I just noticed something about the runtimes on the work units. When fetching the work units, it says that it's fetching like 4 to 8 seconds of work. But my computer takes like, 1 to 7 hours to process it. I'm just wondering, is my computer too slow, and actually bogging down the SETI project rather than contributing anything? It's an Athlon XP 3200+, with 512MB of memory, with a smaller shell replacing explorer.exe, and no applications besides Internet Explorer, and occasionally Outlook running. (That's why I haven't upgraded my RAM yet, I just don't need any more performance). So tell me, is there a possiblity that my computer is actually bogging the project down?

I just noticed something about the runtimes on the work units. When fetching the work units, it says that it's fetching like 4 to 8 seconds of work. But my computer takes like, 1 to 7 hours to process it. I'm just wondering, is my computer too slow, and actually bogging down the SETI project rather than contributing anything? It's an Athlon XP 3200+, with 512MB of memory, with a smaller shell replacing explorer.exe, and no applications besides Internet Explorer, and occasionally Outlook running. (That's why I haven't upgraded my RAM yet, I just don't need any more performance). So tell me, is there a possiblity that my computer is actually bogging the project down?

you have plenty of speed for this and many other projects, My PII 500 is still crunching and being productive.

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I just noticed something about the runtimes on the work units. When fetching the work units, it says that it's fetching like 4 to 8 seconds of work. But my computer takes like, 1 to 7 hours to process it. I'm just wondering, is my computer too slow, and actually bogging down the SETI project rather than contributing anything? It's an Athlon XP 3200+, with 512MB of memory, with a smaller shell replacing explorer.exe, and no applications besides Internet Explorer, and occasionally Outlook running. (That's why I haven't upgraded my RAM yet, I just don't need any more performance). So tell me, is there a possiblity that my computer is actually bogging the project down?

There are people with PII 233's crunching. They are not crunching fast but they are crunching. I personally have a quad 550mhz server crunching. It is taking almost 20 hours per unit, but it is contributing.

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I just noticed something about the runtimes on the work units. When fetching the work units, it says that it's fetching like 4 to 8 seconds of work. But my computer takes like, 1 to 7 hours to process it. I'm just wondering, is my computer too slow, and actually bogging down the SETI project rather than contributing anything? It's an Athlon XP 3200+, with 512MB of memory, with a smaller shell replacing explorer.exe, and no applications besides Internet Explorer, and occasionally Outlook running. (That's why I haven't upgraded my RAM yet, I just don't need any more performance). So tell me, is there a possiblity that my computer is actually bogging the project down?

While you may be requesting 4 or 8 seconds of work, with the exception of moisy WUs I don't believe anyone completes them that fast. What is happening is that your system is trying to fulfill your cache requirements, regardless of how small your request is you will still get a full WU which depending on your processor and the WU angle will take from an hour to 30 hours (I had a PII 300 with 128 M RAM that used to crunch Seti-Beta until it died - it took near 30 hours for some WUs).

So welcome and happy crunching!

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!!Stupidity should be PAINFUL!!

I just noticed something about the runtimes on the work units. When fetching the work units, it says that it's fetching like 4 to 8 seconds of work. But my computer takes like, 1 to 7 hours to process it. I'm just wondering, is my computer too slow, and actually bogging down the SETI project rather than contributing anything? It's an Athlon XP 3200+, with 512MB of memory, with a smaller shell replacing explorer.exe, and no applications besides Internet Explorer, and occasionally Outlook running. (That's why I haven't upgraded my RAM yet, I just don't need any more performance). So tell me, is there a possiblity that my computer is actually bogging the project down?

While you may be requesting 4 or 8 seconds of work, with the exception of moisy WUs I don't believe anyone completes them that fast. What is happening is that your system is trying to fulfill your cache requirements, regardless of how small your request is you will still get a full WU which depending on your processor and the WU angle will take from an hour to 30 hours (I had a PII 300 with 128 M RAM that used to crunch Seti-Beta until it died - it took near 30 hours for some WUs).

So welcome and happy crunching!

48 to 72 hours per WU isn't that uncommon on my PII-300 w/ 96MB RAM.

48 to 72 hours per WU isn't that uncommon on my PII-300 w/ 96MB RAM.

OOPS - just checked my old logs and found that one of my WUs on that PII 300 took over 82 hours (298,708 seconds) . Ah, short term memory loss - what a marvelous thing ;-)

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!!Stupidity should be PAINFUL!!

I just noticed something about the runtimes on the work units. When fetching the work units, it says that it's fetching like 4 to 8 seconds of work. But my computer takes like, 1 to 7 hours to process it. I'm just wondering, is my computer too slow, and actually bogging down the SETI project rather than contributing anything? It's an Athlon XP 3200+, with 512MB of memory, with a smaller shell replacing explorer.exe, and no applications besides Internet Explorer, and occasionally Outlook running. (That's why I haven't upgraded my RAM yet, I just don't need any more performance). So tell me, is there a possiblity that my computer is actually bogging the project down?

When you fetch 4 to 8 seconds of work this means that the Arecibo radiotelescope has listened 4 to 8 seconds into the sky. That is plenty of work to analyse. ;)

Your computer is fast enough to do work for SETI.

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[quote
When you fetch 4 to 8 seconds of work this means that the Arecibo radiotelescope has listened 4 to 8 seconds into the sky. That is plenty of work to analyse. ;)

Your computer is fast enough to do work for SETI.[/quote]

That's not true. Each workunit is data from 107 seconds of staring at the sky. This has nothing to do with how many seconds of work is requested. If even one second of work is requested, the Boinc Manager will receive a full workunit (when it can). Computation time has nothing to do with data collection time from the sky.

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That's not true. Each workunit is data from 107 seconds of staring at the sky. This has nothing to do with how many seconds of work is requested. If even one second of work is requested, the Boinc Manager will receive a full workunit (when it can). Computation time has nothing to do with data collection time from the sky.

So what do those 4 to 8 or any other number of seconds mean? Sorry if I told it wrong. Thought it was right. ;)

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That's not true. Each workunit is data from 107 seconds of staring at the sky. This has nothing to do with how many seconds of work is requested. If even one second of work is requested, the Boinc Manager will receive a full workunit (when it can). Computation time has nothing to do with data collection time from the sky.

So what do those 4 to 8 or any other number of seconds mean? Sorry if I told it wrong. Thought it was right. ;)

BOINC calculates how much work you should have on hand and subtracts how much you actually have. If the difference is positive by even one second it will request that amount from the Scheduler.

                                                      Joe

So what do those 4 to 8 or any other number of seconds mean? Sorry if I told it wrong. Thought it was right. ;)

Your computer keeps a "cache" of work on hand ready to process. The size of the cache can be changed, but by default it's 0.1 days (2.4 hours or 8640 seconds).

BOINC keeps an eye on how long the work you're currently doing, plus anything 'ready to run', is expected to take. When you've only got 8639 seconds' worth left, it'll ask for 1 second to top it up to the minimum.

Of course, it'll usually get a WU lasting much longer than that, which will satisfy the 'minimum cache' level for a good long time to come.

But if no work is sent, say during the weekly maintenance period, BOINC will ask again ten minutes later, asking for 601 seconds of work - assuming the estimate was accurate, and you've actually reduced the working remaining to be done by 600 seconds in those ten minutes! - and so on: after another ten minutes, it'll be asking for 1201 seconds etc.

[Actually, for the purists, the time delay is slightly over 10 minutes, and the estimates are rarely exact, so you won't see an exact progression like this - but you get the gist].

Actually, given the amount of credit you've got and the number of computers attached to your account, you're taking this pretty seriously - it's probably worth starting to read the BOINC Wiki to get some more in-depth understanding of what's going on.

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[Actually, for the purists, the time delay is slightly over 10 minutes, and the estimates are rarely exact, so you won't see an exact progression like this - but you get the gist].

Ahem, 10 min 4 seconds. It's because some users internal clock were off and it kept them in a loop of recieving the famous "last RPC too recent" message.

tony

Actually, given the amount of credit you've got and the number of computers attached to your account, you're taking this pretty seriously - it's probably worth starting to read the BOINC Wiki to get some more in-depth understanding of what's going on.

Many thanks for your explanation. I will look at Boinc-Wiki but after all it's only a hobby for me. :)

I am able to provide Seti with about 20 computers which are running nearly permanently. I have done this for about six years. I don't think that this is something special. Many others have done the same or far more. :)

Sorry again that I told Athenjan200 that 4 to 8 Seconds are telescopetime. That was wrong. ;)[Now I know]

Greetings,
Uwe

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48 to 72 hours per WU isn't that uncommon on my PII-300 w/ 96MB RAM.

OOPS - just checked my old logs and found that one of my WUs on that PII 300 took over 82 hours (298,708 seconds) . Ah, short term memory loss - what a marvelous thing ;-)

And here I thought that your extra 32MB RAM made all the difference. ;)

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I just noticed something about the runtimes on the work units. When fetching the work units, it says that it's fetching like 4 to 8 seconds of work. But my computer takes like, 1 to 7 hours to process it. I'm just wondering, is my computer too slow, and actually bogging down the SETI project rather than contributing anything? It's an Athlon XP 3200+, with 512MB of memory, with a smaller shell replacing explorer.exe, and no applications besides Internet Explorer, and occasionally Outlook running. (That's why I haven't upgraded my RAM yet, I just don't need any more performance). So tell me, is there a possiblity that my computer is actually bogging the project down?

There are people with PII 233's crunching. They are not crunching fast but they are crunching. I personally have a quad 550mhz server crunching. It is taking almost 20 hours per unit, but it is contributing.

I have three PII-200 MHz machines crunching, and I had a P-90 crunching until it died.

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BOINC WIKI