Posts by jsprague78

1) Message boards : Number crunching : going, Going, ........ , GONE. (Message 12346) Posted 24 Jan 2006 by jsprague78 Post: About 600K WU crunched in under 2 weeks. The physicits at the LHC and CERN should have smiles on their faces. Yeah it went pretty quick. I noticed the pace started to slow down as we got closer to the end, guess people were pulling computers off the project and switching them to others. Hopefully the next batch of workunits will be larger since they got completed so quickly.
2) Message boards : Number crunching : Why my Granted Credit is just the half GC than other who did same work? (Message 12341) Posted 24 Jan 2006 by jsprague78 Post: um ... sorry, I have to disagree with the explanation. An Optimized BOINC Client is compiled with a specific processor in mind and specified with compiler switches. This makes the software run as fast as possible. The primary effect of this is to increase the benchmark scores. This results in higher credit claims. An optimized Science Application is a version of the science program compiled with a specific processor in mind. This makes the software run as fast as possible. The primary effect is to complete work faster. As a consequence the credit claim will be lower (shorter time). Some hold that this "cheats" them of credit. So, they want to run an optimized BOINC Client with the Optimized science applications to bring everything back into "balance". The problem is that there is an implicit assumption that the optimization of the BOINC Client is indeed proportional to the speed up of the science applications. It may or may not be true. Also, different science applications run with better or worse efficiency on specific CPUs. So, optimization to "balance" for SETI@Home may unbalance Einstein@Home Worse, for Rosetta@Home the optimized BOINC CLient will grossly over-claim. Thus, the argument about this is cheating, or not ... Trux, to sidestep this made a modified BOINC Cleint that will "adjust" over time the claims to be in line with the supposed standard work unit which is usually worth 32 Cobblestones. In theory, the calibration will only come into play when it is used with an optimized Science Application. It does not change the benchmark scores directly. Rather it fiddles with the reported numbers when the Result is reported to make the claim "accurate". Though I have no problem with this in a very theoretical sense, the problem is that ALL of these areguments are based on an assumption that the person that is releasing the modified client really knows what the credit claim *should be* ... and *this* is where I have the difficulty ... something about hubris ... The good news is that the newer method of counting FLOPS seems to be more stable and perhaps we can put this nightmare behind us ... though I have a feeling that the cat is out of the bag and the argument is still going to be that the modifiers know more about what the claim and grants of credit should be than the projects. So, long term, I suspect that something along the lines of my proposed calibration mechanism is going to have to be implemented ... then the testing and certification will be done double-blind ... There is a lot about this in the Wiki, just wander about reading up on credit and validation process ... tons more ... Ah thanks for the clarification, I was trying to hurry and answer his question before I had to leave and forgot that there is the optimized BOINC client part and then the optimized project specific part. The SETI@Home one I'm using is just a project specific one. If you pull up any of my workunits to see how it affects it I should mention that right before I started running it I also changed out my motherboard/processor from a 2.4ghz P4 to a AMD 3600 with an actual clock speed of 2.0 ghz with HyperTransport.
3) Message boards : Number crunching : Why my Granted Credit is just the half GC than other who did same work? (Message 12338) Posted 23 Jan 2006 by jsprague78 Post: Bah sorry, forgot to mention that a calibrated client is the same thing as an optimized client.
4) Message boards : Number crunching : Why my Granted Credit is just the half GC than other who did same work? (Message 12337) Posted 23 Jan 2006 by jsprague78 Post: ... Such a bad results will actually cause gray hairs to us, .... That's not "grey hair", it's a graphical method to show the experience level. If you have got #808080, you reached the maximum level. Another valid method would be visual cortex enhancement devices - people, who don't understand them, call them "wrinkles". p.s.: Ties have never validated OK in this context. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- What is a calibrated client? How does it work? Does it improve the speed at which work units are created? Someone mentioned using it is cheating, why? Well that depends really, there's optimized clients out there that allow the computer to better utilize the specific aspects of your CPU and whatever instruction set it's best at and they're not available for all projects. Depending on the nature of those clients they either will just speed up the time that your computer completes a workunit thereby giving you less credit per workunit but allowing you to complete more workunits and having roughly the same amount of credit overall. I use one like this for SETI@Home and it shaves an hour off my workunit times so now they only take about 1hr 15min. This to me is the honest type of optimized client as it's not done for the purpose of getting ahead but for the purpose of working the science faster and allowing projects to be completed faster and become of benefit to humanity faster. The other type of optimized client will do the same thing as the one above but will report a inflated completion time, for instance this result of mine on this project... Work unit You'll see that I had the median time of 10,548.50 seconds and the median amount of claimed credit of 33.39 that was given to everyone. The second type of optimized clients would've reported a time greater than that, in some cases about double, but either way it'd be a false amount of time. The only purpose of that is to try to raise in the rankings on the project and has no other benefit. Not to mention that if I remember correctly you have to be careful with some of those optimized clients as they can return invalid results which is more than likely what the original poster is having happen hence their question about the credit. I always say that if you're going to participate in a project then do it for the science and not the credit and stick with the default client. Or at least just stick to the first type of optimized client and research it first before you download it and install it to make sure it's actually going to work correctly.
5) Message boards : Number crunching : Why my Granted Credit is just the half GC than other who did same work? (Message 12307) Posted 23 Jan 2006 by jsprague78 Post: Just to say this last thing on it you mentioned in the Cafe LHC thread of yours that you don't care about the credit but obviously you do otherwise you wouldn't have posted about it in every forum and be using the client you are. As far as the differences in credit goes have you tried just using the normal LHC client to see if the lower credit being given continues? If it does then at least you know it's not the client you're using now but if it doesn't then you'll have your answer.
6) Message boards : Number crunching : Why my Granted Credit is just the half GC than other who did same work? (Message 12306) Posted 23 Jan 2006 by jsprague78 Post: One more time, the way it works three to make a quorum, you take the high score and the low score and delete them and you get what is left, the middle score, simple but effective.... Yep, workunits get sent out to 3 computers, more if needed but on the credit the lowest amount of claimed credit gets tossed and the highest amount of claimed credit gets tossed. I followed the link you provided to your results list and it appears that the reason you are getting less than the granted credit when you do is because of the CPU times, the credit you're getting is more on par with those times than what you trying to claim. I did see a some workunits where that's not the case and I honestly have no idea why that is. I wouldn't exactly call the Truxoft Boinc Callibrated Client fair as you did since it lies and inflates the claimed credit in an effort to put you ahead of the others on the rankings list. Can we say Steroids for BOINC. Just ignore the credit and do it for the science.
7) Message boards : Number crunching : going, going......... (Message 12289) Posted 23 Jan 2006 by jsprague78 Post: Well its been a fabulous week of LHC work! only 70K units left to send out. I guess is they will all be gone within the next 18-24 hours. Before this run I had 4286 credits, Just reached 7496 plus 291 pending. I have just a few old (really old) notebooks running as file/print servers around the house. Dedicated them 100% to LHC this last week. Was hoping to reach 10,000 units. (personal goal is to get to 10K for each approved project). Keep on crankin' Hehe even CPDN? Yeah it's been fun but we'll get more work soon I would imagine.
8) Message boards : Number crunching : Future completion of the LHC (Message 12231) Posted 21 Jan 2006 by jsprague78 Post: Well, even if LHC@Home dies, the LHC itself will be done one day or the other. It is, at least, safer to admit it will achieve a short-term result than, say, SETI. What I ignore is the degree of implication between LHC@Home and the actual LHC project. In my humble opinion, the roughly 96 years of processor time racked up by LHC@Home users worldwide deserves at least a small token of recognition from the people involved in the actual making of the LHC. This recognition should not be an actual reward nor discriminate users depending on their actual number-crunching results (many people would love to contribute more but lack the resources to do so) but rather a symbolic pat on the shoulder to support our shared feeling that we're actually helping the guys out, if only a bit. It's not that much to ask, really :) Has this been considered or done in this or any other BOINC projects? In the end, it would be as simple as coding a tiny app that added the names of the teams / users (and possibly their credits or the percentage of the total calculations done by them) to a PDF or HTML "certificate" file... Then it's as simple as e-mailing them to the users or team leaders and voila, everyone's happy. SETI@Home has a certificate you can print out that lists when you signed up and the amount of credit achieved that you can print out whenever you want as it just pulls the credit listing from the account info. Would be nice if some of the others did that too.
9) Message boards : Number crunching : Work almost done? (Message 12200) Posted 21 Jan 2006 by jsprague78 Post: Ignore, finger twitched when I went to click on Post Reply.
10) Message boards : Number crunching : Work almost done? (Message 12199) Posted 21 Jan 2006 by jsprague78 Post: are we running out of work soon? As you can see works ready to crunch is decreasing quite rapidly (yesterday over 300000 and now 177701). I've noticed that as well, now down to about 158,000. Even if it goes dormant again for a few weeks it's been a pleasure to be able to participate in the projects, just wish I could participate in the LHC Alpha too.
11) Message boards : Number crunching : ETA for new accounts? (Message 11760) Posted 29 Dec 2005 by jsprague78 Post: Ignore.
12) Message boards : Number crunching : ETA for new accounts? (Message 11759) Posted 29 Dec 2005 by jsprague78 Post: Sorry if this has been asked before and I missed it but any idea on when new accounts will be allowed to be created for this project? EDIT: Ok, I goofed, I have an account for the regular LHC but I meant the LHC Alpha.

LHC@home