Short WU : Good or Evil ?

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Profile Fred E.
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Message 1305573 - Posted: 12 Nov 2012, 22:04:11 UTC

Jaye Ellen wrote:
All right, next question is (I run SETI on 4 different laptops) what can I do to my settings to more equitably perform the tasks in a timely manner? I had always thought my settings had nothing to do with the actual scheduling, but apparently that's just one MORE example of my ignorance !!! Also, lately, the amount of work stored on my various machines is dwindling. I run an i-7, an i-5, an Intel Win7 and a win Vista. The Win7 machine seems to be the slowest of the collection. As far as workload, SETI@Home is the main application I run. My partner is an avid Gamer with her i-7 and her machine is set to stop BOINC when she is gaming but except for that SETI has the run of all 8 processes. We just topped 1.9 million work units (It was 1.2 million till I put the i-7 online maybe 3 months ago.) Anyway, I like to watch the units running on the computers and watching the BOINC screen saver. I'm a medically retired Air Force member, last involved with Satellite Communications via a 60 foot dish in Sunnyvale, CA, in Silicon Valley.

Jaye, the i7 and the i5 are being held to 100 cpu tasks each due to the temporary task limits of 100 cpu tasks per computer. The other laptops have even less tasks. Not sure why - perhaps it is your settings or hours of operation. The i7 has a usable gpu, but has never crunched a gpu task. Maybe it's because of the gaming. If you want to use it, make sure "Use Nvidia GPU" is selected in your Set@Home preferences on the website. I also saw your comments in your profile, so if you want some troubleshooting help, open a thread for some help. Congrats on the 1.9 Mil credits!
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Profile Jaye Ellen

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Message 1305610 - Posted: 12 Nov 2012, 23:12:03 UTC - in response to Message 1305573.  

I thought the GPU was being used, another fine example of my brain inability to process things. I thought the settings were done for GPU usage, but I will go back into my settings to see if I can remedy the problem. I suffer from traumatic brain injury caused by fat in the blood after shattering my left femur and Tib - Fib in a nasty car accident and a month in a coma. Things just don't work like they are supposed to. Thank you for help and suggestions.
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Profile Jaye Ellen

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Message 1305826 - Posted: 13 Nov 2012, 20:39:54 UTC - in response to Message 1305610.  

I went into my settings and corrected the snafu on GPU usage --- the i-7 said "0/.199 cpu and the GPU were working, so I guess I finally did something right !!! I'm still seeing more "high priority" tasks, specifically on the Vista machine. It still seems to finish either 2 or 4 or 6 tasks per day, and I am nut sure what to change to make it stop.
Plugging away, slow but sure. --- oh, all these Priority tasks seem to be shortys, all due in the near future, but none in the past. Go figger !!!
Jaye Ellen, Kitty in training
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Claggy
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Message 1305829 - Posted: 13 Nov 2012, 20:42:37 UTC - in response to Message 1305826.  

I went into my settings and corrected the snafu on GPU usage --- the i-7 said "0/.199 cpu and the GPU were working, so I guess I finally did something right !!! I'm still seeing more "high priority" tasks, specifically on the Vista machine. It still seems to finish either 2 or 4 or 6 tasks per day, and I am nut sure what to change to make it stop.
Plugging away, slow but sure. --- oh, all these Priority tasks seem to be shortys, all due in the near future, but none in the past. Go figger !!!
Jaye Ellen, Kitty in training

What cache settings are you using?

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Profile Jaye Ellen

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Message 1305833 - Posted: 13 Nov 2012, 20:54:52 UTC - in response to Message 1305829.  

Cache settings ??? Where and to what?
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Profile Fred J. Verster
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Message 1305834 - Posted: 13 Nov 2012, 20:55:04 UTC - in response to Message 1305829.  
Last modified: 13 Nov 2012, 21:02:49 UTC

Well, another thing about 'shorties', the need about the same CPU-time as the
VLARS or ~0.35AR WUs. And more disk I/O, memory I/O, GPU loading, etc.

And do cause a lot of Net Traffic, IMH they're not 'good', compaired to 0.4 ARs.

(If I do compaire this with Einstein, 10x the bandwidth is used and storage, a few GBytes are normal, they've far less users and would experience the same
trouble if having 10x more users).
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David S
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Message 1305839 - Posted: 13 Nov 2012, 21:10:13 UTC - in response to Message 1305826.  

I went into my settings and corrected the snafu on GPU usage --- the i-7 said "0/.199 cpu and the GPU were working, so I guess I finally did something right !!! I'm still seeing more "high priority" tasks, specifically on the Vista machine. It still seems to finish either 2 or 4 or 6 tasks per day, and I am nut sure what to change to make it stop.
Plugging away, slow but sure. --- oh, all these Priority tasks seem to be shortys, all due in the near future, but none in the past. Go figger !!!
Jaye Ellen, Kitty in training

Has anyone ever explained to you what high priority means? Boinc normally processes tasks in the order it downloads them: FIFO, first in, first out. However, if it senses that any particular task will not get done before its deadline if it waits its turn in FIFO order, Boinc will run that task in high priority. This is likely to happen if your computer unexpectedly stops crunching for a period of time, or if you are running more than one project and one (or more) of them has very short deadlines for its work.

IMHO, the criteria for high priority need to be tweaked a bit, but it mostly works.

David
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Claggy
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Message 1305840 - Posted: 13 Nov 2012, 21:14:26 UTC - in response to Message 1305833.  
Last modified: 13 Nov 2012, 21:18:34 UTC

Cache settings ??? Where and to what?

Eithier under your Computing preferences, or locally in Boinc Manager (setting Computing preferences in Boinc Manager overides the Web Computing Preferences):


Network usage

Maintain enough tasks to keep busy for at least  3 days 
(max 10 days).

... and up to an additional 0.01 days  


Boinc 7 has a newly rewritten scheduler, settings similar to as shown above should be used, (Boinc 6 had them the other way around), having a too high first figure will cause tasks to go into high priority.

BoincFaq: BOINC 7

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Profile Jaye Ellen

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Message 1305851 - Posted: 13 Nov 2012, 22:04:16 UTC - in response to Message 1305840.  

Guess I've overdone this aspect: 5 days and 5 additional days !!!
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Claggy
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Message 1305855 - Posted: 13 Nov 2012, 22:10:55 UTC - in response to Message 1305851.  

Guess I've overdone this aspect: 5 days and 5 additional days !!!

Try 5 and 0.01, your settings would have cached 10 days total, then wouldn't have asked for work again until it got down to a total of 5 days worth of cache left,
at the moment it is best we do small requests of work, big requests will likely time out, and produce ghosts.

Claggy
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Profile Jaye Ellen

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Message 1305885 - Posted: 13 Nov 2012, 23:03:22 UTC - in response to Message 1305855.  

will do, Claggy !!! Thank you very much for this mini tutorial.


Jaye Ellen
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Message boards : Number crunching : Short WU : Good or Evil ?


 
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