Your axe to grind with Apple is well noted, and is increasingly irrelevant here. Are you going to rewrite the 32-bit MacOS stuff for 64-bit and ARM? No? Then quit complaining about how a company you don't buy anything from is doing things you don't like. Bitching about it here isn't going to change a single thing about either the tasks to run, or Apple's practices.

Might aswell point out to everyone using Apple products that they shouldn't be. Selling things which are obsolete after a short time is unethical, criminal, and environmentally unfriendly.

I run Windows and only Windows, because it's the easiest to use, the most commonly supported for programs, and doesn't ditch its users. I see no need to use anything else. Windows 11 on 7 PCs here.

This thread is indeed intended to be for the discussion of new work that appears on CPDN rather than platform comparisons, but in contradiction of that I would say in Apple’s defence that because they supply both hardware and software they also offer trade-ins, which Microsoft cannot in general — when there are no more 32-bit Mac models then I’ll trade in my ancient Mac mini, if they’ll still take it: I cannot do that with any of my PCs. On the other hand, I do have some important applications whose functionality erodes with each Windows version change. So I rather fancy the Microsoft/Apple comparison could just express a bias based on individual use.

I develop software for Windows, so I have a Windows machine; I have old software that won’t run under current Windows so I have an old Windows machine; I have some applications that are better on Mac so I have a Mac; until the power supply blew once too often, I had a Linux machine for yet more stuff. It’s horses for courses and I see no reason to suppose that we all have or should have exactly the same horse.

And there's now 3,500 Windows tasks on the server.

Not sure why the Linux batch #935 shows a submission date of the 21st of last month. I know I said I expected a further batch from that experiment though.

Not sure why the Linux batch #935 shows a submission date of the 21st of last month. I know I said I expected a further batch from that experiment though.

I think Sarah just made that comment on the Trello board for bookkeeping purposes. The batch had already been released in July, it just hadn't been properly placed on the Trello boards.

And all gone, both Linux and Windows tasks.

Woah.

Is there any way to make those opt-in? That's massive, even for CPDN, and I would wager not many people have enough RAM to run more than one of those at a time. One of my dedicated compute boxes could only run one of those, and the other might manage three...

Yes, OpenIFS, as it's a global model, and efficient computationally, it requires RAM. Only machines that have the required hardware will get workunits though, so noone should be compromised if they get one.

The point is though, as great an idea as BOINC is, unless the models in use are scientifically useful there's little point in applying them to the Boinc framework. Scientifically, higher resolution, and hence hardware requirements, are where we need to be to make the platform useful.

I expect that a lot of us have enough RAM, bandwidth, cores, etc.
The tendency of most BOINC projects is to cater to the minimalist user.

I see no reason to do that here. Use as many resources as you need and see what happens.
It is either enough to be scientifically useful, or it isn't. But you won't know if you limit yourself unnecessarily.

Yes, OpenIFS, as it's a global model, and efficient computationally, it requires RAM. Only machines that have the required hardware will get workunits though, so noone should be compromised if they get one.

It would be good to have the chance for the few people with metered connections to opt out of these. While not as fast as I might wish, I do have unlimited data. Those few with metered connections could quickly run into problems.

Yes, OpenIFS, as it's a global model, and efficient computationally, it requires RAM. Only machines that have the required hardware will get workunits though, so noone should be compromised if they get one.

It would be good to have the chance for the few people with metered connections to opt out of these. While not as fast as I might wish, I do have unlimited data. Those few with metered connections could quickly run into problems.

I don't know if the server checks the network capacity in deciding which computers get the tasks, I'll ask Andy, but the user can always just abort the task. Expected data volumes would be published on the forums.

I don't know if the server checks the network capacity in deciding which computers get the tasks, I'll ask Andy, but the user can always just abort the task. Expected data volumes would be published on the forums.

Perhaps the largest ones could be opt-in in preferences?

I expect that a lot of us have enough RAM, bandwidth, cores, etc.
The tendency of most BOINC projects is to cater to the minimalist user.

I see no reason to do that here. Use as many resources as you need and see what happens.
It is either enough to be scientifically useful, or it isn't. But you won't know if you limit yourself unnecessarily.

I agree.

I have 64 GBytes of RAM, 16896 KB cache, 75 Megabit/second up and down Internet bandwidth, 16 cores (I allow only 8 for BOINC).

Measured floating point speed 6.58 billion ops/sec
Measured integer speed 30.58 billion ops/sec
Average upload rate 181.06 KB/sec
Average download rate 6147.47 KB/sec

My machine is only lightly loaded at the moment because ClimatePrediction, WCG, and Rosetta all seem to be sending out few or no work units.

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My machine is only lightly loaded at the moment because ClimatePrediction, WCG, and Rosetta all seem to be sending out few or no work units.

There are still lots of Virtualbox Rosettas to do. Unfortunately you need a modern processor, so only 2 of my 7 can do it (it needs AVX).

WCG has loads to do, but apparently a 14 billion dollar company can't provide a server fast enough to cater for Boinc. I didn't think Canadians were quite that incompetant. Their server is so slow you can't even get onto their forum. I'm assuming it's a 486 in somebody's shed.

If I told you once, I told you a million times: do not exaggerate!

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If I told you once, I told you a million times: do not exaggerate!

LOL. I think he is correct though. I have to sit and manually download WCG WU"s, otherwise it will be "project back off" for days.

That's for another forum. I've posted about it at WCG.

I think he is correct though. I have to sit and manually download WCG WU"s, otherwise it will be "project back off" for days.

Me too. Even if I baby-sit the connection and restart every time it backs off, it can still take many hours of frustration to download the files (about 20) for two ARP1 tasks. In three hours, I have downloaded only about half the needed files.

I do not think the problem is due to inadequate (486) cpu processing power, but one of hopeless networking, both hardware and possibly misconfigured software. Consider:

Thu 25 Aug 2022 10:29:29 AM EDT | World Community Grid | Started download of 5e71c2d062b7962bdb6bac1992fbeeea.
Thu 25 Aug 2022 10:29:33 AM EDT | World Community Grid | Temporarily failed download of 5e71c2d062b7962bdb6bac1992fbeeea.: transient HTTP error
Thu 25 Aug 2022 10:29:33 AM EDT | World Community Grid | Backing off 01:28:25 on download of 5e71c2d062b7962bdb6bac1992fbeeea.
Thu 25 Aug 2022 10:29:48 AM EDT | World Community Grid | Started download of 52e25b9ec8188295263a9b3cc85d65dc.7z
Thu 25 Aug 2022 10:29:51 AM EDT | World Community Grid | Temporarily failed download of 52e25b9ec8188295263a9b3cc85d65dc.7z: transient HTTP error
Thu 25 Aug 2022 10:29:51 AM EDT | World Community Grid | Backing off 01:12:58 on download of 52e25b9ec8188295263a9b3cc85d65dc.7z
Thu 25 Aug 2022 10:30:07 AM EDT | World Community Grid | Started download of 7fafa20f2f43dd6206726e20baabaa68.
Thu 25 Aug 2022 10:30:10 AM EDT | World Community Grid | Temporarily failed download of 7fafa20f2f43dd6206726e20baabaa68.: transient HTTP error
Thu 25 Aug 2022 10:30:10 AM EDT | World Community Grid | Backing off 01:13:24 on download of 7fafa20f2f43dd6206726e20baabaa68.
Thu 25 Aug 2022 10:30:20 AM EDT | World Community Grid | Started download of 44973705de8b4bb1c1113f8e96ecfbc8.
Thu 25 Aug 2022 10:30:24 AM EDT | World Community Grid | Temporarily failed download of 44973705de8b4bb1c1113f8e96ecfbc8.: transient HTTP error
Thu 25 Aug 2022 10:30:24 AM EDT | World Community Grid | Backing off 01:43:23 on download of 44973705de8b4bb1c1113f8e96ecfbc8.

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WCG has loads to do, but apparently a 14 billion dollar company can't provide a server fast enough to cater for Boinc. I didn't think Canadians were quite that incompetant. Their server is so slow you can't even get onto their forum. I'm assuming it's a 486 in somebody's shed.

More likely a set of virtual machines or containers running on bare metal or cloud. It's not difficult to saturate a network connection.

I can get through to their forums with no problems - just posted there again. My usual problem is dropped connections on short files - they can't handle the concurrency. But today it was a 102 MB shared file, that came at less than 350 KBps (on a 70 MB fibre line) - imagine that here.

Some projects have networking wizards, others don't.

I was surprised their WUs have so many individual (and often small) files to download, no wonder they have problems. Would be better if they were zipped into a smaller number of larger files surely.