LHC@home

1. if you go away to make some coffee and come back before a checkpoint, then the work BOINC did will be wasted unless the app stays in memory. This can be a reason to keep apps in memory, especially users with a machine that is newer than the versions of the software they usually use (and so have plenty of excess memory available).

False - BOINC doesn't waste any work, it adjusts the time available to projects in accordance with the PC's apparent "idle" time. It will continue to work even during periods of high user activity, albeit proportionately slower to the demand the user creates. The checkpoints occur when they should regardless of the % cpu time available to it. Keeping the app in memory when preempted refers to the BOINC client behavior when LHC is "paused" by another BOINC enabled project, the BOINC client will not unload the LHC project from memory while it's not in use. The result is, on systems with low amounts of ram and many apps running, slower performance while the OS swaps out to the HDD to compensate for lack of memory.

2. if the memory used is needed by your real work (Word or whatever) then it will take a time for the app to be swapped out and your real work swapped back in. This can be a reason to avoid keeping apps in memory, especially users with a machine with onlu just enough memory for the task they normally work on.

Abso-freakin-lutely True :)

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