I have 6 laptops where 4 are exclusively for SETI@home which generate 3,000 - 4,000 credits a day. While the total credits increase daily, the daily average credit seems to be decreasing on most machines. These are on average 3 years old with 2 or 4 cores and where possible, I have increased the RAM to the max which varies from 8 - 2 GB. Processor speeds are 1.6 GHz to 2.6 GHz
Any explanation?
TIA George

---

I have 6 laptops where 4 are exclusively for SETI@home which generate 3,000 - 4,000 credits a day. While the total credits increase daily, the daily average credit seems to be decreasing on most machines. These are on average 3 years old with 2 or 4 cores and where possible, I have increased the RAM to the max which varies from 8 - 2 GB. Processor speeds are 1.6 GHz to 2.6 GHz
Any explanation?
TIA George

One word?

'CreditNew'

if it's recent it's probably the new guppi tasks changing the steady state.

Credit is essentially a near chaotic system - not worth worrying about, you get what you get, you can't change it anyway (unless you have enough leverage to get a complete revamp of the credit system) and you can't buy anything with it.

imagine a running competition where the timekeeper is an elderly arthritic gentleman whose attention wanders. you might get clocked any odd time.

and now imagine a huge leaderboard/timetable and everybody aiming for the top spot.

cynical? me?

---

A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read. (Mark Twain)

CreditNew (aka "CreditScrew") has a basic design flaw that causes it to reduce credit per task progressively as processor performance increases. Add to that the fact that trigger points required to guess at the flops per task don;t work correctly on GPUs, or the newer applications you have an ever reducing return per second. These "features" have been pointed out to DA (the God Father of CreditNew) and he has chosen to ignore them, hoping people won;t notice. The thing is it is now so obvious......

---

Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

CreditNew (aka "CreditScrew") has a basic design flaw that causes it to reduce credit per task progressively as processor performance increases. Add to that the fact that trigger points required to guess at the flops per task don;t work correctly on GPUs, or the newer applications you have an ever reducing return per second. These "features" have been pointed out to DA (the God Father of CreditNew) and he has chosen to ignore them, hoping people won;t notice. The thing is it is now so obvious......

OT oh you brought up the CreditScrew problem and you put the god of Boinc name to it in that last post

You better run for the hill mate I'm hearing there is now a contract out on you for blaspheming and using he who should not be named in your post

---

Credit new is a great idea, it's too bad they, (mostly DA), have not got it sorted out. I shall crunch on.

---

Ummm, who is DA, and who died and made him King? I'm leaving now for the hills, so if the contract is out, they're going to have to work Real hard to earn their payment! lol Oh, and why is he ignoring something as obvious as this issue appears to be?

---

who is DA?

He created BOINC and and is a major developer and computer scientist.

---

Oh, ok, good to know. So, if he is the creator, plus the other things you mentioned, is it his pride that isn't allowing corrections to be made to his 'baby'? I guess I don't understand if a person is a scientist, and as such supposedly works on empirical data, and that data suggests strongly that there are serious issues with this newcredit business, what is holding back the widely recognized (I'd presume?) fixes that need to be addressed? I really don't have a dog in this fight, though from previous answers it seems to be a very touchy subject?

---

though from previous answers it seems to be a very touchy subject?

Just a bit.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

though from previous answers it seems to be a very touchy subject?

Just a bit.

Ha Ha Ha, ROTFLMAO. Excellent!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

---

I see. Well, is there at least any consensus about possible solutions? Or is that also a point of contention?

---

I suspect he is human and has an ego, although I don't think fixing it is easy.

---

The only person who has come up with possible ideas AFAIK is Jason Gee and I think he is spending some energy in that realm.

---

Ok, probably very basic question, but as this is called creditnew, what was wrong with creditold that caused creditnew to be created, and how hard was that to be rolled out? Was it as difficult back then to get that one released as it appears it is now to get the current one fixed? Is it because BOINC went from primarily SETI to all these other projects, and possibly favoring one over another? I'm honestly pretty much in the dark about it, other than the blurbs I see pop up now and again in threads. mostly like this one castigating it. Which is completely understandable if it's really doing what is being said about it.

---

I see. Well, is there at least any consensus about possible solutions? Or is that also a point of contention?

Jason looked at what Credit New was supposed to do, and what it actually does. He then made some suggestions as to how it could do what it's meant to instead of what it's doing.
Un-fortunately David Anderson doesn't consider it broken (even though it doesn't do what it's supposed to), so he doesn't see any need to fix it.
Hence the disdain (verging on intense dislike) for Credit New amongst the general population.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

Thank you for that explanation. One last question and I'll drop it, before the snipers come out and all this work I've been doing configuring these systems goes to waste... I presume he is a very intelligent person based upon his description above, and as he doesn't consider it broken, what is his logic/reasoning that it is working acceptably to him? Or has he never felt the need to put out that information, just an "I believe it is working fine, so that's it, drop it."?

Oh, and just what exactly was this credit new supposed to accomplish, anyways? There had to be a reason for releasing it, so something presumably was amiss with the old way of assigning credit?

---

Al you been a member for a bit longer than me and you don't know who David Anderson is ?

Or why Credit new is referred to as credit screw ???

mate where you been for the last 16 years !!!!! :-)

---

Compadre, sadly I've been out of the (active) loop for about 5 or so years, and must have had a brain dump. I knew the name sounded familiar when I heard it, and that creditnew thing I guess at this point really isn't. But I would like to know the thought process currently, if it's even knowable, of why nothing has happened, and a little history on it (especially the whys), because honestly, it's all quite fuzzy to me. Maybe it's old age setting in?? :-O lol

Or, maybe I wasn't paying close enough attn back in the day, that's a definite possibility as well.

---

Thank you for that explanation. One last question and I'll drop it, before the snipers come out and all this work I've been doing configuring these systems goes to waste... I presume he is a very intelligent person based upon his description above, and as he doesn't consider it broken, what is his logic/reasoning that it is working acceptably to him? Or has he never felt the need to put out that information, just an "I believe it is working fine, so that's it, drop it."?

Oh, and just what exactly was this credit new supposed to accomplish, anyways? There had to be a reason for releasing it, so something presumably was amiss with the old way of assigning credit?

I believe the purpose of CreditNew was to help regulate projects that arbitrarily assign massive amount of credit. Credit are meant to be a reflection of the amount of computing power you have done at a project. Some projects caused the scientific validity of BOINC/projects reporting computing power to come into question. As some projects increased their credit payout to draw more people to their project.

Those that have looked into how CreditNew works have stated something along the lines of "CreditNew is designed to have a stable long term average, but it has a short term pitfall.".
Personally I think there are some issues of how RAC is calculated as well. I've seen my user RAC suddenly drop 20-30%. While the daily credit values showed no real change. It would be confusing to see my RAC drop to from ~100k to 80K one day and then 70K the next day. While the daily credit values were all over 100K for 60+ days. When I was running 30+ machines I mainly watched my RAC to see if any of them had crashed, locked up, or were spitting out errors. So finding no errors and a falling RAC was odd... Well the first few dozen times.

---

SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

Thanks, HAL, that was a great explanation, and it makes sense to me now. Wonder what Jason has found to hopefully make it more stable and such? I hope he can work his magic on it and it will fix it so everyone will be reasonably happy with how credit is granted again.

---