There’s some news on the SMP client front. First, we’ve moved our OSX and Linux clients to a non-beta designation, reflecting the maturity of those clients. We expect those clients to run reasonably well. The Windows/SMP client is not there yet, but we have been continuing to work on it and improve it.
Right now, we are making available two Win/SMP clients. The primary one (6.22) is on our download page ( https://foldingathome.org/English/DownloadWinOther ). People have reported issues with 6.22, so we have made 5.91/5.92 available with an extended expiration as well ( http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4369 ).
With
the public beta release of the v6.22 SMP client, we encourage all our
beta users to upgrade to that client. However, since the 5.91/5.92 beta
expiration date is rapidly approaching, we have decided to extend those
clients to allow users more time to upgrade (and to give us a little
more time to work out the issues that invariably come up during public
beta testing).
It’s worth reminding people that these Windows/SMP clients are still very experimental, hence the reason for the expiration and extra points one gets. If you would like a “set it and forget it” client, this client is not for you (please check out our classic client in that case), and one should expect that the Win/SMP client will take a lot of extra work to run. See the discussion at the top of our download page ( https://foldingathome.org/English/DownloadWinOther ) and SMP FAQ for more details.
We’re working to improve the Win/SMP client and get it released non-beta like the OSX and Linux clients and hopefully we’ll get there soon. An important part of this open beta is the beta testing reports we’ve gotten from people. Please post them in our forum (http://foldingforum.org).
PS Here’s the info from our download page on the nature of these clients
High Performance clients. In addition to the
clients that run in the background on typical computers, we also offer
high performance clients, such as the GPU and SMP clients. These
clients use more system resources, but are also much more productive.
Please consider the use of these clients carefully. See the respective
GPU, GPU2, SMP, and PS3 FAQs for more information.
Beta clients. We often release
clients early for donors to beta test. These beta versions likely have
some rough edges, but we expect that they should work reasonably well
for all donors. See the respective installation instructions for more
details of known bugs for each of the beta versions.
As in the use of any beta software, please
make sure to back up your hard drive before installing. DO NOT not run
a beta client if you or your machines cannot tolerate even the
slightest instability or problems. Beta clients and servers performance
may vary significantly from standard FAH clients during the development
process, including but not limited to work unit shortages, server
downtime for upgrades, short notice for client upgrades, and Points Per
Day that differs a little or a lot from the developmental benchmark
level.
Finally, note that while the points per day for these
clients are higher than the classic client, they can require a lot more
maintenance due to their experimental or beta nature. If you would
prefer to have a client which runs as smoothly as possible, we suggest
you run our main client, not a high performance client. If you run a
high performance client, expect a much more complex experience and much
more work to keep the client running (which is compensated by extra
points per day).