Is anyone else experiencing a reduction in credit within the last couple of hours? All of a sudden my 3 machines are all underclaiming against my wingmen by an average of .50 credits. All machines are running v8.

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It gets Freakier :O

here is one of yours, where both yourself and wingman are running ak_v8 SSSE3x Win32 Build 41:

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/workunit.php?wuid=303248166

Both report the same flops, and multiplier ...yet the claim shows different... something screwy or purposely changed at the server end I'd suggest.

Jason

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

I also have one that fits in the same category:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/workunit.php?wuid=304737461
I used AK V8 and claimed 19.11 - my "Anonymous" wingman used stock app and claimed 18.59, difference of .52 credits. Both machines returned 4 spikes.

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Just checked... discovered same behavior here...

wuid=303990264

Maybe another "side effect" of the AstroPulse enabling changes?

Looks like Jason got it right, the server page is showing some problems. Think I'll just wait till its fixed before I send any more workunits in so I don't cost people credit.

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Going back through my latest results I've found up to 10 credits difference in the claim between myself and my wingman for some units. Sometimes I'm the high one sometimes I'm the low one (about 50/50).

There appears to be no consistency between CPU type, client version or operating system as to which is higher or lower. One thing I did notice was significant differences in the Flop counter after the first four places.

Maybe "line noise" or similar is randomly affecting some uploads from the server so that the unit requires a little bit of extra crunching for the client to make sense of it ?

Brodo

There is a modification to the scheduler that just went into effect this afternoon to try to adjust credits better to match benchmark scores. The differences here are because one result was returned with the old scheduler and one with the new one. The differences should be less noticeable after this point.

Eric

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@SETIEric@qoto.org (Mastodon)

Hmmm...

I assume you're talking about the benchmark scores for the theoretical reference machine?

Alinator

Why, I have to ask, is why anyone would want to compare credits, or anything else, to benchmark scores.

As I pointed out on Beta, two computers, a Q6600 and a Athlon X2 6000+ on same OS, have similar benchmark scores BUT the Q6600 completes an AP unit in under half the time of the AMD. Similar performance is also observed doing MB units.

Isn't Astropulse based on benchmarks and not credit multipliers ?

It's been some time since I've been on Beta so correct me if I'm wrong...


I assume the new scheduler should be set to only Astropulse and not MB...

That might be causing the problem....

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Isn't Astropulse based on benchmarks and not credit multipliers ?

It's been some time since I've been on Beta so correct me if I'm wrong...


I assume the new scheduler should be set to only Astropulse and not MB...

That might be causing the problem....

The latest AP app and the previous one have credits calculated on FLops. But due to the way AP works, i.e. total FLops is known, this basically means the same fixed credits for all AP units.

Some of the differences mentioned here are piffling compared to the over 1,400 my machine claimed, when awarded only 700-odd. Now THAT'S a big diff!
(Of course, we're all in it for the science, so I'm at least prepared to "sacrifice" a few credits). after all, it's not like they actually have a tradeable value, is it?

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Some of the differences mentioned here are piffling compared to the over 1,400 my machine claimed, when awarded only 700-odd. Now THAT'S a big diff!
(Of course, we're all in it for the science, so I'm at least prepared to "sacrifice" a few credits). after all, it's not like they actually have a tradeable value, is it?

The existing BOINC benchmark in the view of many here is completely bogus when comparing actual work completed over various processors and operating systems, which is why I believe the project went to counting flops.

An adjustment to better even out the MB credits over differing work unit angles would be good and fair.

The cynical side of me thinks it is more likely an attempt to bring MB credit to the level of AP, on which I have previously stated my views in the now sticky Astropulse Rumor thread.


UncleVom

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I understood it well enough..?
Now the benchmarks are back again in the calculation of the Credits?
So it's no longer recommened to use Crunch3r's BOINC V6.1.0 client with little bit higher benchmark-results?

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I understood it well enough..?
Now the benchmarks are back again in the calculation of the Credits?
So it's no longer recommened to use Crunch3r's BOINC V6.1.0 client with little bit higher benchmark-results?

I suspect it won't make a bit of difference what the benchmark says [at your end], as the server still uses flopcount for the calculation, but was probably tweaked slightly to bring (server end) calculation to closer reflect the 'benchmark system', meaning a 'reference PC benchmark' rather than redefining the credit calculation process. [That's how I interpret Eric's post anyway...]

Jason

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

My AK v8.0 result was compared with stock app and I got 2.2 less credits.. :-(
wuid=300706526
Uhh.. what's going on?

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My AK v8.0 result was compared with stock app and I got 2.2 less credits.. :-(
wuid=300706526
Uhh.. what's going on?

Yep, looks like one reported before the change, and one after again, as described in Eric's post. This time your claim is higher ... go figure

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

I understood it well enough..?
Now the benchmarks are back again in the calculation of the Credits?
So it's no longer recommened to use Crunch3r's BOINC V6.1.0 client with little bit higher benchmark-results?

Benchmark could mean "the benchmark routines in BOINC" but that's unlikely because we all know how well that worked. Glad it's gone.

"Benchmark" can also mean "the standard we measure against" -- the hypothetical 100-cobblestone machine is a "benchmark."

So, they've tweaked the multipliers a tiny bit to keep everything comparable.

If they'd changed back to Benchmark * Time, the credits would be wildly different across different CPUs, not just a few percent.

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I'm not sure if this is relevant but I can tell you that even my smal units. 16+ are returning a,mot half a point less than those they are being compared with and this seems to be consistant.. What I return as 16.21 is being reported by the other person as 16.67.... hope I'm not killing someone else's credit. My 18.77 is returned as 19.30 by my wingman

Larger WUs have larger discrepencies...see below
928970335 4454214 24 Jul 2008 17:57:34 UTC 26 Jul 2008 8:38:01 UTC Over Success Done 18,076.27 49.30 49.30
928970336 3875073 24 Jul 2008 17:57:25 UTC 25 Jul 2008 8:04:21 UTC Over Success Done 20,799.38 50.69 49.30

Could it be the task duration correction factor is incorrect due to the last CPU benchmarks run? Each of my compos were showing at least 50million ops per second slower. When I reran benchmarks the task duration correction factor corrected itself.... We will see.
The above is a full 1.39 lower than my wingman's. Seems the larger the WU the larger the discrepancy.

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Only ran one WU on the comp that was consistantly lower. This time my comp had the higher return as compared to my wingman. Think those CPU benchmarks have something to do with it. If you're like me and never shut down, or load BOINC at as soon as you boot while other system processes are loading, it can throw off the speed SETI sees your comp crunching at. I guess it can fluctuate.
928436480 3259798 24 Jul 2008 7:56:15 UTC 26 Jul 2008 9:04:16 UTC Over Success Done 10,639.28 71.84 71.84
928436479 4449925 24 Jul 2008 7:56:08 UTC 27 Jul 2008 1:46:49 UTC Over Success Done 6,073.87 73.41 71.84

UPDATE: Uploaded one WU from each comp and it seems the results are consistant. Even though one unit had a narrower margin it came back even with the wingman this time compared to the past day's results.

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