Crunchers,

I just heard from Travis. Between the BOINC conference last week and now finishing his thesis, his hands have been full lately. Please take that into consideration in your criticism over the recent difficulties on the project.

He is VERY aware of your concerns and has assured me he will put an update on the Front Page shortly.

Thank you for your patience.

Blurf

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Reply posted in "No Thank You" thread from Travis:

We're well aware of the server issues and we're doing what we can to address them. We should be putting in an order for some new hardware which should let us get work out faster (and let the webpage load faster as well).

I'm defending my thesis in < 2 weeks so until then I'm pretty busy getting everything prepared for that. After I'm done with my defense I'll have a lot more time to try and get things flowing more smoothly.

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From news section on front page:

November 4, 2009
I've started some new searches with larger sized workunits, so hopefully these will help the server strain. Let us know how they're running.
--Travis

I was just about to post about sensibility of this move (increasing WU length) in the "Thank you" thread, until I checked results. Times are double, while credits remain the same, so we were screwed once again. And just when I got MW to crunch on my 5870 without VPU crashes and recoveries every 12 - 24h. So, I'd like to thank you for sticking it up our arses, by only doing one half of what you were supposed to do, once again!
I'm joining boosted and other top users in going 100% Collatz. Thanks for making at least this decision an easy one.

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From news section on front page:

I was just about to post about sensibility of this move (increasing WU length) in the "Thank you" thread, until I checked results. Times are double, while credits remain the same, so we were screwed once again. And just when I got MW to crunch on my 5870 without VPU crashes and recoveries every 12 - 24h. So, I'd like to thank you for sticking it up our arses, by only doing one half of what you were supposed to do, once again!
I'm joining boosted and other top users in going 100% Collatz. Thanks for making at least this decision an easy one.

Vid, have you been listening to Laibach at extreme volumes? :-)

Nobody at RPI is trying to 'screw' you or anyone else that is crunching here. Let's collar that dog and give Travis and his team a bit of time to work things out. The MW team and the faculty that runs this project wants it to succeed!

BTW - Laibach rules!

From news section on front page:

I was just about to post about sensibility of this move (increasing WU length) in the "Thank you" thread, until I checked results. Times are double, while credits remain the same, so we were screwed once again. And just when I got MW to crunch on my 5870 without VPU crashes and recoveries every 12 - 24h. So, I'd like to thank you for sticking it up our arses, by only doing one half of what you were supposed to do, once again!
I'm joining boosted and other top users in going 100% Collatz. Thanks for making at least this decision an easy one.

Vid, have you been listening to Laibach at extreme volumes? :-)

Nobody at RPI is trying to 'screw' you or anyone else that is crunching here. Let's collar that dog and give Travis and his team a bit of time to work things out. The MW team and the faculty that runs this project wants it to succeed!

BTW - Laibach rules!

It has happened before, sometimes the credits were sored out other times they weren't. It is possible the new work was added quickly and the credits weren't changed. But with as many credit reductions that have happened it doesn't look good when this occurs.

From news section on front page:

I was just about to post about sensibility of this move (increasing WU length) in the "Thank you" thread, until I checked results. Times are double, while credits remain the same, so we were screwed once again. And just when I got MW to crunch on my 5870 without VPU crashes and recoveries every 12 - 24h. So, I'd like to thank you for sticking it up our arses, by only doing one half of what you were supposed to do, once again!
I'm joining boosted and other top users in going 100% Collatz. Thanks for making at least this decision an easy one.

Vid, have you been listening to Laibach at extreme volumes? :-)

Nobody at RPI is trying to 'screw' you or anyone else that is crunching here. Let's collar that dog and give Travis and his team a bit of time to work things out. The MW team and the faculty that runs this project wants it to succeed!

BTW - Laibach rules!

Well, I in fact live in Ljubljana (which was called Laibach while we were under austro-hungarian rulership - well german speakers still cal it Laibach). And no, I don't like them, and listen to their music, very much. I am more a drum'n'bass person, which I enjoy at any volume; might call it extreme at the moment, yes.
I know, that at RPI nobody is trying intentionally to screw anyone among us (unless there have been some sympathies made through PM system), however this project has demonstrated more sloppiness when applying changes than one would consider reasonable. Everything here seems to be only half done. Every change only half implemented, and the user base less than half considered. Caches less than half full and so on... And posting such news on front page, well lets see: jobs are longer, great, less stress for servers, jobs do run, great for science, however the only "compensation" users get for runnig thi s project, got halved yet again after numerous previous reductions, well I think these facts speak for themselves. If it wasn't intentional, then someone has a very looooooong way, to learn ho to properly change or fix things, ahead of him.
I hate to compare one project to another, as each has its own individual characteristics, however, implementing such changes as longer runtimes, should be comparable across projects. Recently over at Collatz, job runtimes were extended by 50% and also credits were adjusted accordingly at the same time (not retroactively), like many other projects before that (even Seti). Which leads me to believe changes here were made on impulse without any planning or considerations made prior to acting.

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Again some reactionary posts. I've looked at my results and can say the credits have not changed in any way. A run time on my 4870 of 50 to 52 seconds still gets me 53.45 credits.

I think Travis doubled the size of the wu's that were taking ~26 seconds and giving ~26.7 credits as I can't find any of those listed in my results any more and there are no wu's with more than 53 credits listed.

LOL...damn slow server causing double posts!

LOL...damn slow server causing double posts!

Hi GG,

You need to post then have a beer.... then see later...... ;-)))

Hey you, my 4850 card gives me 53 credits for 53 secs time. Why is your 4870 not a lot faster???

LOL...damn slow server causing double posts!

Hi GG,

You need to post then have a beer.... then see later...... ;-)))

Hey you, my 4850 card gives me 53 credits for 53 secs time. Why is your 4870 not a lot faster???

My 4850 takes 53 to 55 seconds.

Due to computer lock ups that I couldn't pin point the cause of, I set all gpu's and cpu's to default clocks. Not sure if that has anything to do with it and it also turns out that my display is hooked up to the 4870.

All up, I also would have thought the 4870 would be faster than the 4850 by more than 2 to 3 seconds....

The only thing I missing here is information, a short briefing about what happening in front page or a mail to top users whats going on, then they probably post a message to some shouts or team site. MV is now my second boinc project because if collatz is running, it take all gpu ignoring MW/collatz boinc share, fix that please.

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Again some reactionary posts. I've looked at my results and can say the credits have not changed in any way. A run time on my 4870 of 50 to 52 seconds still gets me 53.45 credits.

I think Travis doubled the size of the wu's that were taking ~26 seconds and giving ~26.7 credits as I can't find any of those listed in my results any more and there are no wu's with more than 53 credits listed.

Again, due to such fast result purging, I cannot prove my past observations, and things seem to have been sorted by now. Also, I would like to apologize for my earlier behaviour, to which has in some part contributed the fact, that my ATIs have experienced some unexplained slowdown of about 20%, which was discovered after I made those posts. However I still claim, that there were WUs that ran 1.5x longer than others with the same credit grants, but will never be able to prove it. And just some small suggestion, before I drop this topic completely. It wouldn't hurt if Travis told us not only that there was increase in runtime, but also by how much, and which WUs would that be.

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I believe it was after the last crash, I had numerous tasks that ran up to 2x longer and recieved the same credit. After a few days they went back to normal. I know someone else saw that happen too. Could it in someway be how the initial results are sent out?

The only thing I missing here is information, a short briefing about what happening in front page or a mail to top users whats going on, then they probably post a message to some shouts or team site. MV is now my second boinc project because if collatz is running, it take all gpu ignoring MW/collatz boinc share, fix that please.

Regarding your request these were posted on the Front Page today:

Large WU Sizes
November 4, 2009
I've started some new searches with larger sized workunits, so hopefully these will help the server strain. Let us know how they're running.
--Travis

Website Slowness
November 4, 2009
We've been looking into the website performance and it looks like we're going to be ordering some more hardware in the next couple weeks which should improve the performance. Until then you're probably just going to have to bear with the website slowness. I'm currently trying to finish up my phd thesis (I defend in less than 2 weeks), so I probably won't be frequenting the forums very much until then.
--Travis

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However I still claim, that there were WUs that ran 1.5x longer than others with the same credit grants, but will never be able to prove it.

Such a defeatist attitude... ;-)

I have 3 reported tasks from my Pentium 4 right now. One took around 7250 seconds, while the other two took around 5100 seconds, all three getting 53.45 credits.

My average credit per day on that system when I stopped processing here a few days ago was around 800.

7250 + (5100 * 2) = 17450 total runtime seconds thus far.

24 * 60 * 60 = 86400 seconds in a day

86400 / 17450 = 4.9513

53.45 * 3 * 4.9513 = 793.94 ~= "around 800"

Yes, it may "stink" to get multiple of the longer running tasks, but there are also plenty of the shorter running tasks to average things out over the long term.

And just some small suggestion, before I drop this topic completely. It wouldn't hurt if Travis told us not only that there was increase in runtime, but also by how much, and which WUs would that be.

Personally, I think he just meant that they were starting up 3s (3-stream) searches instead of 1 or 2 stream which generally cause the server to be real sluggish. The runtime variation in the tasks has been there for weeks, if not months, so this is a tempest in a teapot...

However I still claim, that there were WUs that ran 1.5x longer than others with the same credit grants, but will never be able to prove it.

Such a defeatist attitude... ;-)

I have 3 reported tasks from my Pentium 4 right now. One took around 7250 seconds, while the other two took around 5100 seconds, all three getting 53.45 credits.

My average credit per day on that system when I stopped processing here a few days ago was around 800.

7250 + (5100 * 2) = 17450 total runtime seconds thus far.

24 * 60 * 60 = 86400 seconds in a day

86400 / 17450 = 4.9513

53.45 * 3 * 4.9513 = 793.94 ~= "around 800"

Yes, it may "stink" to get multiple of the longer running tasks, but there are also plenty of the shorter running tasks to average things out over the long term.

Today was the first time I got any of those; couple of caches full of them without normal ones, so combined with front page news, sure it made my blood boil. And thank you for confirming my claim that such workunits exist. ;)

And just some small suggestion, before I drop this topic completely. It wouldn't hurt if Travis told us not only that there was increase in runtime, but also by how much, and which WUs would that be.

Personally, I think he just meant that they were starting up 3s (3-stream) searches instead of 1 or 2 stream which generally cause the server to be real sluggish. The runtime variation in the tasks has been there for weeks, if not months, so this is a tempest in a teapot...

In my case the de_14_3s_const type WUs would take 12s on my 5870, _2s_const 17s and _1s_const 23s to complete. The new de_s222_3s_best which as I see normally take around 23s took 45s in that batch I got. Now do some mental extrapolation what that would mean for _2s and _1s WUs. Combine with the news blurb, and there you have it. That is why I think some more clarity as to what and by how much WUs have been lengthened should be in order.
BR

[edit]quotes[/edit]

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The new searches are all 3 stream workunits, so they should all take quite a bit of time to compute. The old searches were a mix of 1, 2 and 3 stream WUs, so they would have different crunch times and different awarded credit.

Thank you.
So they should all take about the same amount of time on same hardware? And by how much variation in run times should be considered normal? I am asking this because I discovered that there may be some other instabilities besides VPU recovers caused by combination of MW and 9.10 drivers, and would like to be able to detect them properly instead of making false assumptions and accusations.
BR,

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Thank you.
So they should all take about the same amount of time on same hardware? And by how much variation in run times should be considered normal? I am asking this because I discovered that there may be some other instabilities besides VPU recovers caused by combination of MW and 9.10 drivers, and would like to be able to detect them properly instead of making false assumptions and accusations.
BR,

I believe you wanted to know how long the new tasks should run; right? From past experience the 3 stream take 1.5x as long as 2 stream and 3x as long as 1 stream tasks (noted by the 3s in the task name). Travis was saying that all of the new searches should take the same length of time. To find a similar run time for your tasks find another user with a similar machine setup.

The only thing I missing here is information, a short briefing about what happening in front page or a mail to top users whats going on, then they probably post a message to some shouts or team site. MV is now my second boinc project because if collatz is running, it take all gpu ignoring MW/collatz boinc share, fix that please.

Regarding your request these were posted on the Front Page today:

Large WU Sizes
November 4, 2009
I've started some new searches with larger sized workunits, so hopefully these will help the server strain. Let us know how they're running.
--Travis

Website Slowness
November 4, 2009
We've been looking into the website performance and it looks like we're going to be ordering some more hardware in the next couple weeks which should improve the performance. Until then you're probably just going to have to bear with the website slowness. I'm currently trying to finish up my phd thesis (I defend in less than 2 weeks), so I probably won't be frequenting the forums very much until then.
--Travis

Yep, that is your/my/all crunchers here/problem? Admins here always, almost one week behind reporting whats going on here on server side. Only thing that I ask is little short briefing in less than one week time.