that's correct. we both use OSX machines. i actually have to virtualize windows to compile the windows builds.

With the "see how badly things crash" sentiment being expressed, are you planning on only sending the new app to people who have enabled "Run test applications?" through the project preferences?

Thanks...

Brian

do you know what we need to do to set that up server side? i didn't know we could do that.. but for now i'll be sending out limited batches of workunits for testing until i'm confident enough to start up the assimilator and have it automatically generate work.

I'm sorry Travis, but in my limited thinking you're bla, bla, bla... (I'm sorry for my bad english)... Let me know if I was wong, please... (Uh!... Bla, bla bla... ins spanish is who say a lot of things without order and nothing what to say is true)

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Logan.

BOINC FAQ Service (Ahora, también disponible en Español/Now available in Spanish)

what I can say is that there is a consistent theme of giving a little bit of information and then expecting me to fill in the gaps. I'm not that intimately involved in the coding aspect because I have been involved in business logic for quite some time and just don't remember enough about scientific theories / laws to be of any good to anyone without some time to relearn, which I do not have the time right now. When I'm left with a "you figure the rest out", I basically stop thinking about the subject.

You are not supposed to fill in the gaps. That's the responsibility of the project. I guess most people forget who runs this project. It is the Rensselaer Computer Science Department. They may not have written the code in the first instance (the astronomy students are guilty), but they should understand the brief hints and should be able to correct the inefficiencies of the code. They had almost a year for it now! In my opinion, every computer scientist who ever had a beginners course in structured programming should be able to get a factor of 10 out of the app even without any hint. If they would rewrite the app in a clean way I'm sure we could see speedups beyond factor 100 compared to the current state. Considering the shortness of the actual code, it should be doable in a week or so if one has a plan, what one really wants to do.

When I talk to my colleagues in some technical terms, it is clear they understand me, but someone not from the field is somehow lost. But here, I'm telling them something about their field (not mine) and they are still lost? WTF!?!

Actually to correct some misinformation here. The RPI computer science department as a whole does not run this project. There is myself, Nate, dave, and our 4 advisors (1 professor in the physics dept, and 3 in the cs dept). Our advisors have quite a few other projects they're working on (and I myself have another one or two). Either way, the bulk of the work on this project is done by myself, dave and nate. 3 people, not 440. We also have classes and our degree requirements to attend to. This is the nature of graduate level research.

Right now we're operating off an NSF grant which pays for our hardware, Nate, myself and a couple undergrad researchers. During the summer things are even slower due to the fact that it's summer and not everyone is around.

Either way, in the recent version of the application i've made an attempt to clean up all the legacy code and implement the optimizations that have been suggested, andI went a bit farther with a couple of my own.

I'll try and release the code sometime this weekend for people to look at, because I don't think there will be many more changes in terms of fixing any bugs that'll happen. I'm actually looking forward to people looking at the new code and giving some optimization suggestions, because right now i'm not quite sure how much more performance we can squeeze out of the integral loop.

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what I can say is that there is a consistent theme of giving a little bit of information and then expecting me to fill in the gaps. I'm not that intimately involved in the coding aspect because I have been involved in business logic for quite some time and just don't remember enough about scientific theories / laws to be of any good to anyone without some time to relearn, which I do not have the time right now. When I'm left with a "you figure the rest out", I basically stop thinking about the subject.

You are not supposed to fill in the gaps. That's the responsibility of the project. I guess most people forget who runs this project. It is the Rensselaer Computer Science Department. They may not have written the code in the first instance (the astronomy students are guilty), but they should understand the brief hints and should be able to correct the inefficiencies of the code. They had almost a year for it now! In my opinion, every computer scientist who ever had a beginners course in structured programming should be able to get a factor of 10 out of the app even without any hint. If they would rewrite the app in a clean way I'm sure we could see speedups beyond factor 100 compared to the current state. Considering the shortness of the actual code, it should be doable in a week or so if one has a plan, what one really wants to do.

When I talk to my colleagues in some technical terms, it is clear they understand me, but someone not from the field is somehow lost. But here, I'm telling them something about their field (not mine) and they are still lost? WTF!?!

Actually to correct some misinformation here. The RPI computer science department as a whole does not run this project. There is myself, Nate, dave, and our 4 advisors (1 professor in the physics dept, and 3 in the cs dept). Our advisors have quite a few other projects they're working on (and I myself have another one or two). Either way, the bulk of the work on this project is done by myself, dave and nate. 3 people, not 440. We also have classes and our degree requirements to attend to. This is the nature of graduate level research.

Right now we're operating off an NSF grant which pays for our hardware, Nate, myself and a couple undergrad researchers. During the summer things are even slower due to the fact that it's summer and not everyone is around.

Either way, in the recent version of the application i've made an attempt to clean up all the legacy code and implement the optimizations that have been suggested, andI went a bit farther with a couple of my own.

I'll try and release the code sometime this weekend for people to look at, because I don't think there will be many more changes in terms of fixing any bugs that'll happen. I'm actually looking forward to people looking at the new code and giving some optimization suggestions, because right now i'm not quite sure how much more performance we can squeeze out of the integral loop.

Well...

Let them an opportunity.

But, be sure, our eyes are keeping on you.

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Logan.

BOINC FAQ Service (Ahora, también disponible en Español/Now available in Spanish)

that's correct. we both use OSX machines. i actually have to virtualize windows to compile the windows builds.

With the "see how badly things crash" sentiment being expressed, are you planning on only sending the new app to people who have enabled "Run test applications?" through the project preferences?

Thanks...

Brian

do you know what we need to do to set that up server side? i didn't know we could do that.. but for now i'll be sending out limited batches of workunits for testing until i'm confident enough to start up the assimilator and have it automatically generate work.

I do not know. I'm assuming there should be some help on the BOINC forums or you could try to contact some of the other project admins. The people at Cosmology have used it, but I don't know about other projects. Some of the other more experienced participants here might also know.

Personally, I can't ever remember seeing the participants asking for longer, 'tougher' work on any project (at least the ones I run and/or follow).

It usually means making workunits twice as long but doing twice the useful work too. Basically merging multiple workunits in one. You don't lose anything, you just get less server load (the longer each workunit, the less frequently clients contact the server).

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Please use "Reply" or "Quote" buttons on posts, instead of "reply to this thread". Keep the posts linked together ("X is a reply to Y").

And frankly, when looking at the source code one can get some doubts if the MW staff is actually able to put some reasonable code together. You should look for a fresh and ambitious undergraduate or PhD student!

Heh. Go see TSP or Ramsey@Home source code, you'll take your eyes out :)

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Please use "Reply" or "Quote" buttons on posts, instead of "reply to this thread". Keep the posts linked together ("X is a reply to Y").

E.g. I've seen code like this in the MW sources:

x = y / z;
v = x * z;

Anyone who made it through school's Mathmatics, will notice that this is the same as v = y.

And in many cases, a compiler can figure that out too, and optimize it out. I know for sure compilers can convert this:

a = sin(x) + b * (sin(x));

into this:

t = sin(x);
a = t + b * t;

avoiding the double calculation of sin(x) (which is relatively expensive to calculate).

It's possible they won't do that in the code you quote, though. For example, if they are integers, that operation isn't v = y, because the first assignment will round off the division result. Or maybe compilers will try hard to make sure if you asked for floating point inaccuracies, you get them :)

And of course, this doesn't remove the fact that optimized-out by the compiler or not, that code is stupid.

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Please use "Reply" or "Quote" buttons on posts, instead of "reply to this thread". Keep the posts linked together ("X is a reply to Y").

*ROFL* +1...

Hey, every post has a [+] button.

(which nobody uses)

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Please use "Reply" or "Quote" buttons on posts, instead of "reply to this thread". Keep the posts linked together ("X is a reply to Y").

*psst* *psst* (avoicefromtheshadows)

From my sources (that don't want their names made public) I can tell you that the performance tuning of the new app is finished, but it's not ready to be released.
Right now two major items are not finished yet:
1. native support for GPU computing on the soon-to-be-released Bitboys Avalanche 3D chips
2. port to GNU Hurd (upcoming release in 2009)

This sounds suspiciously sarcastic.

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Please use "Reply" or "Quote" buttons on posts, instead of "reply to this thread". Keep the posts linked together ("X is a reply to Y").

I'll try and release the code sometime this weekend for people to look at, because I don't think there will be many more changes in terms of fixing any bugs that'll happen. I'm actually looking forward to people looking at the new code and giving some optimization suggestions, because right now i'm not quite sure how much more performance we can squeeze out of the integral loop.

You should make your version control system public, so people can immediately see every change you do.

(I will assume you are using some version control already...)

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Please use "Reply" or "Quote" buttons on posts, instead of "reply to this thread". Keep the posts linked together ("X is a reply to Y").

do you know what we need to do to set that up server side? i didn't know we could do that.. but for now i'll be sending out limited batches of workunits for testing until i'm confident enough to start up the assimilator and have it automatically generate work.

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/BetaTest

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Please use "Reply" or "Quote" buttons on posts, instead of "reply to this thread". Keep the posts linked together ("X is a reply to Y").

do you know what we need to do to set that up server side? i didn't know we could do that.. but for now i'll be sending out limited batches of workunits for testing until i'm confident enough to start up the assimilator and have it automatically generate work.

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/BetaTest

yep we got that working :)

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yep we got that working :)

Well, I came here specifically because someone told me "People at MilkyWay are wanting to set up test applications, but don't know how." Maybe he had very outdated info...

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Please use "Reply" or "Quote" buttons on posts, instead of "reply to this thread". Keep the posts linked together ("X is a reply to Y").

When can we expect WU's to stop being generated from the old app?

When can we expect WU's to stop being generated from the old app?

We won't be stopping the old app until the new one is working correctly.

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Actually to correct some misinformation here. The RPI computer science department as a whole does not run this project. There is myself, Nate, dave, and our 4 advisors (1 professor in the physics dept, and 3 in the cs dept). Our advisors have quite a few other projects they're working on (and I myself have another one or two). Either way, the bulk of the work on this project is done by myself, dave and nate. 3 people, not 440. We also have classes and our degree requirements to attend to. This is the nature of graduate level research.

Right now we're operating off an NSF grant which pays for our hardware, Nate, myself and a couple undergrad researchers. During the summer things are even slower due to the fact that it's summer and not everyone is around.

Either way, in the recent version of the application i've made an attempt to clean up all the legacy code and implement the optimizations that have been suggested, andI went a bit farther with a couple of my own.

I'll try and release the code sometime this weekend for people to look at, because I don't think there will be many more changes in terms of fixing any bugs that'll happen. I'm actually looking forward to people looking at the new code and giving some optimization suggestions, because right now i'm not quite sure how much more performance we can squeeze out of the integral loop.

Yeah, of course.
Btw, I am not running the whole physics departement I am working at, too. I'm just a PhD student who gets his money from a DFG grant (the equivalent of the NSF in Germany). In the moment I'm quite busy with compiling the application for the next four year period (600 something pages, there are 18 individual projects at our institute applying together for about 10 million euros). Unfortunately, I'm one of the few guys responsible for that. So we are in the same boat in some sense ;)

After the deadline for this (next friday), I will be busy with some measurements at FLASH (Free electron LASer in Hamburg). But after that, maybe I will find some time to look at the new code. But my professor really starts to urge me to finish my thesis so I cannot promise anything.

Either way, as I said, I had a very capable partner at this account who would also like to look at the new code. So if you want someone to doublecheck the improvements you implemented or just to chat about it and the further possibilities, feel free to contact me either by email (Dave has my) or PM.

Up to now, my partner and me have not shared the code (we have two independent versions). But with the new application this may change and we could come to a jointly developed version. If we are lucky, we can even convince Crunch3r to contribute (I admit, this will be hard) as his latest version (I know of) was still some 20% faster than my fastest one (the latest version of my mate was roughly the same speed as mine but it scaled a bit differently). From the algorithmic point of view, Crunch3r and my partner would be the ideal contacts, as they are both somehow experienced programmers. My advantage may be the understanding of what is actually done (I'm a physicist after all) not the implementation, but that requires some time from my side I may not have. We will see. I'm definitely looking forward to some message from you.

When can we expect WU's to stop being generated from the old app?

We won't be stopping the old app until the new one is working correctly.

Is there a way to opt out if the old one?

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Grüße vom Sänger

*ROFL* +1...

Hey, every post has a [+] button.

(which nobody uses)

Well, have you tried it over here? It's either not working, or disabled... ;)

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When can we expect WU's to stop being generated from the old app?

We won't be stopping the old app until the new one is working correctly.

Is there a way to opt out if the old one?

I guess that was one of my questions as well.

If I only wanted to run test/new applications and not the production app...

When can we expect WU's to stop being generated from the old app?

We won't be stopping the old app until the new one is working correctly.

Is there a way to opt out if the old one?

I guess that was one of my questions as well.

If I only wanted to run test/new applications and not the production app...

I only wanted to run the 'Test apps." as well, Is there any way to do that?

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A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory