I am little confused over the credit being assigned or calculated for AstroPulse 4.35 work units as it does not appear to match what had been previously communicated. I tried searching for an answer in other forums but was unable to wade or sort through the large number of comments and posts.

I am running stock SETI@home and recently completed my first AstroPulse 4.35 task. I recall seeing information earlier that although AstroPulse tasks would take significantly longer the basic credit would be the same as for tasks of other type. Even allowing for differences due to the changing correction factors, the credit granted for AstroPulse work units is significantly less (about 60% less) than other work units or at least on the basis of per CPU time. Is there something that I don’t understand, conditions have changed or perhaps because the persons most likely to have reported AstroPulse 4.35 tasks are more likely to also have been running an application to reduce the time spent completing tasks?

I tried posting this on the AstroPulse message board but could not get this to go through and number crunching has a different focus.

Thank You

Seem to be having similar problem. Have done 2 so far and both credit claims were about 50% to 55% less then what they should be by normal WU standards. To make things better, the first unit I crunched granted me 0 credits. That was 64 hours of my computers time for nothing. I am fearful of the next one. That one took almost 95 hours. RAC has dropped by about 1000 credits in the last 2 weeks. Pretty harsh. Anyone know of a way to inquire about getting SOME credits from past astropulse WUs? Thank you for your time.

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My RAC has dropped well over 1,000 recently. My first AP unit blew up sometime during the night and actually forced a reboot of the computer on its own. Got up to find that WU gone, not to mention the credit.

It's beginning to be no fun any more.

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John

Seem to be having similar problem. Have done 2 so far and both credit claims were about 50% to 55% less then what they should be by normal WU standards. To make things better, the first unit I crunched granted me 0 credits. That was 64 hours of my computers time for nothing. I am fearful of the next one. That one took almost 95 hours. RAC has dropped by about 1000 credits in the last 2 weeks. Pretty harsh. Anyone know of a way to inquire about getting SOME credits from past astropulse WUs? Thank you for your time.

Replied to you in the other thread too.

Eric will apply credit retroactively as soon as the server issues are straightened out. One of the problems was with the validators for AstroPulse which caused lots of people to not receive their credit.

Since RAC is calculated in a decaying daily average, and since SETI workunits only took a few hours whereas AP workunits can take days, RAC is bound to decline due to the difference. The credit for AstroPulse is actually more accurate than SETI's as I understand it from Eric's post.

It's beginning to be no fun any more.

Its still fun for me, but then again, the science is my first priority over credits (though credit can be fun). I'm still happy to help contribute my CPUs power to science and something useful regardless of the credit I receive.

I do not believe that I adequately communicated my original question. I am not concerned with the issue of getting bigger numbers for credit, moving up in standings or cross-project arguments and competition. My question was intended to be more of equal pay for equal work within the same project. Even allowing for a 10-15% reduction in the rate at which credit is granted within SETI@home I was wondering, not arguing, why the rate of credit for Astropulse would be so much less than elsewhere within SETI@home.

Assuming that “Eric’s post” refers to Message 789160 - Posted 28 Jul 2008 22:26:17 UTC, Last modified: 28 Jul 2008 23:18:53 UTC we see a discussion for the issues concerning a 10-15% reduction not 55-60%.

Again, I am not trying to argue about increasing the rate of credit, I am trying to understand why AP 4.35 credit is reduced so much more. I believe and trust that other issues with not granting credit will be addressed and corrected.

It looks to me like you're running an optimized SETI@home app, which give you about double the credit per CPU second that the stock app does. Until you get an optimized astropulse that can do the same, you're probably stuck with the reduction. Although David says he plans to add the application selection option to the preferences "soon," so you could choose not to run Astropulse in the near future.

Les, I can't look at your machines, so I can't see if you're running the stock SETI@home or not.

BTW, the most recent credit multipliers are 0.887 for S@H and 0.993 for Astropulse.

Eric

Seem to be having similar problem. Have done 2 so far and both credit claims were about 50% to 55% less then what they should be by normal WU standards. To make things better, the first unit I crunched granted me 0 credits. That was 64 hours of my computers time for nothing. I am fearful of the next one. That one took almost 95 hours. RAC has dropped by about 1000 credits in the last 2 weeks. Pretty harsh. Anyone know of a way to inquire about getting SOME credits from past astropulse WUs? Thank you for your time.

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@SETIEric@qoto.org (Mastodon)

Eric Said: Les, I can't look at your machines, so I can't see if you're running the stock SETI@home or not.


Thank you for the response. You have a lot on your hands right now which makes me appreciate the response even more.

I have never run anything other than the stock SETI@home and have been pretty good about trying to have the latest official version running. I just never had the desire to research, install and run a customized application.

However for the first time last week I changed the preferences to hide my computer which was probably not one of my wiser decisions due to the timing of asking my question. I just reset this to show my computers but am running Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9300 @ 2.50GHz [x86 Family 6 Model 23 Stepping 7] Microsoft Windows Vista Home Edition, Service Pack 1, (06.00.6001.00). Not overclocked, etc., typically running three CPU for SETI@home. Currently running 6.2.16.

I originally was a bit reluctant to pose the question as I did not want to participate in the argument that more credit is better. I appreciate all of the hard work that everyone has done and the too little Thanks sent to everyone working on SETI@home. At the risk of sounding patronizing only twice have I unintentionally run out of work since 1999 and am pretty well content trying to run quietly in the background. It is just when I see something on my machine that doesn’t seem to match that I bother others with my silly little questions.

Thank You

Les - It looks like your computers are still hidden.

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Wendy



Click Here for BOINC FAQ Service

Les - It looks like your computers are still hidden.

The computers page is cached on the server. It'll take anywhere from an hour to 24 hours to clear that. Until the cache clears, his computers show as hidden, even if he has unhidden them.

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Jord - forgot about that...

guess I've been working too long today....

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Wendy



Click Here for BOINC FAQ Service

Les,

I looked at your machine stats. You are correct. You are getting 0.00687 credits per cpu second with SETI@home and 0.00470 credits per cpu second with Astropulse. That's about 32% less.

Here's my best theories why. Your Core2 has more cache than the average machine, which makes it much better at running SETI@home. More cache isn't as big of an advantage with Astropulse because the working set is significantly larger. It's also likely that SETI@home is using SSE/SSE2/SSE3 routines while Astropulse doesn't have specially optimized routines to use SIMD instruction sets.

In other words, your machine does more per cycle than the average machine on SETI@home. But on Astropulse you aren't doing as much more per cycle than the average machine.

Eric

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@SETIEric@qoto.org (Mastodon)

Les,

I looked at your machine stats. You are correct. You are getting 0.00687 credits per cpu second with SETI@home and 0.00470 credits per cpu second with Astropulse. That's about 32% less.

Here's my best theories why. Your Core2 has more cache than the average machine, which makes it much better at running SETI@home. More cache isn't as big of an advantage with Astropulse because the working set is significantly larger. It's also likely that SETI@home is using SSE/SSE2/SSE3 routines while Astropulse doesn't have specially optimized routines to use SIMD instruction sets.

In other words, your machine does more per cycle than the average machine on SETI@home. But on Astropulse you aren't doing as much more per cycle than the average machine.

Eric

Thank you for taking the time to look at this on what must be an extremely busy day. In retrospect I should have waited a couple of days to first let things settle down.

Thank You and hope that things quickly settle down for the hard working staff.

Seem to be having similar problem. Have done 2 so far and both credit claims were about 50% to 55% less then what they should be by normal WU standards. To make things better, the first unit I crunched granted me 0 credits. That was 64 hours of my computers time for nothing. I am fearful of the next one. That one took almost 95 hours. RAC has dropped by about 1000 credits in the last 2 weeks. Pretty harsh. Anyone know of a way to inquire about getting SOME credits from past astropulse WUs? Thank you for your time.

Replied to you in the other thread too.

Eric will apply credit retroactively as soon as the server issues are straightened out. One of the problems was with the validators for AstroPulse which caused lots of people to not receive their credit.

Since RAC is calculated in a decaying daily average, and since SETI workunits only took a few hours whereas AP workunits can take days, RAC is bound to decline due to the difference. The credit for AstroPulse is actually more accurate than SETI's as I understand it from Eric's post.

I have since received credit for my AstroPulse WU. Thank you for your response and your time. With this new info, it will be far easier to be patient and let you guys work out the bugs.

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I am little confused over the credit being assigned or calculated for AstroPulse 4.35 work units as it does not appear to match what had been previously communicated. I tried searching for an answer in other forums but was unable to wade or sort through the large number of comments and posts.

I am running stock SETI@home and recently completed my first AstroPulse 4.35 task. I recall seeing information earlier that although AstroPulse tasks would take significantly longer the basic credit would be the same as for tasks of other type. Even allowing for differences due to the changing correction factors, the credit granted for AstroPulse work units is significantly less (about 60% less) than other work units or at least on the basis of per CPU time. Is there something that I don’t understand, conditions have changed or perhaps because the persons most likely to have reported AstroPulse 4.35 tasks are more likely to also have been running an application to reduce the time spent completing tasks?

I tried posting this on the AstroPulse message board but could not get this to go through and number crunching has a different focus.

Thank You

what the big thing about credit????
just do it cause you want to

I am little confused over the credit being assigned or calculated for AstroPulse 4.35 work units as it does not appear to match what had been previously communicated. I tried searching for an answer in other forums but was unable to wade or sort through the large number of comments and posts.

I am running stock SETI@home and recently completed my first AstroPulse 4.35 task. I recall seeing information earlier that although AstroPulse tasks would take significantly longer the basic credit would be the same as for tasks of other type. Even allowing for differences due to the changing correction factors, the credit granted for AstroPulse work units is significantly less (about 60% less) than other work units or at least on the basis of per CPU time. Is there something that I don’t understand, conditions have changed or perhaps because the persons most likely to have reported AstroPulse 4.35 tasks are more likely to also have been running an application to reduce the time spent completing tasks?

I tried posting this on the AstroPulse message board but could not get this to go through and number crunching has a different focus.

Thank You

what the big thing about credit????
just do it cause you want to

As you look to be new at this I shall explain. First: if I didnt want to be doing this, I would not. Had over 12,000 WUs before they ever went to the credit thing. Second: what the credits do is let us have more fun and do more then just let the computer work. With credits, we can make teams and then compete with other teams and so on. Thus taking something rather mundane (crunching numbers) and making it fun. Third: it is also a motivator. How high can I get my RAC so that our team can beat that other team!!!! This makes me and others like me, want to crunch more. Thus doing more good for SETI. I hope that this has been helpful in understanding the mind of a person who worries about credits.

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As you look to be new at this I shall explain. First: if I didnt want to be doing this, I would not. Had over 12,000 WUs before they ever went to the credit thing. Second: what the credits do is let us have more fun and do more then just let the computer work. With credits, we can make teams and then compete with other teams and so on. Thus taking something rather mundane (crunching numbers) and making it fun. Third: it is also a motivator. How high can I get my RAC so that our team can beat that other team!!!! This makes me and others like me, want to crunch more. Thus doing more good for SETI. I hope that this has been helpful in understanding the mind of a person who worries about credits.

FWIW, I agree with your points 100%. Yes, I also do this because I believe that 'we are not alone', but the points you bring up are also a big part of it.

Unfortunately, the current server problems have me thinking of going elsewhere. I've never seen things this bad. Less than 2 months ago my RAC was over 3,600. As I write this it's less than 2,000. No fun.

For doubters, just check to the left and see how long I've been around...

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John

I am little confused over the credit being assigned or calculated for AstroPulse 4.35 work units as it does not appear to match what had been previously communicated. I tried searching for an answer in other forums but was unable to wade or sort through the large number of comments and posts.

I am running stock SETI@home and recently completed my first AstroPulse 4.35 task. I recall seeing information earlier that although AstroPulse tasks would take significantly longer the basic credit would be the same as for tasks of other type. Even allowing for differences due to the changing correction factors, the credit granted for AstroPulse work units is significantly less (about 60% less) than other work units or at least on the basis of per CPU time. Is there something that I don’t understand, conditions have changed or perhaps because the persons most likely to have reported AstroPulse 4.35 tasks are more likely to also have been running an application to reduce the time spent completing tasks?

I tried posting this on the AstroPulse message board but could not get this to go through and number crunching has a different focus.

Thank You

what the big thing about credit????
just do it cause you want to

As you look to be new at this I shall explain. First: if I didnt want to be doing this, I would not. Had over 12,000 WUs before they ever went to the credit thing. Second: what the credits do is let us have more fun and do more then just let the computer work. With credits, we can make teams and then compete with other teams and so on. Thus taking something rather mundane (crunching numbers) and making it fun. Third: it is also a motivator. How high can I get my RAC so that our team can beat that other team!!!! This makes me and others like me, want to crunch more. Thus doing more good for SETI. I hope that this has been helpful in understanding the mind of a person who worries about credits.

While credits are fun, you should never lose sight of the real goal.

I love collecting credits and I love seeing a high RAC and high total credit, but I wouldn't care less if they reset all the credits to zero, even if it were just my account that lost them all. As fun as they are, credits are just meaningless numbers and are not enough to make me quit (and I should hope the same would go for any volunteer).

Just my $.02.

As you look to be new at this I shall explain. First: if I didnt want to be doing this, I would not. Had over 12,000 WUs before they ever went to the credit thing. Second: what the credits do is let us have more fun and do more then just let the computer work. With credits, we can make teams and then compete with other teams and so on. Thus taking something rather mundane (crunching numbers) and making it fun. Third: it is also a motivator. How high can I get my RAC so that our team can beat that other team!!!! This makes me and others like me, want to crunch more. Thus doing more good for SETI. I hope that this has been helpful in understanding the mind of a person who worries about credits.

FWIW, I agree with your points 100%. Yes, I also do this because I believe that 'we are not alone', but the points you bring up are also a big part of it.

Unfortunately, the current server problems have me thinking of going elsewhere. I've never seen things this bad. Less than 2 months ago my RAC was over 3,600. As I write this it's less than 2,000. No fun.

For doubters, just check to the left and see how long I've been around...

That's interesting you should say that. I may not have been around as long as you, but I have read discussions from Matt Lebofsky (who has been on the SETI Administrative team since before it opened to the public) and he has stated that with SETI Classic, there were literally weeks of downtime (we've only had a couple weekends here and there). The only catch was that the average machine completed a WU in about a week, so very few machines noticed the servers being down for an entire week or more.

So while things may seem bad now, they have definitely been far worse. I would be sorry to hear anybody go, but people must do what they think is best.

Me? I'm not about to abandon ship just because of a few hurdles, major or minor. I know this'll pass just like all the others and we'll be back up and running in no time.

snip.....................
BTW, the most recent credit multipliers are 0.887 for S@H and 0.993 for Astropulse.

Eric

Earlier in this thread Eric posted this as part of a posting.
Can someone explain what these two numbers do? What do they mean?

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