Message boards : Number crunching : "In progress" means ??
Message board moderation

To post messages, you must log in.

AuthorMessage
River~~

Send message
Joined: 13 Jul 05
Posts: 456
Credit: 75,142
RAC: 0
Message 13411 - Posted: 19 Apr 2006, 15:54:50 UTC
Last modified: 19 Apr 2006, 15:55:38 UTC

On the home page we have

Server Status

Up, out of work
27 workunits in progress
46 concurrent connections


What exactly does "in progress" mean here?

27 WU that have not yet made quorum?

27 WU that have not yet been validated (but which might have the quorum and be waiting for the validator?

Or 27 WU with results that are not yet returend or timed out?

With redundant replication (ie producing more results in the initial replication than are needed to form quorum) a WU could be complete in the sense of having a canonical result to pass back to the scientists, but still not yet complete in that every result has completed.

Just curious. Anyone know?

River~~
ID: 13411 · Report as offensive     Reply Quote
Profile Ocean Archer
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 13 Jul 05
Posts: 143
Credit: 263,300
RAC: 0
Message 13412 - Posted: 19 Apr 2006, 16:03:17 UTC

River --

I'm not an expert on these things, but my humble opinion is that there are 27 WUs out there still to be returned. Hopefully they will get back soon so we can move on to the next portion of the project ...


If I've lived this long, I've gotta be that old
ID: 13412 · Report as offensive     Reply Quote
m.mitch

Send message
Joined: 4 Sep 05
Posts: 112
Credit: 1,864,470
RAC: 0
Message 13413 - Posted: 19 Apr 2006, 17:43:34 UTC


I think that would include WU's that have a quorum but have one or more results still not returend or timed out.




Click here to join the #1 Aussie Alliance on LHC.
ID: 13413 · Report as offensive     Reply Quote
Nuadormrac

Send message
Joined: 26 Sep 05
Posts: 85
Credit: 421,130
RAC: 0
Message 13418 - Posted: 20 Apr 2006, 10:53:10 UTC

Yeah, 27 waiting to be returned...

However, because 4 WUs are sent out, but only 3 are needed for a quorum, that could include those which had validated already, I would gather...
ID: 13418 · Report as offensive     Reply Quote
senatoralex85

Send message
Joined: 17 Sep 05
Posts: 60
Credit: 4,221
RAC: 0
Message 13420 - Posted: 20 Apr 2006, 21:53:06 UTC
Last modified: 20 Apr 2006, 21:57:37 UTC




****************Duplicate Post****************
ID: 13420 · Report as offensive     Reply Quote
senatoralex85

Send message
Joined: 17 Sep 05
Posts: 60
Credit: 4,221
RAC: 0
Message 13421 - Posted: 20 Apr 2006, 21:56:25 UTC - in response to Message 13420.  
Last modified: 20 Apr 2006, 21:58:27 UTC

I think River's question would be similiar to mine. I have been wondering for awhile how they count the workunits on the front page. Each workunit is sent out around 3-5 times. Does the count on the front page include each workunit being sent out multiple times?


**Edit**

To answer River's Question

I would make the educated guess that "in progress" means that the workunit has been sent out but that the computer has not returned the workunit yet. (Just what Archer said)



ID: 13421 · Report as offensive     Reply Quote
Profile Keck_Komputers

Send message
Joined: 1 Sep 04
Posts: 275
Credit: 2,652,452
RAC: 0
Message 13426 - Posted: 21 Apr 2006, 11:28:23 UTC

"Workunits in progress" means the number of workunits that have not been validated yet. If it said "results in progress" then it would be counting the number sent to individual hosts and not returned yet. At this project there are normally 5 results per workunit.

What that will say and mean when the new terms come out I am not sure. It may not change though since SETI is still using "results" and "workunits" on their website, they should have the current server package out.
BOINC WIKI

BOINCing since 2002/12/8
ID: 13426 · Report as offensive     Reply Quote
senatoralex85

Send message
Joined: 17 Sep 05
Posts: 60
Credit: 4,221
RAC: 0
Message 13428 - Posted: 22 Apr 2006, 1:06:04 UTC - in response to Message 13426.  

"Workunits in progress" means the number of workunits that have not been validated yet. If it said "results in progress" then it would be counting the number sent to individual hosts and not returned yet. At this project there are normally 5 results per workunit.

What that will say and mean when the new terms come out I am not sure. It may not change though since SETI is still using "results" and "workunits" on their website, they should have the current server package out.


-------------------------------------------------------

Wow, thanks Keck. That means when this project has 100,000 workunits there are 500,000 results to crunch (or a number pretty close to that). That is a mind boggling amount of work to fathom.

ID: 13428 · Report as offensive     Reply Quote
River~~

Send message
Joined: 13 Jul 05
Posts: 456
Credit: 75,142
RAC: 0
Message 13434 - Posted: 24 Apr 2006, 18:42:28 UTC - in response to Message 13428.  

... That means when this project has 100,000 workunits there are 500,000 results to crunch (or a number pretty close to that). That is a mind boggling amount of work to fathom.


not quite. If I understand Keck's post then 100,000 WU could be anything from 500,000 results out there if none of those WU have any returned results, down to just 100,000 if they are all waiting fo rthat last result to come home, or even 0 if they'd all been returned but the validator was asleep.

That would explain why the counts do not reduce vary fast in the first day or so of a new batch - as results come back they go into the pending count, and the WU count is nt reduced. Later as results alow validation to happen, the pendng counts go down, and so do the WU counts on the front page

Thanks to everyone for you answers to my question.

R~~
ID: 13434 · Report as offensive     Reply Quote
R/B
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 30 Jan 06
Posts: 10
Credit: 1,947
RAC: 0
Message 13442 - Posted: 25 Apr 2006, 10:02:20 UTC

When there is such a small number remaining why not just send these work units out to a few more computers to speed things up a bit? Or does it not really matter because the next batch isn't ready to be sent out to us anyway?
Founder of BOINC group Objectivists: Rational people crunching data for science.

ID: 13442 · Report as offensive     Reply Quote
Gaspode the UnDressed

Send message
Joined: 1 Sep 04
Posts: 506
Credit: 118,619
RAC: 0
Message 13444 - Posted: 25 Apr 2006, 10:59:58 UTC - in response to Message 13442.  

When there is such a small number remaining why not just send these work units out to a few more computers to speed things up a bit? Or does it not really matter because the next batch isn't ready to be sent out to us anyway?


The problem with your suggestion is that it requires a manual intervention by CERN staff to do it. With a system as involved as BOINC, wading in to do the job by hand can cause more problems than it solves. This is why orphaned units tend to be left in the databases. There's plenty of other work for the CERN people to do, so a delay of a couple of days getting the results back isn't a problem.



Gaspode the UnDressed
http://www.littlevale.co.uk
ID: 13444 · Report as offensive     Reply Quote
Profile Ocean Archer
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 13 Jul 05
Posts: 143
Credit: 263,300
RAC: 0
Message 13448 - Posted: 25 Apr 2006, 12:49:00 UTC

The other side to the coin is if there were "manual intervention" on behalf of certain Work Units, perhaps those WUs would be directed to "fat cat" crunchers whose results might skew the result. I remember a discussion thread a few months ago about how the various machines all deliver slightly different results due to the way the different programs are compiled. Such "manual intervention" could open the door to creating a result to fit the project, rather than one that was totally unbiased. I'd certainly hate to see one of the BOINC projects to which I donate time fail because of such actions ...


If I've lived this long, I've gotta be that old
ID: 13448 · Report as offensive     Reply Quote
Nuadormrac

Send message
Joined: 26 Sep 05
Posts: 85
Credit: 421,130
RAC: 0
Message 13464 - Posted: 27 Apr 2006, 19:49:17 UTC
Last modified: 27 Apr 2006, 19:54:44 UTC

From the stantpoint of the project, a few days doesn't matter. As River and some others have pointed out, they aren't waiting for results... Case in point, no work is out there yet, and CERN is still not ready for the next batch of work.

They have other things they also need to do (as they're doing right now), and so will get to the WUs when they're ready. Wasn't necessarily a matter of crunchers holding them up...

As to the CPUs, it is true that Intel and AMD for instance have slightly different implementation, but this isn't based simply on the clock rate (actually performance, given the efficiency of 2 CPUs need not be the same). Both Intel and AMD have never gen processors, as well as older. And someone with a lattest gen dual proc P4 3.4+ GHz processor using the lattest core, and someone using an X2 or FX60! on the other hand, aren't exactly going to be hurting for crunch time...

The slower comps would be more a PII vs P4, or a K62 vs. A64 type situation, then an Intel vs. AMD. Though there might be slight differences performance wise, the high end processors from each company aren't entirely non-competitive against each other, or anything of the sort... And true, perhaps the PII might get a bit of a different result then a P4 (different architecture), but as long as one can compare Intel to AMD, slight differences will show up (if this is what's wanted, unlike with Predictor which ties a WU to a given processor type to allow less variation).
ID: 13464 · Report as offensive     Reply Quote

Message boards : Number crunching : "In progress" means ??


©2024 CERN