Foldit is eating Mac's cpu at close to 90%

Started by auntdeen

infjamc Lv 1

In that case, would it be possible to have the option of using less than the maximum number of cores available in the game itself (as opposed to using the task manager, etc.)?

auntdeen Lv 1

I strongly suspect there is a bug.

I just had another system hang on puzzle 610. Client had protein dragged off screen, GIU hidden, and was minimized. It was fine for a couple hours then hung the system with this from the log.txt:

Autosaved puzzles/0000993271/0000099169/default/autosave.ir_solution.
Autosaved puzzles/0000993271/0000099169/default/autosave-best.ir_solution.
Autosaved puzzles/0000993271/0000099169/default/autosave-recentbest.ir_solution.
Autosaved puzzles/0000993271/0000099169/default/autosave-creditbest.ir_solution.
core.scoring.NeighborList: Minimization stats: 39 score/deriv cals, 10 narrow-from-wide updates, 1 full updates.
delta_score: -237.292
Playing sound: 3
Tool on_action_complete called
Tool on_action_complete called
Tool on_action_complete called
Error reading upload_tmp_988948_1291658941.ir_solution; expected SOLN, got ion:.

That is the end of the log.txt - nothing follows that line.

I had another hang earlier today on puzzle 607 but didn't grab the log.txt.

The only other things running on my computer with both hangs were Colloquy (external irc client) and FireFox (nothing with graphics or javascript or flash or anything graphical running).

I really wish that you all hadn't moved us all to the one true client. I had always backed clients up and dated them before you did that so I could roll back for comparisons. Today I wish that I had an older client kicking around - at least I'd be able to fold even if I couldn't score.

tamirh Lv 1

The short answer again I'm afraid is no…

We use threads for a few reasons. The main being we want two or more things to happen concurrently. This means the when you are uploading the puzzle to our servers your screen doesn't freeze. When you are wiggling, you are still able to view the protein.

It is the job of the operating system to distribute this work onto one or more cores. The OS usually tries to split jobs across many cores for a lot of reasons, the best one being it just makes everything run faster and programs will seem more interactive.

tamirh Lv 1

Thanks for narrowing down the issue. This does seem like it's a bug separate from the 'excessive cpu usage' thing. I'll look into this and see if I can see what's up.

tamirh Lv 1

There are two reasons I can think of for this:

1) Not all work is created equally when it comes to circuits. I can max out my CPU by having a tight loop that does nothing but just goes on forever. While it will technically max out a CPU, the heat output will be much lower than 'real' work where more pathways on the core are actually being touched every instruction.

2) Foldit is a 3D video game that engages your GPU as well. While it's no Crysis and won't tax your video card to the max, the GPU can still output quite a bit of heat. If you have a dedicated video card on your laptop, they can run very hot.

On my personal laptop, I can run programs that max out my CPU and it will just get warm. If I play a game that taxes my video card, it gets blazingly hot (and if I haven't cleaned the fan or the vents are covered at all it will shut down to prevent heat damage).