Hello ! Could anyone tell me what a work unit that ends in VLAR is ? What does that mean ? Needless to say, I'm not a computer freak, and I don't understand all the things that you people talk about, but I've seen this, "VLAR" on several work units that I have received, and just want to know what it means.
Thanks for any info you may give.

Hello ! Could anyone tell me what a work unit that ends in VLAR is ? What does that mean ? Needless to say, I'm not a computer freak, and I don't understand all the things that you people talk about, but I've seen this, "VLAR" on several work units that I have received, and just want to know what it means.
Thanks for any info you may give.

Jeff...
I can give you a partial answer.

It stands for 'very low angle range'.
Which means that when the signals for that WU were recorded at the Arecibo radio telescope, it was not moving very much and was 'staring' at a small section of the universe.
By the same token, VHAR stands for 'very high angle range', and means that the telescope was scanning much more quickly during the recording period.

Since all Seti data 'piggybacks' on whatever else is being done with the telescope, the project has no control over where it is pointed or how fast it is scanning, and this give us different kinds of data to process.

Hope that helps.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

And since, once upon a time, there have been computing devices (some nVidia GPUs) that wouldn't cope well with those VLAR tasks, those tasks are marked as such and no longer sent to those devices. :-)

Gruß,
Gundolf

I am getting vlars on my Seti app by Dotsch on my Solaris Virtual Machine but not on the Lunatics app on my Linux host.
Tullio

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I am getting vlars on my Seti app by Dotsch on my Solaris Virtual Machine but not on the Lunatics app on my Linux host.
Tullio

VLARs on CPUs are not a problem. You could see them on any machine. Right now I have 0 VLAR tasks on my machines at home.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

I see ! Hey, thanks to all of you for the info. I just wondered what it ment, and now, thanks to you people, I KNOW ! As stated earlier, I don't understand all of this stuff, so I have to ask a stupid question every now and then. Thanks for setting me straight on this !!

There are no stupid questions. It is better to ask, because a search didn't answer it, then not asking at all.

I am sure, it answered something a lurker was looking for.

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Pluto will always be a planet to me.

Seti Ambassador
Not to late to order an Anni Shirt

I see ! Hey, thanks to all of you for the info. I just wondered what it ment, and now, thanks to you people, I KNOW ! As stated earlier, I don't understand all of this stuff, so I have to ask a stupid question every now and then. Thanks for setting me straight on this !!

Since a dumb/stupid question is a question that is never asked, I will pose my own. In the last twelve years I have never seen a task tagged as VHAR, are these the quickies that everyone complains about clogging the pipe at times?

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I don't buy computers, I build them!!

I see ! Hey, thanks to all of you for the info. I just wondered what it ment, and now, thanks to you people, I KNOW ! As stated earlier, I don't understand all of this stuff, so I have to ask a stupid question every now and then. Thanks for setting me straight on this !!

Since a dumb/stupid question is a question that is never asked, I will pose my own. In the last twelve years I have never seen a task tagged as VHAR, are these the quickies that everyone complains about clogging the pipe at times?

Them would be the little rascals.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

I see ! Hey, thanks to all of you for the info. I just wondered what it ment, and now, thanks to you people, I KNOW ! As stated earlier, I don't understand all of this stuff, so I have to ask a stupid question every now and then. Thanks for setting me straight on this !!

Since a dumb/stupid question is a question that is never asked, I will pose my own. In the last twelve years I have never seen a task tagged as VHAR, are these the quickies that everyone complains about clogging the pipe at times?

Them would be the little rascals.

Thanks Matt that explains a whole lot. I guess it wasn't such a dumb/stupid question after all.

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I don't buy computers, I build them!!

I see ! Hey, thanks to all of you for the info. I just wondered what it ment, and now, thanks to you people, I KNOW ! As stated earlier, I don't understand all of this stuff, so I have to ask a stupid question every now and then. Thanks for setting me straight on this !!

Since a dumb/stupid question is a question that is never asked, I will pose my own. In the last twelve years I have never seen a task tagged as VHAR, are these the quickies that everyone complains about clogging the pipe at times?

Them would be the little rascals.

Thanks Matt that explains a whole lot. I guess it wasn't such a dumb/stupid question after all.

No dumb questions around here....

And BTW....I be Mark, not Matt. Matt's a lot higher up in the chain of command than myself...LOL.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

I see ! Hey, thanks to all of you for the info. I just wondered what it ment, and now, thanks to you people, I KNOW ! As stated earlier, I don't understand all of this stuff, so I have to ask a stupid question every now and then. Thanks for setting me straight on this !!

Since a dumb/stupid question is a question that is never asked, I will pose my own. In the last twelve years I have never seen a task tagged as VHAR, are these the quickies that everyone complains about clogging the pipe at times?

Yes.

VHAR, VLAR and normal range WU's are all the same data size, VHAR's need less processing, on my machine about 3 min compaired with 15 to 20 min for a normal WU, so it takes 5 to 7 times the amount of data to be passed through the pipe for the same amount of processing time at this end.

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Kevin

Since a dumb/stupid question is a question that is never asked, I will pose my own. In the last twelve years I have never seen a task tagged as VHAR, are these the quickies that everyone complains about clogging the pipe at times?

Them would be the little rascals.


Uh Oh.... Just checked my work to be done, and I have quite a few of the, "Pipe Clogging Rascals". :) Better get out the plunger people !! Thanks for that info to. I've heard about the problems with overloading the servers, but never knew that these, "LITTLE" work units were the cause of the prolem. I'm going to have to come to this message area more often. I'm learning a LOT from you guys and gals ! Thanks !!

Since a dumb/stupid question is a question that is never asked, I will pose my own. In the last twelve years I have never seen a task tagged as VHAR, are these the quickies that everyone complains about clogging the pipe at times?

Them would be the little rascals.


Uh Oh.... Just checked my work to be done, and I have quite a few of the, "Pipe Clogging Rascals". :) Better get out the plunger people !! Thanks for that info to. I've heard about the problems with overloading the servers, but never knew that these, "LITTLE" work units were the cause of the prolem. I'm going to have to come to this message area more often. I'm learning a LOT from you guys and gals ! Thanks !!

Yeah...my top rig pounds through these in a couple of minutes each on the Cuda cards. Hard to keep enough work coming back in to replace them in the cache.
They are bandwidth pounders.
And either Joe or Richard had posted that due to the observation schedules at Arecibo, it looks like we are stuck with a lot of them for a while to come.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

And either Joe or Richard had posted that due to the observation schedules at Arecibo, it looks like we are stuck with a lot of them for a while to come.

That one was Joe. Message 1120081

Edit - having said that, Joe describes the A2130 GALFACTS project as producing only VHAR "shorties", and A2130 is the only project described as using the ALFA receiver on or around 01 April 2011. Yet I've got a couple of good block allocations of mid-AR work from the current 01ap11ac. Things may not be as bad as they sounded. I suspect the ALFA receiver may still be able to pick up data at times other than scheduled observations, possibly even sometimes during maintenance.

OK, here's another question. Since these little work units are causing the plumbing to jam up, would it not be better to send these work units to people like me, who are just using one computer ? My computer is just a plain old H.P. Media Center PC. Nothing fancy about it, and it only does 2 or 3 work units a day. I'm sure that there are others who are working for the project with this type of equipment. Now, I don't know if this would help, but if people like me got those little work units, and you people that have the Super Computer set up, got the other work units, would this help in any way, and if so, is there any way it could be done ? It takes my computer about 2 1/2 hours to complete one of the small work units.

OK, here's another question. Since these little work units are causing the plumbing to jam up, would it not be better to send these work units to people like me, who are just using one computer ? My computer is just a plain old H.P. Media Center PC. Nothing fancy about it, and it only does 2 or 3 work units a day. I'm sure that there are others who are working for the project with this type of equipment. Now, I don't know if this would help, but if people like me got those little work units, and you people that have the Super Computer set up, got the other work units, would this help in any way, and if so, is there any way it could be done ? It takes my computer about 2 1/2 hours to complete one of the small work units.

Sounds as a good idea to me, don't know if it's possible or worth it, but if there was an option to (de)select receiving VHARs on the options page I would like it :)

Right now, all we have is the option in Efmers' tool to either send VHARs to the CPU or to allow it to move them to the GPU if needed. It helps a little.

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PROUD MEMBER OF Team Starfire World BOINC

Well, if this COULD be done, I'd gladly sign up for it and do all the little WU's I could handle. My computer runs about 12 hours a day, so I could take care of few of them. Maybe someone who knows what they are doing could figure out how to do this and we could give it a try ?? Hey... don't look at me ! I'm an old geezer that has trouble getting his email ;P

And speaking of those VLAR/VHAR/Normal units - regardless of perfomance issues, do they have the same value? I don't mean the points earned but the actual scientific value. At first glance it would appear that a quick sweep of a wide field of view would be less detailed but, on the other hand, you may need enough reference points along the arc for the processing. Could anyone comment please?