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ProfileDave Jackson
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Message 51013 - Posted: 22 Dec 2014, 9:55:58 UTC - in response to Message 51005.  

A couple of things to add, pending credit is not used by CPDN,which uses statistical analysis of results rather than a confirmation of a second computer getting the same result from a task. It is only there because the BOINC software demands it. Also CPDN does give less credit/cpu cycle than some other projects according to what I have read elsewhere on these boards. I don't know how much as my crunching for other projects has been minimal and only when CPDN has no work which has happened for a week or more at a time.

Despite what Les says and he knows a lot more about these things than I, my credit has increased on 18th, 19th and 20th of this month so not sure about the script not running unless somehow my CPDN beta credits are being added but not from main site?
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Les Bayliss
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Message 51017 - Posted: 22 Dec 2014, 19:58:18 UTC

Hi Marmot

I made a mistake earlier, forgetting that all my crunching for the past couple of week has been on the beta test site. Checking a few other users, all seems to be well.

So, it's your computer(s) that have the problem.
As you're talking about RAC, which is very ephemeral, perhaps you need to think differently on this project.
Each model type (i.e. the name of the 1st part of a model name), takes a different amount of time to run through a "unit of time". A good one to use is a model day, as this is what gets run over and over.
So, as your computer changes model type, the amount of time being spent slaving away to earn one credit will keep changing. This will then be reflected in the RAC. Which makes RAC a fairly useless measure of anything on this project.
Best to check the Granted credit column for each model a day or two after it's finished, and see if it now has credit.


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marmot

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Message 51018 - Posted: 22 Dec 2014, 21:20:26 UTC - in response to Message 51017.  
Last modified: 22 Dec 2014, 22:04:25 UTC


So, it's your computer(s) that have the problem.
As you're talking about RAC, which is very ephemeral, perhaps you need to think differently on this project.
Each model type (i.e. the name of the 1st part of a model name), takes a different amount of time to run through a "unit of time". A good one to use is a model day, as this is what gets run over and over.
So, as your computer changes model type, the amount of time being spent slaving away to earn one credit will keep changing. This will then be reflected in the RAC. Which makes RAC a fairly useless measure of anything on this project.
Best to check the Granted credit column for each model a day or two after it's finished, and see if it now has credit.

The i5 did toss a single WU out in error after 59,000 sec (irritating) but the rest of the WU from 2014, that were worked on by three machines, completed successfully and are granted. (The t7500 returned errors on every 2011 packet. Really should have checked in and figured THAT out, sorry.)
The i5-2430m is getting ~2350 credit a day on this project (calculated by granted credit/CPU time across 4 threads). Under Asteroids it was getting 6900 and the results for the t9300 (received 3800 per day and 6500 on Aster@H) and m620 are similarly lower than the Asteroids credit so there is a 0.3 to 0.6 reduction in credits received compared to Asteroids. Will need many more data points to get a better average figure.
These machines are heating the bedroom to 70 degrees and I chose the projects on importance to survival of the species. But a mystery is a mystery and credits are a matter of pride and competition amongst many users so my curiosity is satisfied.

EDIT: So CPDN does follow the cobblestone credit related in the Wiki (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Computation_credit) in it's trickle calculations?
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Les Bayliss
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Message 51019 - Posted: 22 Dec 2014, 22:27:02 UTC - in response to Message 51018.  

Credit when we started was based on that given by seti at the time, based on the amount of processor time involved. This hasn't changed.
I don't know how this relates to the Wiki, now or back then.

For each new model that gets tested, we try to adjust the credit to be the same as for existing models, for the time taken. There's a file on the server somewhere that the credit program uses to decide on how much per trickle for the model about to be added to that part of the credit run.


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marmot

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Message 51020 - Posted: 22 Dec 2014, 23:41:58 UTC - in response to Message 51019.  
Last modified: 22 Dec 2014, 23:56:30 UTC

I've opened up a can of worms and am choking on it now!

This appears http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/ClientSchedOctTen to be the controlling document on credit granting for the BOINC client.
There have been a few other proposals including:
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/CreditNew
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/CreditProposal
and some Fixed credit/reference-machine from Dr Anderson.

Supposedly SETI has moved to the CreditNew proposal.

There was a brief, heated debate in a thread about "Utopia Bitcoin not science project" http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thread.php?id=9473#54892 with people that have 400 cores calculating. Points were made on credit inflation from the ASIC's, how FLOP's benchmarks not being suitable for credit calculations and how Utopia seems to be essentially awarding BOINC credit
for money donated at the BOINC forums. I'm guessing that conversation was had at other cross platform and team forums.
With the prospect of users with huge number of cores looking to leave BOINC (likely to Stanford?) it seems a new generalized credit proposal was made:
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/CreditGeneralized

BOINC projects seem to be a bit like herding cats, so it will be interesting to see how many projects adopt some form of the new proposal.

EDIT:
This chart shows what the controversy is about.
Notice the inflation from July 2014 which, I assume, is stemming from Utopia.



Yes, certainly Utopia:

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Richard Haselgrove

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Message 51021 - Posted: 22 Dec 2014, 23:59:52 UTC - in response to Message 51020.  

Indeed, SETI has been running CreditNew since late May or early June 2010 - OctTen was a post facto rationalisation.

CreditNew produces a reasonable facsimile of the Cobblestone definition provided:

Projects supply a realistic <rsc_fpops_est> for their workunits.
Project applications use CPU FPUs only, and don't employ SSE, AVX or similar SIMD optimisations
Projects don't use GPUs or other specialist hardware
Projects don't introduce new applications and expect them to work normally (credit and runtime estimation) for the first few weeks
Project Administrators bind themselves to the mast and cover their ears to the siren voices calling "you're paying too little", and instead notice that nobody, ever, has posted "you're paying too much"

There are dark places I could point you to on the web where people talk about such matters, but then I'd probably have to kill you. It needs a degree in higher mathematics, an extraordinarily thick skin, and an endless supply of cool, damp towels to wrap around your fevered brow.
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marmot

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Message 51210 - Posted: 14 Jan 2015, 6:50:18 UTC - in response to Message 51021.  
Last modified: 14 Jan 2015, 6:50:51 UTC


"There are dark places I could point you to on the web where people talk about such matters, but then I'd probably have to kill you. It needs a degree in higher mathematics, an extraordinarily thick skin, and an endless supply of cool, damp towels to wrap around your fevered brow."


Are B.S. in physics and mathematics not high enough to peruse those dark places?
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Richard Haselgrove

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Message 51211 - Posted: 14 Jan 2015, 10:15:58 UTC - in response to Message 51210.  


"There are dark places I could point you to on the web where people talk about such matters, but then I'd probably have to kill you. It needs a degree in higher mathematics, an extraordinarily thick skin, and an endless supply of cool, damp towels to wrap around your fevered brow."

Are B.S. in physics and mathematics not high enough to peruse those dark places?

It looks like most of the existing combatants have retired hurt: Evaluation Of CreditNew

How good are you on PID controllers and Kalman filters?
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Frank Peiffer

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Message 51346 - Posted: 2 Feb 2015, 0:17:29 UTC

Hi all,

My computer recently finished five WU of "UK Met Office HadAM3P-HadRM3P Europe v7.23" with up to 0 credits and no errors. All other WU have given credits. Have I done something wrong? If my results are of nil value but not showing up as an error I wonder if I should not accept anymore work from the project as it is a waste of resources for the project. I don't mind not getting credits provided the results are valid and of use to the project.
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ProfileDave Jackson
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Message 51347 - Posted: 2 Feb 2015, 8:36:28 UTC - in response to Message 51346.  

Don't have much doubt that the results are valid. However I will post to moderators list hopefully before there is a flood of messages from outraged crunchers who do care about credits!
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Frank Peiffer

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Message 51348 - Posted: 2 Feb 2015, 9:11:01 UTC - in response to Message 51347.  

Thanks for that Dave. I have only recently re-joined the BOINC projects and am still a bit of an amateur.

Cheers FJP
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Richard Haselgrove

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Message 51350 - Posted: 2 Feb 2015, 11:14:53 UTC - in response to Message 51348.  

Thanks for that Dave. I have only recently re-joined the BOINC projects and am still a bit of an amateur.

Cheers FJP

But it turned out to be a very useful report. See the staff response at

http://climateapps2.oerc.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/forum_thread.php?id=8015#51349
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Frank Peiffer

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Message 51351 - Posted: 2 Feb 2015, 12:22:56 UTC - in response to Message 51350.  

Thanks Richard and Dave. Its good to know I haven't done something wrong. Cheers and thanks again. Frank
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