Request: Bare Bones Client

[eldiablo]

Could we get a windows text client without the animation?

[Jodie]

From the readme (You DID read the readme, right?) at:

http://www.distributedfolding.com/readmeclient.html

Quiet Mode
----------
To run the client in quiet mode (i.e. no output whatsoever to the terminal),
simply edit the foldit script (foldit.bat on Windows) and add "-qt" (without
the quotes) to the end of the line containing "foldtrajlite -f protein -n
native". This may be useful if you are, for example, starting jobs remotely.
You can then terminate jobs by removing foldtrajlite.lock or hitting the 'Q'
key (the latter works on Windows only however). It is recommended you select
"E-mail me when updates are available" on the logged-in page at
http://www.distributedfolding.org if you are running in quiet mode, or else
you won't be aware when a new update is required. Alternatively, see
non-interactive auto-update above. To check progress while in quiet mode, a
file called "progress.txt" will be written to the directory where the program
is installed so you can monitor its progress still. You may customize this
further by adding '-g ###' where ### is a number, to the foldit script.
This is how often (in number of structures) you want this progress.txt to
be updated, to avoid excessing disk writing. If you put '-g 0' this will
disable the progress.txt output altogether.

[eldiablo]

I don't want to kill all output to the terminal , I just don't want the ASCII graphics drawn.

[eldiablo]

Actually, if this wouldn't mean the distribution was significantly smaller, just adding an optional runtime switch to turn off the ascii art would do.

[Brian the Fist]

I see no reason why we should do this. The ASCII art uses essentially 0 resources.

[Scott Jensen]

WARNING: Computer moron entering discussion. It is recommended that all computer geeks take a handful of aspirin before reading further. You have been warned.

Howard,

What do you mean no resources are being taken up by the animation?! Something must be running them. Couldn't that resource be better used to do more crunching? Personally, I don't need to see the little animation and would instead prefer the client to do more crunching.

[Jodie]

Notice the "essentially 0" disclaimer.

Depending upon how well optimized the display code is you could actually do it in six instructions on an x86 processor. Understand that we're talking about processors now doing close to a billion instructions/sec. (or more!) I know my older AMDs are reporting around 1200BogoMIPS last I bothered to look... "Million instructions per second" is a poor performance measure (hence: Meaningless Indicies of Performing Speed), however for this discussion it's fine.

Most likely, the display routine isn't hand-optimized assembler requiring a couple of assignments and a call to int 21. Even if it were a near-worst-case scenario - a system call to sprintf, you're looking at around 22 instructions (gcc 2.95) per draw. And we're making what, sub-100 redraws per iteration? And let's say that your machine is SCREAMINGLY fast at everything but screen draw. And each iteration takes one second. 2200 redraws/sec. versus a billion instructions/sec.

.00000022% of the task, in this example case, going to redraw.

Ok, let's say I'm off by - oh, a factor of 10,000. You have a 500MIP machine, and the compiler stinks and takes double the number of instructions, and you have a slow bus to the video card and it's really several hundred redraws, and... We're still talking .0022% of the processing power of the machine.

We could get anal here and talk about number of clocks/instruction, and thread preemption model of displaying the text, and the switch time betwixt them - but without profiling I'd guess we're probably in the neighborhood of, oh, ZERO percent of the total task is spent in accomplishing this little feat. And if a few hundred thousandths of a percent makes a difference to you - run it in quiet mode. See, Howard's team thought of everything!

Prehaps Howard should be more accurate next time:

"It's a non-zero number so approaching zero as to be indistinguishable from zero to the casual observer, or to even the careful observer who only considers three or four significant positions in accuracy."


If his team is going to start profiling and optimizing, I'd imagine the core would be where I'd like the see the effort spent - as it's clearly the Lion's Share of the required umph.


Clear as mud?

[eldiablo]

Gee, what a warm response...

[pointwood]

I absolutely love that explanation! :cool

Originally posted by Jodie
See, Howard's team thought of everything!

Not quite - I don't remember getting any medal or even a congratulation when I had generated my first million structures

[Shaktai]

The sole exception is the OS-X version terminal running under the GUI. The terminal program itself steals 2-4% while running the terminal updates and animations.

Solution: run quiet mode (provides a noticable improvement) Running quiet mode (-qt) eliminates all terminal program demands on the CPU. Otherwise, even without the animations, the terminal program under GUI would still eat cycles.

or, better yet, log directly into console and eliminate all GUI overhead (if you are more geek inclined).

[MAD-ness]

I had always assumed that the -qt option was for *nix systems only. I have only heard "terminal" refer to CLI environments. Which makes me wonder now, what the heck I think DOS is? Anyways, brain-farts aside, I just decided to test the -qt option.

The CLI window is still created and kept open, but there is no output.

I guess this is what it says it does, but I just hadn't understood it correctly. I will stick with the service install (thank you very much), but this option should do just what was requested here.

(not that I didn't believe anyone, I just decided to test it out myself and am confirming that it does as stated).

BTW, Jodie, interesting diatribe. Between you and Scoofy, I might get accidentally get edumacated here sooner or later.

[1fast6]

heck, I'd be happy with a green blob icon in the tray if its running and a red blob icon if its not...