The race is on
Diggory and I are continuing our heated battle in Folding@Home. As of this morning we are neck-and-neck, with equal work units completed. For some reason, though, I have a slight lead in points, which is pleasant but makes absolutely no sense.
(Nerd alert:) Work units, according to Wikipedia, are the packets of data that F@H downloads to work on (and yes, I know that sentence isn’t grammatically correct). They come in different sizes; the PS3 processes work units that are 150,000 or 300,000, while Diggory has downloaded work units that are as large as 10,000,000 on his PC. (/Nerd alert)
I have no idea what the numbers actually refer to, so don’t ask.
The point is, you would think that if I completed a work unit that was 150,000… whatevers… in size, and Diggory completed one that was 1,500,000 in size, Diggory would get ten times the points.
To my simultaneous glee and consternation, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Diggory’s PC is grinding its way through absolutely enormous… things. I think it’s actually simulating the birth of the universe at this point. It will churn on these calculations for days, grunting masculinely with the exertion. But when it loads them back to the server, they still count as one work unit and only a slight advantage in points.
At this rate, my lowly PS3-and-wheezing-laptop combination just might be able to keep pace with Diggory’s shining arsenal of protein-folding doom.
[...] whupping has begun. Diggory, who was initially slow off the blocks and pateintly biding his time in our Folding@Home [...]