page with your browser. If your Internet connection is working, it might be that you have a software firewall which is blocking access to the www.worldcommunitygrid.org site. If you have one, try turning it off temporarily and see what happens. If it starts working, then add the www.worldcommunitygrid.org address as a trusted site to your firewall.
How do I create a new team?
Your personal World Community Grid account must have a username before you can create a team. Please go here for instructions on how to create a username.
Go to the home page and sign in. From the My Contribution page, select My Team from the left navigation menu, then select Create a New Team from the left navigation menu. Follow the instructions on the page for adding a team and then select save.
Please familiarize yourself with what the World Community Grid considers objectionable before creating a new team.
Why are my work units failing with exit code 233 “ERROR: Kernel execution time estimate too high, exiting”?
At the beginning of each work unit run on your graphics card, a small portion of the workload is run to estimate the execution time of a single kernel execution on the graphics card. If this estimate is too high, the application will exit to reduce the risk of Windows restarting the display driver due to the Timeout Detection and Recovery feature of Windows. If this occurs, the above error message will be written to the stderr log. If this occurs multiple times, it is likely the graphics card is not capable of running the project. Please refer to the "What graphics cards are not able to participate in the Help Conquer Cancer research project?"FAQ for a list of graphics cards which are not supported.
If it occurs occasionally but not on every execution, it could be that other graphics intensive work is interfering. We recommend that you set your preferences to not allow World Community Grid to run while you are actively utilizing your computer. This option is available on the Device Profile page under the custom options section. This option is labeled "Do work on my graphics card while computer is in use?". Select "no" and save.
How soon is a new influenza drug going to be available?
In just several weeks, we will start identifying candidates for laboratory examination from the analysis on World Community Grid. It will then take anywhere from a few months to years to complete the entire process of distributing new drugs. During this time, when good candidates are found, they will proceed to laboratory testing phases. These ultimately lead to clinical trials and hopefully a drug available for use. The entire process can take years depending on the details and any problems encountered. Thus, we do not know how long it will really take nor when and if suitable candidates will be found.
However, we do know that the process of searching for drug candidates among the millions of potential compounds can be greatly accelerated using World Community Grid, compared to using conventional laboratory work or the limited resources typically available to the researchers.
How do I configure my settings so that World Community Grid uses my device's GPU?
By default, World Community Grid will not use your device's GPUs. To allow World Community Grid to use your GPUs:
- Go to Device Profiles and select the relevant profile. (If you're not sure which profile relates to the device on which you want to run GPU work, refer to your Device Manager list).
- Ensure that the selected device profile is a Custom Profile.
- Scroll through the Advanced Options to the 'Graphics Card Usage' section.
-
In order to get GPU work, select "Yes" for the type of GPU card (AMD/ATI, Intel or NVIDIA) you wish World Community Grid to use. You can set all three types (AMD/ATI, Intel, NVIDIA) as "Yes" if you do not know what card you have or wish to run GPU work on all cards available in a computer.
Another option is "Do work on my graphics card while computer is in use?". This is an advanced option and is set to "No" by default, as in some cases choosing "Yes" can cause the device performance to appear sluggish while the GPU is used for mouse movements and other system operations.
HPF1 vs. HPF2: Res-res pair score
The pair score in HPF2 is like the pair score in HPF1, but HPF2-pair score takes the position of Rotamers (a way of efficiently representing all side chain atoms) instead of centroid positions (representing the amino acid as a blurred out single point). So think of the HPF2 pair score as a all-atom version of the HPF1 pair score (appropriately re parameterized, of course).
How might the data generated by OpenPandemics - COVID-19 be valuable to scientists?
The data generated during the project could represent ideal starting points for the design of new classes of drugs to target COVID-19 and other coronaviruses. Additionally, OpenPandemics - COVID-19 could build a model for the fast deployment of computational resources to help identify potential treatments during fast-spreading pandemics.
And because all data, tools, and processes that are developed through OpenPandemics - COVID-19 will be shared freely, the project can benefit the scientific community at large.
What is the Verification Code and what is it used for?
The Verification Code is a private, personal code that you can use to verify your team membership and team stats. There are teams that provide incentives and/or rewards to members for being a part of their team. World Community Grid is providing the Verification Code as a way for these teams to verify their members' statistics and team membership without requiring members to give the team their password.
Note that your Verification Code will change if you change your member name and/or password. If your team is relying on your verification code to verify your membership and statistics, be sure they have your current Verification Code.
To verify the team membership and statistics for a member, use the API:
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/verifyMember.do?name=MEMBERNAME&code=VERIFICATIONCODE
You must set your data sharing preferences to "Display my data" for this API to return data for your account.
You will get a response in XML containing the membership information for that member. If there is an error, it will be reported back in the XML response.
How may I change my team name, description, or URL?
Team name, description, and URL may only be changed by the team captain. To change this information, sign in to My Contribution, select My Team from the left menu. From the My Team page, select Edit. On the Edit Your Team page, make the changes and select Save.
Why does the software sometimes display with a piece of the screen missing?
The software requires an 800x600 screen to display properly. If the software's window is opened when the screen is resized (for instance if you begin playing a game that resizes the screen), windows may not properly "re-paint" the windows when the screen is re-sized back to its original setting. To fix this, minimize the software's window by clicking on the downward pointing triangle. Right click on the software's icon in the system tray (the section of the Start bar where the time is displayed) and choose exit. Open the software by clicking on [Start] [Programs] [World Community Grid] [World Community Grid Software].
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.
What happens if I check the box labeled 'Remember Me' when I sign into World Community Grid?
If you check the 'Remember Me' box when you sign into World Community Grid then you will be automatically signed into the website the next time that you visit from the same device. This means that you will not have to sign in again in order to access your My Contribution pages or post in the forums. You can have World Community Grid 'Remember' you on as many devices as you wish. If you wish World Community Grid to stop remembering you, then all you need to do is click on 'sign out' at the top right of our pages.
As a security precaution World Community Grid will not automatically sign you into the website if you have not accessed the website from a device for more than two weeks. Additionally, if you change your password, then World Community Grid will continue to remember you only on the device where you changed your password. However, next time you visit World Community Grid you can then check the 'Remember Me' box and World Community Grid will continue to remember you from that device.
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:
How may I tell how much my team is contributing?
There are two ways to do this:
- Go to the home page and sign in. On the My Contribution page, the team that you are a member of will be shown in the center of the page next to My Team. Select that link to view the team statistics.
- Click Here to search for a team. This section is listed under "Find a Team" in the My Contribution section, but will allow you to search through all the teams that have been created at World Community Grid.
What are Project and Recruitment Badges?
Project badges recognize the contribution that a member has made to a research project running on World Community Grid, and recruitment badges recognize the member's contribution to introducing new volunteers to World Community Grid. All available project badges may be viewed here and all available recruitment badges may be viewed here.
Badges appear on a member's My Contribution page and next to their name in the forums.
Project Badges: There are 11 levels of badges awarded based upon how much computing time a member has contributed to each project:
Recruitment Badges: There are 5 levels of badges awarded based on how many new people a member has recruited to World Community Grid:
Members receive credit towards recruitment badges when someone signs up for World Community Grid using that member's unique recruitment URL and begins contributing computing power. You can get your recruitment URL and see which members you've recruited on your My Contribution page.
Recruitment badges are different from project badges in that they must be maintained. Recruited members must actively contribute computing power (return a result at least every 30 days) to count towards a member's recruitment badge. If an inactive recruited member becomes active again, they will once again count towards the recruitment total of the member who introduced them to World Community Grid.
Can devices listed on my Device Manager page be deleted or merged?
Devices listed on your Device Manager page cannot be deleted or merged at this time.
How do I keep the software from running while my laptop is only using battery power?
The software is configured so that it will not run while your laptop is on battery power.
How do I set my preferences so that World Community Grid will use my GPU while I am actively using my computer?
Once you have allowed World Community Grid to use your GPU, we only use your GPU while you are not actively using your computer.
If you want World Community Grid to use your GPU at all times, you must manually enable this option by going to the Device Profile page under the Custom Options section. This option is labeled "Do work on my graphics card while computer is in use?". You may select either "Yes" or "No."
How is Protinfo different from other approaches?
Protein structure prediction is an active area of research, and no one method or methodology is "best" for all situations. The public success of projects like Folding@Home, POEM@Home, Human Proteome Folding, and Rosetta@Home are evidence of the interest in solving this computationally challenging problem. We wish to offer another approach that differs in certain subtle but significant ways that can provide complementary and competitive results.
Some approaches (like Folding@Home and POEM@Home) simulate the protein folding process as we believe it occurs in real life, where physical energies are minimized. Protinfo (like Human Proteome Folding and Rosetta@Home) uses a minimization of "statistical energies" to identify likely protein structures, but with a slightly different approach. Rather than relying on a single complex energy function, Protinfo uses a simple, easily evaluated function and chooses the best structures by following up with a set of more sophisticated functions. Another difference is that Protinfo uses a novel continuous sampling methodology that enables us to explore good structures more finely. The continuous sampling methodology incurs little memory overhead and evaluating our compact energy function is very fast. This allows Protinfo to run on almost any computer.
The Protinfo structure predictions have been ranked as some of the best by the Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction (CASP) competition since 1994. You can read more about Protinfo on the researchers' page about this project.
HPF1 vs. HPF2: Solvation - modeling the protein in water at higher resolution
Another major challenge with high-resolution methods is the difficulty of computing accurate potentials for atomic-detail protein modeling in solvent; with electrostatic and solvation terms being among the most difficult terms to accurately model. Full treatment of the free energy of a protein conformation (with correct treatment of dielectric screening) is not a problem with an efficient solution and the computational cost of full treatment of electrostatic free energy (by solving the Poisson-Boltzmann or linearized Poisson-Boltzmann equations for large numbers of conformations) is high. In spite of these difficulties several studies have shown that refinement of de novo structures with atomic-detail potentials can increase our ability to select and or generate near native structures. These methods can correctly select near native conformations from these ensembles and improve near native structures, but still rely heavily on the initial low-resolution search to produce an ensemble containing good starting structures (HPF2 like methods rely on initial search with HPF1 like methods) (Lee et al. 2001; Misura and Baker 2005; Tsai et al. 2003). Some recent examples of high res predictions are quite encouraging, and an emerging consensus in the field is that higher resolution de novo structure prediction (structure predictions with atomic detail representations of side chains) will begin to work if sampling is dramatically increased (thus the grid!). The solvation score is depicted in one of the three score panels in the HPF2 client.
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.