Hi,

I'm rather new to the BOINC world. As much as I'd like to contribute, judging from the other threads (re: using AMD64 CPU's) in the forum + the few experiences that I've made so far, CP can be a frustrating experience.
To make a long story short: Is this going to improve in the near or distant future and/or are there plans to create WU's that take less time?

cheers

Hello Benni

Welcome to the world of Citizen Science, and to cpdn.

When cpdn started about 12 years ago, it was all in-house at Oxford, and the models where the simplest variety. Then more advanced models were tried.
(All programs are from the UK Met Office.)

Then it started to move out into climate research centres around the world, with the people here at Oxford just facilitating things.

These professional climatologists want more and more accuracy and detail for their studies, which means bigger (and slower), models.

So it's more likely for models to get bigger and take longer, than the other way around.

Benni,

Adding to Les' post, your machine received three tasks: One aborted, one crashed, one running.

The crashed task had numerous 'Suspend requests.' This usually means boinc is thrown to the hard drive until reactivated. Eventually, files can get out of synchronization. We strongly recommend that the option to "Leave tasks in memory" be checked. (Your machine has plenty of memory so that should not be a problem.) Too set the option:
In boinc manager: Advanced/Preferences/disk and memory usage, check the box for "Leave applications in memory while suspended".

Also, if the machine runs only for relatively short periods of time (an hour or two) the task may not reach a checkpoint and is doomed to repeat the same part of the run over and over again. As a minimum, every time the machine is shut-down some amount of processing is lost (from a few minutes to a few hours) because restarts begin at last checkpoint. Many of us shut our machines down only for maintenance-required restarts. (We consider the energy burned to have been put to good use. Especially in Winter, it also helps heat our homes!)

There is an option to limit number of processors used by boinc. You might be well served to limit boinc's use of the machine to 50% of its processors.

(For what it's worth, current CPDN tasks are short compared to what we used to run!)

Good luck and I hope you stay with us.

---

"We have met the enemy and he is us." -- Pogo
Greetings from coastal Washington state, the scenic US Pacific Northwest.