Thank you all for your help and suggestions (even snarky Ned).

What it all boils down to is that "that's the way it is" and that's that. Too bad (that's why it's called Software ENGINEERING - you make incremental changes as time goes on to correct (IMO) bugs - or unintended features).

I've only been a programmer since 1964 or so - so what do I know? But I will tell you that ego shouldn't be involved in programming decisions. ("That's the way it is" isn't a fact, just ego sticking out).

But I certainly understand BOINC better now for this thread, so, again, thanks.

Okay, you've got the qualifications (I haven't been coding as long as you have, I didn't start until 1969), work through the various goals and see if you can come up with another idea.

I don't have any ownership, I've just gone through the exercise myself more than once....

There are a number of goals that must be met that make scheduling a lot more difficult.

First is "don't miss deadlines" -- that means you may want to be able to devote all cores to just one project for a while to stay ahead of the clock.

The second is "keep the cache full" -- and work may not always be available.

You got hit by the other trap, which is that the benchmarks (and the project estimates) just aren't suitable for every PC architecture -- that some processors do the same work in fewer clocks.

... and you've got people like me with a 900 "share" for SETI, a 99 share for SETI BETA (which frequently sees deadline pressure because of the low share) and 1 for BOINC Alpha.

So, basically, BOINC does what it has to do to meet deadlines and keep the caches full, and if you take a snapshot, BOINC will always be correcting one way or another to correct for tight deadlines or failed downloads.

It's an interesting programming problem. JM7 can fill you in on all the rules better than I can.

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Wasn't it Arthur C. Clarke who said any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature?

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Wasn't it Arthur C. Clarke who said any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature?

No, but I'd be happy to quote you saying that -- without attribution of course. :-)

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Thank you all for your help and suggestions (even snarky Ned).

What it all boils down to is that "that's the way it is" and that's that. Too bad (that's why it's called Software ENGINEERING - you make incremental changes as time goes on to correct (IMO) bugs - or unintended features).

I've only been a programmer since 1964 or so - so what do I know? But I will tell you that ego shouldn't be involved in programming decisions. ("That's the way it is" isn't a fact, just ego sticking out).

But I certainly understand BOINC better now for this thread, so, again, thanks.

It doesn't sound to me like any of the items mentioned here are bugs or unintended features. If I understand all this correctly, BOINC is working as intended, its more a matter of temporary short-term imbalance due to insufficient work from one (or possibly several) projects and will even out as time goes on.

If all projects were sending out work in a perfect world, then the time allocation per project would be right-on I would imagine. Is this the case? If so, then this is a matter of some difficulties with one project (SETI in particular in this case) and will be resolved once those issues are fixed; therefore, this is not a bug nor is it an unintended feature. In so far as my computer is currently doing work, I can reasonably expect that SETI will "catch-up" later when all is well right? If so, I'm happy with all that.

Most of the way that the CPU scheduler works flows from the design requirements.

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BOINC WIKI

Wasn't it Arthur C. Clarke who said any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature?

I wish he had, then we could all go home every day knowing we all somehow added some new features to the world.

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