Seti Enhanced Credit Fair?

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kevint
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Message 312991 - Posted: 22 May 2006, 3:57:16 UTC - in response to Message 312835.  

RAC is in theory the rate at which credit is granted. In practice, it's pretty rough.

The fact that if you quit crunching altogether, your RAC will remain constant from the point your last WU was validated, illustrates one of the roughest edges.



This is absolutly untrue - if you stop crunching your RAC or Recent Average Credit, will start to drop and will eventually reach a 0.


Go ahead, give it a shot, stop crunching for a few days, your constant RAC will constitantly be lower every day.
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Message 313000 - Posted: 22 May 2006, 4:29:02 UTC - in response to Message 312991.  

RAC is in theory the rate at which credit is granted. In practice, it's pretty rough.

The fact that if you quit crunching altogether, your RAC will remain constant from the point your last WU was validated, illustrates one of the roughest edges.



This is absolutly untrue - if you stop crunching your RAC or Recent Average Credit, will start to drop and will eventually reach a 0.


Go ahead, give it a shot, stop crunching for a few days, your constant RAC will constitantly be lower every day.

Actually, it depends on where you look.

On the SETI site itself (or any project site) RAC does not change until the next report.

On the various stats sites, you'd have to ask the people who implemented the site.

I have a machine that was "burning in" and according to my stats on this site, it has a RAC of 38. It hasn't contacted SETI since 4/23.
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Message 313002 - Posted: 22 May 2006, 4:32:52 UTC - in response to Message 312991.  

The fact that if you quit crunching altogether, your RAC will remain constant from the point your last WU was validated, illustrates one of the roughest edges.

This is absolutly untrue - if you stop crunching your RAC or Recent Average Credit, will start to drop and will eventually reach a 0.

Go ahead, give it a shot, stop crunching for a few days, your constant RAC will constitantly be lower every day.
That turns out not to be the case--for this question. The RAC will only keep dropping so long as your pending credit results keep validating. When your pending is gone, the drop stops.

And yes, I have recently tried it. I had a couple of old Pentium III's running at 3% SETI resource share when they converted to enhanced. Needless to say, their completion rate is glacial, and their previous pending long since went away. As part of my logging I've logged their SETI RAC's daily for some weeks. As of this morning, one had shown the exact same RAC for eleven consecutive daily readouts, and the other for ten. One of them went EDF today and completed a result. So at tomorrow's readout its RAC will move for the first time in over a week, and it will move down, as the derating of the past will outweigh the credit for the new result.

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Message 313038 - Posted: 22 May 2006, 6:41:00 UTC

http://boinc-wiki.ath.cx/index.php?title=RAC for if you want to know the calculation and decay rates.
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Message 313066 - Posted: 22 May 2006, 7:38:27 UTC - in response to Message 312772.  

In case you missed it, everyone's RAC is just beginning to rapidly drop.

And in case you missed it RAC is an even more meaningless number than Whetstones. But i'm sure that won't stop people from getting all worked up about it.
Grant
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Message 313070 - Posted: 22 May 2006, 7:56:54 UTC - in response to Message 312971.  


I was commenting on sideband's lack of observation, inability to understand what he reads and lack of understanding simple facts, and was making no comment on the levelness of the credits across the BOINC projects. If sideband was to use the right app he can for a short period until the end of S4, due to finish mid June, still keep his credits/time up.

Andy


That does not answer my question. If you get 30 credits for 45 minutes work on Einstein and way less than that here, then how has enhanced made the credit system of Seti equal to that of other projects? Weren't we told that was the purpose of changing the way credits were granted? Sounds to me like they should have gone up and not down.

At the moment on Eistein you are able to take advantage of optimised applications. So bearing that in mind, Einstein, if a host is using the opptimised app, should be taken out of the comparison. All other projects will give approx the same credits/time.
If you can identify were the developers started from it sometimes gives a hint as to which cpu/OS combination works best. For instance the CPDN app is an adaption of an older program written for mainframes etc using Fortran.
So it has to be recognised that for some projects their apps are more suited to some cpu/os combinations than others. Some projects like cpu speed, some a large L2 cache (Seti) and some give better performance with large amounts of fast memory.
So if you want to chase for the maximum credits, do your research and put your computer(s) where they will gain most credits.

Andy
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Message 313112 - Posted: 22 May 2006, 10:56:51 UTC - in response to Message 312768.  
Last modified: 22 May 2006, 10:58:11 UTC

Hi,
Hello all,

*riesenseufzer*

I give up ... It's useless ...

Regards,
Carsten

Don't.


Ok, one last try ...

First off all, it's absolute irrelevant what a single user gets or what a single team gets. The stats for the entire project are important. That's the reason why I asked to explain the stats of the project and not the stats of user A or team B.


The RAC:
*Everybody* has observed a drop of the RAC for now more than 2 weeks. If the RAC really reflects the credit production in terms of "credit per day" or "credit per week" why in God's sake doesn't this reduced credit production show up in the credit graph of the project? Why in God's sake is there still a straight line in the credit graph although many people have been stating for two weeks now that their RAC is in free fall? Everybody observed the drop of the RAC. If the RAC really is as important as some of you want that it is why don't the total credits of the project show any evidence?

Regards,
Carsten
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Grant (SSSF)
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Message 313115 - Posted: 22 May 2006, 11:01:14 UTC - in response to Message 313112.  

Everybody observed the drop of the RAC. If the RAC really is as important as some of you want that it is why don't the total credits of the project show any evidence?

Because RAC is a meaningless, useless, irrelevant number. But still they get all worked up over it.

Grant
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Message 313131 - Posted: 22 May 2006, 11:32:11 UTC - in response to Message 313070.  


That does not answer my question. If you get 30 credits for 45 minutes work on Einstein and way less than that here, then how has enhanced made the credit system of Seti equal to that of other projects? Weren't we told that was the purpose of changing the way credits were granted? Sounds to me like they should have gone up and not down.

At the moment on Eistein you are able to take advantage of optimised applications. So bearing that in mind, Einstein, if a host is using the opptimised app, should be taken out of the comparison. All other projects will give approx the same credits/time.
If you can identify were the developers started from it sometimes gives a hint as to which cpu/OS combination works best. For instance the CPDN app is an adaption of an older program written for mainframes etc using Fortran.
So it has to be recognised that for some projects their apps are more suited to some cpu/os combinations than others. Some projects like cpu speed, some a large L2 cache (Seti) and some give better performance with large amounts of fast memory.
So if you want to chase for the maximum credits, do your research and put your computer(s) where they will gain most credits.

Andy


Maybe my question is unanswerable, I don't know, but everybody is just dancing all around it. If there are still MAJOR differences between each projects credit granting, then what has the change here accomplished? If the intent was to equalize the projects it appears to have failed. Otherwise there would not be projects with higher granted credit for me to move to.


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Message 313139 - Posted: 22 May 2006, 11:44:59 UTC - in response to Message 313115.  

Everybody observed the drop of the RAC. If the RAC really is as important as some of you want that it is why don't the total credits of the project show any evidence?

Because RAC is a meaningless, useless, irrelevant number. But still they get all worked up over it.

RAC is only meaningless if it means nothing to the person using it. Since RAC is meaningless to you (though not to me) let's pick another average to look at. My daily average for each week has always been within 10-15% of my RAC so let's look at it. Oh my goodness, my daily average for the week is dropping at about the same rate as my RAC. Okay, let's look at my daily production numbers. Hmmm, daily production has dropped much faster than my RAC or my daily average. Either way you look at it my claim is the same.

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Message 313140 - Posted: 22 May 2006, 11:46:27 UTC

This new Enhanced is strange... i had trux calibrating client + optimized seti client before...

for a 33 mins of work i was claiming about 32 credits so about 1 CREDIT per minute... it was calibrating client so i was claiming about as much as i deserve... now for 2:20 so about 140 minutes i am claiming 64 credits... so not even 0.5 credit / minute.... 2 times less than before.... where the problem?

calibrating client was made on the fair calculations...
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Message 313143 - Posted: 22 May 2006, 11:50:27 UTC - in response to Message 313140.  

where the problem?

Go read how Enhanced is calculating the credits here. It's no longer based on benchmarks times run time of result, but on the actual floating point operations per second that your CPU does.

And thus, a calibrating client is of no use, as the benchmarks are no longer used.
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Message 313173 - Posted: 22 May 2006, 12:31:19 UTC - in response to Message 313140.  

This new Enhanced is strange... i had trux calibrating client + optimized seti client before...

for a 33 mins of work i was claiming about 32 credits so about 1 CREDIT per minute... it was calibrating client so i was claiming about as much as i deserve... now for 2:20 so about 140 minutes i am claiming 64 credits... so not even 0.5 credit / minute.... 2 times less than before.... where the problem?

calibrating client was made on the fair calculations...


There is no problem. The calibrating client and all the rest of the "optimised" clients are mostly designed to claim unfair amounts of credit per amount of time, they might claim an appropriate amount per task though.
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Message 313182 - Posted: 22 May 2006, 12:48:55 UTC - in response to Message 313139.  

Hi,
My daily average for each week has always been within 10-15% of my RAC so let's look at it. Oh my goodness, my daily average for the week is dropping at about the same rate as my RAC. Okay, let's look at my daily production numbers. Hmmm, daily production has dropped much faster than my RAC or my daily average. Either way you look at it my claim is the same.

My daily average, my RAC, my daily production numbers, my claim, my, my, my, ...

Again: It's absolutely irrelevant what you get. You are a tiny little piece of the whole picture. Why do you think this tiny little piece represents the whole project? If you look at the whole picture the credits per day haven't changed. Only this is relevant.

Regards,
Carsten
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Message 313186 - Posted: 22 May 2006, 12:50:30 UTC - in response to Message 313131.  


Maybe my question is unanswerable, I don't know, but everybody is just dancing all around it. If there are still MAJOR differences between each projects credit granting, then what has the change here accomplished? If the intent was to equalize the projects it appears to have failed. Otherwise there would not be projects with higher granted credit for me to move to.


The only valid comparison of granted credits vs time spent crunching is using unoptimized clients on all projects. If that's roughly even, averaged across different processors, then the playing field is as level as possible. If optimizing allows you to increase your credits:time ratio and the project allows this, then that's a bonus.

Einstein allows the optimizations and so does seti enhanced. So you're still free to take advantage of the bonus with both. However, as the stock applications improve, the advantage of optimizing becomes less, so your bonus goes down. If the optimized apps get better and we gain more speed improvements, the the bonus for using them will go up, and if the stock application gets faster while the optimized clients stay roughly the same, the bonus goes down.
XaaK


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Message 313196 - Posted: 22 May 2006, 13:01:37 UTC - in response to Message 312971.  

That does not answer my question. If you get 30 credits for 45 minutes work on Einstein and way less than that here, then how has enhanced made the credit system of Seti equal to that of other projects? Weren't we told that was the purpose of changing the way credits were granted? Sounds to me like they should have gone up and not down.


The change by SETI@Home has made the credit-system roughly equal for the 94% that is not running optimized Einstein@home-application...

There does the 94% come from? According to BoincStats last stats-update, Einstein@home is responsible for 11.71% of daily production, if you expect half of this is from users that is not running optimized application, it means 94.145% of BOINC's total daily production is not from someone running optimized Einstein@home.


Anyway, isn't optimized Einstein@home at the moment giving an even bigger speed-up than optimized "old" v4.18 SETI@Home was giving? If so, the moment Einstein@home releases "official" optimized applications, or switches to "flops-counting", the drop in granted credit/hour for the optimizers will likely be even bigger in Einstein@home than the drop here in SETI@Home...

So bottom line is, short-term Einstein@home will give an advantage over other projects, but "soon" this advantage will be removed, meaning users will get roughly the same credit/hour regardless of BOINC-project.
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Message 313228 - Posted: 22 May 2006, 14:00:08 UTC - in response to Message 313182.  
Last modified: 22 May 2006, 14:03:35 UTC

Hi,
My daily average for each week has always been within 10-15% of my RAC so let's look at it. Oh my goodness, my daily average for the week is dropping at about the same rate as my RAC. Okay, let's look at my daily production numbers. Hmmm, daily production has dropped much faster than my RAC or my daily average. Either way you look at it my claim is the same.

My daily average, my RAC, my daily production numbers, my claim, my, my, my, ...

Again: It's absolutely irrelevant what you get. You are a tiny little piece of the whole picture. Why do you think this tiny little piece represents the whole project? If you look at the whole picture the credits per day haven't changed. Only this is relevant.

Regards,
Carsten

Why can no one here respond without saying how meaningless it is or how meaningless I am. Each person who takes the time, equipment and money to support the project is important to the project. Yet there are many on this board who seem to think otherwise. You guys are NOT the project, nor do you speak officially for the project, so you and your rhetoric are meaningless to me.



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Message 313247 - Posted: 22 May 2006, 14:17:54 UTC - in response to Message 313228.  

Hi,
My daily average for each week has always been within 10-15% of my RAC so let's look at it. Oh my goodness, my daily average for the week is dropping at about the same rate as my RAC. Okay, let's look at my daily production numbers. Hmmm, daily production has dropped much faster than my RAC or my daily average. Either way you look at it my claim is the same.

My daily average, my RAC, my daily production numbers, my claim, my, my, my, ...

Again: It's absolutely irrelevant what you get. You are a tiny little piece of the whole picture. Why do you think this tiny little piece represents the whole project? If you look at the whole picture the credits per day haven't changed. Only this is relevant.

Regards,
Carsten

Why can no one here respond without saying how meaningless it is or how meaningless I am. Each person who takes the time, equipment and money to support the project is important to the project. Yet there are many on this board who seem to think otherwise. You guys are NOT the project, nor do you speak officially for the project, so you and your rhetoric are meaningless to me.



Sarge.........Just looking at your stats here I see that you have moved up 50 places in the last month, 11 in the last week and 2 in the last day. I don't see the justification of your claim!




Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....
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Message 313262 - Posted: 22 May 2006, 14:36:46 UTC - in response to Message 313228.  
Last modified: 22 May 2006, 14:38:39 UTC


Why can no one here respond without saying how meaningless it is or how meaningless I am. Each person who takes the time, equipment and money to support the project is important to the project. Yet there are many on this board who seem to think otherwise. You guys are NOT the project, nor do you speak officially for the project, so you and your rhetoric are meaningless to me.



IMHO it is unfair :)

1. Taking into account the pre-enhanced scores - the rules (ex. RAC) have changed but previous scores were not cancelled.
2. The credits amount per day has changed making the whole competition (for those who care) not transparent.

But who cares - as long as we doing it for science sake :>
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Message 313275 - Posted: 22 May 2006, 14:54:58 UTC - in response to Message 313262.  
Last modified: 22 May 2006, 14:57:45 UTC

[...]
2. The credits amount per day has changed making the whole competition (for those who care) not transparent.

Great care has been taken to attempt to keep the s@h-enhanced scoring the same as was awarded for the standard s@h application. Ofcourse this will be less than was achieved for those that followed and used the improvements offered by all the optimised clients. Those optimisations are now incorporated into s@h-enhanced so that everyone takes advantage of those optimisations for generating more science. To keep everything fair, the credits have been rationalised to what they were before the x6 optimised clients inflated the credits rates by x6 of what most other participants (unoptimised) were being awarded.

I consider this to be very fair for everyone.

But who cares - as long as we doing it for science sake :>

Well, a lot of people do seem to care.

My priority is very much for the Science and for the fun of doing this.

Happy crunchin',
Martin
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