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Posts by Grzegorz Skoczylas

1) Message boards : Number crunching : Some tasks seem never-ending. (Message 76388)
Posted 20 Sep 2023 by Grzegorz Skoczylas
Post:
For some time now, the tasks of this project have been behaving strangely from time to time. For example, at the beginning it is estimated that the whole task should take less than 2 hours to calculate. Meanwhile, after more than 2 hours of calculation, it turns out that more than 23 days are still needed to complete the calculation and this time keeps increasing!

I understand that calculation algorithms can be complex. However, I believe that in a situation like this, where there is no chance of completing these calculations in a reasonable amount of time, such a task should terminate such an activity on its own, rather than wasting the power of my processor and my electricity bills on worthless calculations that nobody will need for anything after such a long time.

It would probably be possible to implement some kind of watchdog to force the abandonment of calculations in such situations.

I have already had several such situations on two different computers. One such task I aborted after more than 24 hours of calculation. A few others – after a few hours.

One of those cases: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-6UbrvuVOs91uJylDOo-u4ztubtPZvaH/view?usp=sharing
2) Message boards : Number crunching : Isn't this a waste of my CPU resources? (Message 69112)
Posted 23 Sep 2019 by Grzegorz Skoczylas
Post:
The website http://dell.com/support informs that all drivers are up to date.

It seems to me that other projects also use the GPU, but they don't have such problems.
3) Message boards : Number crunching : Isn't this a waste of my CPU resources? (Message 69090)
Posted 20 Sep 2019 by Grzegorz Skoczylas
Post:
Today is 20 September. In the BOINC Manager I see among others two MilkyWay tasks with the following data:

  • Task #1: progress 44.758%, elapsed 6d 02:33:44, remaining: 7d 12:50:53, deadline 24 September, 04:04:47
  • Task #2: progress: 20.537%, elapsed 3d 05:55:39, remaining: 12d 13:25:52, deadline: 25 September, 23:37:01


Does it make any sense to continue these tasks? After all, it looks like there is no chance that they will be completed before the deadline!

I still have similar problems with the tasks of the MilkyWay. Apart from MilkyWay, I also carry out tasks of several other projects (Asteroids, Einstein, SETI). No other project has such problems.

The two computers on which the MW tasks are calculated are more or less equally loaded, i.e. there are no periods of significantly higher load. What's more, one of these computers does nothing else almost all the time.

The problem is with the Milkyway@home Separation 1.46 application.

It looks as if the MilkyWay has a problem with the correct estimation of the complexity of tasks.
It seems to me that it makes no sense to calculate the tasks long after the deadline.





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