Message boards :
ATLAS application :
typical length of time an ATLAS task takes?
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Send message Joined: 28 Mar 20 Posts: 25 Credit: 135,772 RAC: 160 ![]() ![]() |
Hi, I've recently joined lhc@home and gotten my first ATLAS tasks; one of those tasks has now been running for a little over 2 hours. I have also started a Theory task and the BOINC Manager "Remaining (estimated)" time changed from close to 3 hours before it started to now just under 4 days, after already running for well over 8 hours. Can anyone give me an idea of what the average time to complete an ATLAS task would be? BOINC Manager is saying something over 4 hours with 4 CPUs - is that reliable? I'd rather not have all CPUs dedicated to one task, so is it possible to accurately estimate the time to complete for 1, 2 and 3 CPUs as well? My machine is latest Windows 10, Intel Core i5-3470 with 16GB memory, 4 cores. I have the latest BOINC and Virtual Box combo installed (BOINC 7.16.5), which I upgraded to a week or so ago. Thanks. Doug |
Send message Joined: 27 Sep 08 Posts: 854 Credit: 699,074,939 RAC: 180,024 ![]() ![]() ![]() |
The ATLAS tasks are typically much shorter than theory, like 4-8hrs vs 12+ You can limit the tasks to use less than 4 CPU's but they will always take about the same time, since the virtual box is a wrapper for the real work they all do a number of smaller jobs inside the VM so the wrapper run time is somewhat arbitrary |
![]() Send message Joined: 15 Jun 08 Posts: 2571 Credit: 258,809,998 RAC: 119,262 ![]() ![]() |
As others already mentioned BOINC's runtime estimation is completely wrong for most Theory and ATLAS tasks. At least ATLAS (vbox) has a built-in progress monitoring that can be seen if VirtualBox Extension Pack is installed. 1. install the VirtualBox Extension Pack corresponding to your VirtualBox version: https://www.virtualbox.org/ 2. BOINC may need a restart 3. ATLAS VMs that started after the extensions have been installed now provide an interface to watch the VM internal consoles. 4. Mark a task and click on the console button 5. In the console window press ALT-F2 to switch to console 2. After a while the monitoring has collected enough data from the internal logs to estimate a remaining runtime. Since the individual runtimes of each "event" can be from a few seconds to more than 1/2 hour the remaining time is a statistical value but it is more accurate than the value shown by your BOINC manager. |
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