Talk:SMP client

From FaHWiki

The way this page is currently setup, it jumps in head first to technical details that most people don't care about.

The initial section it titled General, but it not general in nature. It's rather specific.

There should be an "intro" or "history of" section first. As in...

In the first 5 versions of the fah client, SMP (and say what SMP is) support for the fah client was handled by running multiple instances of the CPU client...

Then say something like, but at this date, the project added SMP support and started beta testing...

Then a general info section works.

Then swap section 2 and section 3. It makes more sense to have section 3 come first. If the OS you are currently running isn't supported by the new SMP client, then most people will stop reading the rest of the page. No need to go in to technical details after that unless you are actually running an OS that supports this client.

and "howtos" is more correctly changed to "How Tos"

And I thought the FAQs usually go at the bottom of the page, like the See Also section.

Just some suggested changes. I didn't change anything because I see other people have spent a lot of time on this page.

-7im

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If you want to change the page layout (order of sections) for this page, you also need to do it for the other client pages: GPU_client, CPU_client, PS3_client. As they all use the same layout for consistency, and this consistency must stay.

I have implemented this layout after Uncle_Fungus posted on the FAH Wiki Mailinglist about cleaning up the FAQ & HOWTOs for the new clients, see:

http://groups.google.com/group/FoldingHome-Wiki/browse_thread/thread/824ff08eddd5e281

Nobody complained about the layout, so I'm hesitant to change it now. I'd rather have more discussion on the Mailinglist first.

Swapping the order of section 2 and 3 I don't mind much, the SMP Client Specific Applications section only exists on this SMP client page, and not on the other *_client pages. But the consistency of the sections with the other *_client pages must be kept.

With respect to the actual content of the SMP_client page, I agree that it is not optimal.

When the client was released we didn't know anything about it, so we couldn't say much about it other than that it was availble.

Only after the thread on the Team Mac OS X forum in which we dug into the network reset problem on OSX could we say more. There we found out about the use of MPICH2, its documentation, etc.

The only useful place to put it was on this SMP_client page so it would have some content.

Feel free to improve the content.

All my pages open with a General section to cover the basic info, and other sections to cover more specific issues. The current content of the General section could go to a 'Technical' section or something similar, and have more generic info in the General section.

If you want to rename Howtos to How Tos, HOWTOs, How tos, or something else. Let's get consensus on which to use first, and implement it everywhere. But I feel it's like Folding@Home, Folding@home and folding@home. It's fine by me to mix and match the case, use which ever you like. But if you're going to change it on this page: also change it on all the other to preserve the consistency.

I'd rather have these FAQ sections high up, because these are references to the only official documentation on these clients. So for more/other information people should check those first.

More discussion required.

-- Smoking2000