I know this is silly and I have been crunching since 1999 but what are the different work units type and what should they be crunched with my 17 920 CPU or my 2 galaxy GTX 460 @768 memory GPU. I read about vlar and shorties and astropulse are there more?

---

There are two types of applications: Multibeam (MB) and Astropulse (AP).

So there are basically MB and AP workunits.

MB workunits have a property called the angle range (AR) that vastly influences processing. VLAR are 'very low angle range' - those units are atm not going to NVidia GPUs because they were found to process very badly there, often causing huge (screen) lags, making some systems impossible to use or even crashing them. 'shorties' VHAR are on the other end of the spectrum - very high angle range. They process very fast and are issued with very short deadlines accounting for that fact.

Running stock you could crunch MB on the GPUS and MB+AP on the CPUs.
Running optimised (Lunatics) the same - there is a beta app to run AP on the NVidia GPU via OpenCL, but it has an issue with newer drivers.

As you are already using optimised apps you'd only want to look into why you don't seem to be getting any GPU tasks.

Thank you
Very informative I am now schooled.
In November my power supply burned up and I was running my 2 video cards and doing AP and MB on both video cards as well as my i7 920 CPU and had a rack of 35000. So I had to fall back on an older CPU that at one time had a q6600 but the CPU went bad and I put a celeron in it until I built my i7 machine. I rma the psu until then I started to use the celeron which had a low rac. I replaced the celeron with a q8400 and it had a rac of 3000 it went up a little when I used the 210 video card with a 450 psu which could not run my 2 460 cards. Cooler master replaced my power supply. I just started to run my i7 again and I wanted to see what the rac would be without the video cards. Then I will start with the video cards. So I have read about the NV cards and the vlar wu and shorties and ghost wu and people using rescheduler etc.

So what are ghost wu?

---

So what are ghost wu?

Ghost WU are something that mostly happens when the bandwidth is maxxed out.

Your host asks for work. The scheduler assigns work (it shows up on your web tasklist) but that reply gets lost. So your host never actually recieves the order to download and crunch those tasks. They are 'ghosts'.

If 'resent lost results' is enabled, each time your host asks for work it sends along a list of what it has and the scheduler checks that against what you should have. If some are missing on your host, it reissues them to you. A side effect is that work may show up as 'timed out' with impossibly short deadlines. Those are in fact cancelled units. Your host asked for work for CPU and got assigned some VLAR. it doesn't receive them. It then asks for GPU work. The scheduler notices that you should have those units. At the same time those units have been deemed unsuitable for the NVidia GPU. Instead of checking whether you are asking for CPU work as well and directing them there, those units are timed out. (and resent to a different host at a later time).

Ghost WUs are WUs that are assigned to your computer by the Seti scheduler but not downloaded by your computer.

Your computer makes a work request, the scheduler issues WUs to it. But for some reason, comms fail at that point, and your computer does not successfully download them. So, the Seti servers show that your computer has that work, but your computer does not have it there to crunch.

Right now, there should not be many ghosties, because the 'resend' feature is turned on (thankfully). This feature compares the WU list your computer sends to Seti when requesting work, and if WUs are in the list for that computer on the Seti servers, but your computer does not include them in the work request list, they should be sent to you again. You may see a response to a work request in the Boinc messages saying 'resending lost tasks'. If the resend feature was not enabled, those would have become ghosts, and new work would have been issued instead.

EDIT....Oops, the Lady beat me...

---

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

Thanks to LadyL and Mark.

From another post "memory timmings" in which Jason talks about using different applications such sse4.1 for certain wu and ssse3x for certain wu so that got me to wondering about the different wu.

Your replies helped me understand what he was talking about.

See below.

Yeah there's a few things going on that make the best app different depending on the setup & dominant work mix. Firstly with respect to latencies, VHAR are most prone to cache thrashing, and there are different strides used to trigger the hardware prefetchers depending on the build. In the case of the SSE4.1 build, those strides are longer & so initiate fewer transactions, effectively reducing bus contention, though can be prone to starve on a lower memory subsystem performance setup, where the 'Xeon half stride' feature pulls ahead, in SSSE3x builds.

Another consideration is with the SSSE3x & SSE4.1 builds is that a major feature of those was Alex's SSSE3 hand pulsefinding optimisations, intended to deal with misaligned loads & other issues. As Intel's transistor budget rises year to year, it appears they are continuing to reduce the sensitivity to misaligned accesses, and so in some cases SSE3 code can be a better choice due to its inherent lower instruction count & complexity.

As it stands, one of my long term goals is to integrate many of the builds to a single build per platform, which will use the best code path available for hot functions on a given chip. The way things are going, this may end up being controlled via a static dispatch mechanism controlled by an external bench utility & advanced user configurable parameters. The exact form this should take isn't completely clear yet, though certainly there are indications that some sub-functions involved at different weights by angle range do perform differently depending on the task angle range content (FFT lengths etc), so it will likely end up more complex than 'use SSE3 for this...' etc.

Jason

---

does anyone else here seem amused that the astropulse WU's are designated as ap.XXX...wu why does an astropulse wu need the wu on the end. Is that an artifact from back when it was being instituted?

---

In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

wow sweet awesome

I almost have 1 million of credits and I'm just starting to understand what I've done and I've made so far since 3-4 months :P

Can I ask more explanations ?

about : AR (Angle range) along with VLAR (Very Low Angle range) - VHAR (Very High Angle range).

My misunderstanding comes from when i try to figure our what is an "Angle range", the picture that comes in my mind is our eye with a telescope versus the horizon (Low) or directly over our head (High). => which is totally a wrong picture since we are talking about frequencies.

What is an "Angle range" inside a "frequency" ?

Angle Range is what the Telescope is doing, A VLAR is when the telescope is fixed to a single point in Space, Note the Earth is Rotating, so the telescope is moving to track that single point in space,
a Normal AR task is where the telescope is stationary, as the Earth rotates the telescope tracks across the sky, a Very High AR task is where the telecope is being motored across the sky,

Claggy

I know when I have a vlar wu just by looking at my task but how can I tell if I get a vhar wu or a ghost wu.

---

PS EDIT : if i say '' the telescope which at (or at which - sorry my english /cry) the radar is linked'' it is not a radar that record the frequencies ? and not a telescope ? because a telescope = it's for pictures , and what we are recording are sounds - frequencies ? so : a radar. no ?

We are using radio waves. A radio telescope (Arecibo in Puerto Rico) only collects radio waves. That is what we are analyzing with our computers.

Steve

---

Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

I know when I have a vlar wu just by looking at my task but how can I tell if I get a vhar wu or a ghost wu.

One way that you can find the angle range is by open the work unit in something such as notepad. Where you will find <true_angle_range> followed by the value such as <true_angle_range>0.37454123643124</true_angle_range>.

EDIT: As I use Fred's reschedule program I can see the number of each kind of tasks that my machine has. You could use it just for that without using any of the reschedule functions if you wanted.

To tell if you have "ghost" tasks. You can check the count of the tasks on your machine vs. the number the on your machines tasks pages on the website. If the in progress number is larger than the count on your machine then you have "ghost" tasks. When the servers are enabled to send out lost tasks you don't have to worry about ghosts. At the moment this is enabled.

---

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

I know when I have a vlar wu just by looking at my task but how can I tell if I get a vhar wu or a ghost wu.

One way that you can find the angle range is by open the work unit in something such as notepad. Where you will find <true_angle_range> followed by the value such as <true_angle_range>0.37454123643124</true_angle_range>.

EDIT: As I use Fred's reschedule program I can see the number of each kind of tasks that my machine has. You could use it just for that without using any of the reschedule functions if you wanted.

To tell if you have "ghost" tasks. You can check the count of the tasks on your machine vs. the number the on your machines tasks pages on the website. If the in progress number is larger than the count on your machine then you have "ghost" tasks. When the servers are enabled to send out lost tasks you don't have to worry about ghosts. At the moment this is enabled.

So what angle ranges are for vlar and intermediate angle range and vhar?

---

I found this

Notice that the angle range of this wu is 0.65xxx so it would be considered a "high" angle range when compared to a "normal" AR of 0.41/0.42 Also note that this wu would take about 1/3 less time to crunch than a "normal" AR unit.

http://www.boinc-wiki.info/SETI@Home_Enhanced_FAQ#How_do_I_find_what_the_Angle_Range_of_a_work_unit_is.3F

So a normal is 0.41-0.42
So a vhar is above 0.42
So a vlar is below 0.41

---

I found this

Notice that the angle range of this wu is 0.65xxx so it would be considered a "high" angle range when compared to a "normal" AR of 0.41/0.42 Also note that this wu would take about 1/3 less time to crunch than a "normal" AR unit.

http://www.boinc-wiki.info/SETI@Home_Enhanced_FAQ#How_do_I_find_what_the_Angle_Range_of_a_work_unit_is.3F

So a normal is 0.41-0.42
So a vhar is above 0.42
So a vlar is below 0.41

But this wu is <true_angle_range>0.17057585438786</true_angle_range> would be a vlar but it is not marked as vlar so I guess that is not a true and fast rule observed so if had got sent to an nv card it would have problems.

---

I found this

Notice that the angle range of this wu is 0.65xxx so it would be considered a "high" angle range when compared to a "normal" AR of 0.41/0.42 Also note that this wu would take about 1/3 less time to crunch than a "normal" AR unit.

http://www.boinc-wiki.info/SETI@Home_Enhanced_FAQ#How_do_I_find_what_the_Angle_Range_of_a_work_unit_is.3F

So a normal is 0.41-0.42
So a vhar is above 0.42
So a vlar is below 0.41

But this wu is <true_angle_range>0.17057585438786</true_angle_range> would be a vlar but it is not marked as vlar so I guess that is not a true and fast rule observed so if had got sent to an nv card it would have problems.

IIRC the servers use 0.13 at the threshold the flag tasks as VLAR. The range for normal is much broader than .41 or .42. I think 0.42 was the desired AR for the classic S@H and kind of the center road. If you have seen the charts that have been made by various people where they plot time and AR you can get a good sense of where the VHAR and VLAR ranges are. Often the graph looks like a sideways S that is flattened out in the middle.

Edit: Here is one of the graphs Raistmer did. Not quite a flattened S like I was thinking, but shows where many AR tasks fall.
http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/4914/mbtasks.png

---

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

The kitties only know two types of WUs......those they have crunched, and those they have yet to crunch.

---

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

Mark,
Surely its 11 types?

Those I've crunched
Those I've yet to crunch
and
Those you've crunched for me ;-)

---

Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

The kitties only know two types of WUs......those they have crunched, and those they have yet to crunch.

What about WUs that are being crunched?

---

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

Mark,
Surely its 11 types?

Those I've crunched
Those I've yet to crunch
and
Those you've crunched for me ;-)

:)

There's only 10 types, really...

Dang, I was thinking just what you already just posted Rob...

Sorry! Brain Fart...

Lt
edited...

Mark,
Surely its 11 types?

Those I've crunched
Those I've yet to crunch
and
Those you've crunched for me ;-)

Well, the kitties luv all flavors of kibble.

---

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