Looks like my pending units keep on piling up without credit. I wonder if something "broken" at SETI.

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What is the amount you normally have?
As of today I have 60,000 pendings not unusual. I hover around 50 to 60 thousand on average.

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[/quote]

Old James

I think the agreed position is that pendings in most accounts is at least three times RAC.

Mine at the moment is about 4 * RAC. But it can vary quite a bit depending on server status, size of cache etc.

My ratio is up a bit in the last few days....
Currently 4.7845966

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

6.4 and change. I had one of the crunchers start failing on a graphics card so it's been offline occasionally and that's dropped the RAC.

On a previous thread we all concluded something between 4 and 6 was pretty standard.

Regards,

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My ratio used to be about 1-2 times RAC, now it is 4 times and climbing.

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I'm currently at 3.966799507 (or thereabouts). For whatever reason, my RAC seems to be fluctuating somewhat lately; same (kind of) problem as Miklos; my Pendings seem to be piling up - maybe the others doing the same units are just taking longer?

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I'm currently at 5.1350
My quicker Host (8 CPU + 260 GPU) now have a pending / RAC ratio of 5.3323
I started it on 22 April and now has 80'000 Pending, 15'000 RAC and 343'628 done.
This host has a Average turnaround time of 5.35 days. After 21 days this host should be near at the normal productivity RAC (I have calculated about 20~22K RAC) but it is still at 15'000 because - I suppose - of the 80'000 pending.

In the server status page I see also that "Results out in the field" is 6,185,869
This is very high! I think it's about double than some week or month ago but I don't have any way to be sure.
See also Result turnaround time (last hour average) 122.13 hours (I remember it was less but I'm not sure). It is about 5 days so my host's turnaround time is syncronized with the global average time.

I think that or a lot of people have increased the work buffer in last months or something is happening in the project.

At last, I see the HOSTs with GPU have higher Pending/RAC Ratio.

Bye,
Franz

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Yust one idea:
Most of GPU users are running the optimized "V12 modification by Raistmer".
So the "VLAR autokill enabled" is ON.
Some of them (as I) are using also the Reschedule 1.9 program.
In this case I don't "autokill" anything and I crunch all WU's I receive.
I move from CPU to GPU some work ad move VLAR from GPU to CPU.
But if other crunchers autokills the same VLAR of the same Workunit, I'll wait a long time (in progress until deadline) untill someone doesn't autokill the VLAR that I have crunched at next reassignement.
This can explain high pending and growing "Results out in the field".

What do you think?

Franz

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Another problem is people quitting and leaving WUs to sit until they time out. Whenever SETI has a problem we seem to lose a lot of people. A lot of my pending is from right around the time when there were problems.

On another note, it might be an idea to make it easier for people to quit. I had one machine I shut down that left behind a few WUs. I did detach first but did not reattach so the servers never got the word that machine was gone. If there was a button that could be used to say hey, I'm leaving, thanks for all the fish....uhh credits, then we might be able to get whatever WUs they have left on their machines back out in the field and crunched a lot sooner.

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PROUD MEMBER OF Team Starfire World BOINC

Id have to say That I agree with Francesco that a lot of cruncehers upped their cache to ten days. Me I run a 0.75 day cache. Even my old P4 has 20 pendings.

Yes I run out of work once in awhile, But thats when you blow out the dust bunnies.

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Old James

Mine is 5.6809105 (x RAC) and a 3 day's cache, more then enough, especially with a few projects all together.
Just started MW on ATI-GPU's.

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But if other crunchers autokills the same VLAR of the same Workunit, I'll wait a long time (in progress until deadline) untill someone doesn't autokill the VLAR that I have crunched at next reassignement.

Why would you have to wait for a deadline? If a task is killed, it's reported back immediately and gets sent out again. The only thing you'll have to wait for is that it works its way up someone's (possibly ten-day) cache.

Gruß,
Gundolf

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Computer sind nicht alles im Leben. (Kleiner Scherz)

SETI@home classic workunits 3,758
SETI@home classic CPU time 66,520 hours

This discussion raises a question I have wondered about. What is the reason for GPU users to need/want an autokill feature for VLAR workunits? Unless these workunits don't function correctly with GPU crunchers for some reason, it seems to me a credit is a credit. Does it really make a difference between running a lot of low credit workunits as opposed fewer high credit workunits? And yes, I am a CPU cruncher only.

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This discussion raises a question I have wondered about. What is the reason for GPU users to need/want an autokill feature for VLAR workunits? Unless these workunits don't function correctly with GPU crunchers for some reason, it seems to me a credit is a credit. Does it really make a difference between running a lot of low credit workunits as opposed fewer high credit workunits? And yes, I am a CPU cruncher only.

Yes, credit is credit... but, in essence each SaH task pays a semi-fixed rate, and the VLAR tasks take 3-10 times longer than the other tasks, so, you get 1/3 to 1/10 the going rate per second by doing the VLAR on the GPU ... it is like using a sports car to haul a pile of dirt ... you can get there, but it would be faster with a truck ...

So, by killing the long running tasks that take an hour to an hour and a half to run on a GPU and concentrating on those tasks that only take 5-10 minutes to run on the same GPU, work per hour (RAC is a crude measure of this) is much higher... we call that efficiency ...

Why would you have to wait for a deadline? If a task is killed, it's reported back immediately and gets sent out again. The only thing you'll have to wait for is that it works its way up someone's (possibly ten-day) cache.

Gruß,
Gundolf

Sure? You are right, and the system should act so but I'm not sure at all.
I think that resend of killed task to other cruncher is done after the weekly maintenance.
Can some one tell us haw the real procedure is?

By the way: I see
Results returned and awaiting validation 6,043,837
Results out in the field 6,284,723

Why are awaiting for validation?

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Why would you have to wait for a deadline? If a task is killed, it's reported back immediately and gets sent out again. The only thing you'll have to wait for is that it works its way up someone's (possibly ten-day) cache.

Gruß,
Gundolf

Sure? You are right, and the system should act so but I'm not sure at all.
I think that resend of killed task to other cruncher is done after the weekly maintenance.
Can some one tell us haw the real procedure is?

When a reissue is created it goes at the end of the "Results ready to send" queue, so for this project under normal conditions is sent out within a few hours.

By the way: I see
Results returned and awaiting validation 6,043,837
Results out in the field 6,284,723

Why are awaiting for validation?

Mostly because the wingmate's result has not yet been received. That's the total "pending", some may be inconclusives too.

                                                              Joe

When a reissue is created it goes at the end of the "Results ready to send" queue, so for this project under normal conditions is sent out within a few hours.

Ok, I have seen now that you are right.
After 1 hour the task was reassigned to a new user.
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/workunit.php?wuid=610657396

Mostly because the wingmate's result has not yet been received. That's the total "pending", some may be inconclusives too.

Ok, clear! But why it's so high? Weeks ago it wasn't so.
Francesco

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...But why it's so high? Weeks ago it wasn't so.

probably because I started doing SaH work again ... I broke every last little thing ...

By the way: I see
Results returned and awaiting validation 6,043,837
Results out in the field 6,284,723

Update:
Results out in the field 6,086,264
Results returned and awaiting validation 6,824,424
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So ... Out in the field now are less (now 6,086,264 was 6,284,723)
and Returned and waiting are more (now 6,824,424 was 6,043,837)

My "production" (let us call it so) is alwasy the same but pending is growing.

Bye
Franz

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