I have five questions about SETI, Einstein and Milkyway... each.

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Profile George Project Donor
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Message 2005751 - Posted: 4 Aug 2019, 20:22:34 UTC
Last modified: 4 Aug 2019, 20:34:30 UTC

1) What is the "duration factor"? On my system:
In Einstein it is "3.1535" in BOINC Manager properties under projects, where it is at Einsteinathome>Computer>Details> duration factor "3.153476". I'm okay with the differences as it is just a mater of rounding off the numbers to make it 4 digits instead of 6.
In Milkyway it is "???", it's not even listed in BOINC Manager properties, but in the details section of Milkyway's computer it is just"1".
In SETI it is also not listed in BOINC Manager, where in SETI's computer details it is also just a "1".

2) What is "scheduling priority", or more correctly how does this impact what each of "my" projects download, use, report back to Berkeley and when berkeley has actually given a validation?
In Einstein under BOINC Manager it is "-0.00". That is correct, it is not a typo. Negative zero? There has to be some explanation for this. Under the details section in computers for Einstein it is not listed.
In Milkyway under BOINC Manager it is "-0.01". This I can accept for what it's worth. Milkyway is not listing "scheduling priority" under the details for computers either.
In SETI under BOINC Manager it is "-0.06", and there is nothing in SETI's computer details either.

3) In each of my projects I have listed "NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (4095MB) driver: 430.86" under coprocessors in their respective details section under computers, where as in Milkyway and SETI it ads "OpenCL: 1.2", but not for Einstein. Would this be because in BOINC Manager SETI and Einstein are showing "Running (1 CPU + 1 Nvidia GPU)" and it takes 1 thread away from running "normal"(?) tasks, whereas in Milkyway it shows "Running (0.978 CPUs + 1 Nvidia GPU)" and does not take away a thread from the eight threads. It will show the "opencl_nvidia_SoG" in a separate 9th thread, or is it an Nvidia thread?

4) In addition to question #3, I am wondering if my "NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (4095MB)" is listing my GPU as having only 4GB of memory instead of the 6GB listed by EVGA (& Nvidia) because that is the max memory allowed (possible?) by the SETI, Milkyway and Einstein projects? I also did a little checking on others in SETI with other GPUs like an RTX 2080-Ti that has 11GB, but shows only 4GB when identified under coprocessors within the SETI project.

5) Another curiosity: What is a "drupal"? Under Einstein@Home my account credentials list "Drupal user ID #XXXXXX". Even Webster's online dictionary doesn't identify it as a word, and Literary Devices where they have terms used by literary personnel - "Literary Devices refers to the typical structures used by writers in their works...", it shows nothing.
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Message 2005757 - Posted: 4 Aug 2019, 20:40:50 UTC - in response to Message 2005751.  

1) What is the "duration factor"? On my system:
In Einstein it is "3.1535" in BOINC Manager properties under projects, where it is at Einsteinathome>Computer>Details> duration factor "3.153476". I'm okay with the differences as it is just a mater of rounding off the numbers to make it 4 digits instead of 6.
In Milkyway it is "???", it's not even listed in BOINC Manager properties, but in the details section of Milkyway's computer it is just"1".
In SETI it is also not listed in BOINC Manager, where in SETI's computer details it is also just a "1".

Duration factor used to be used for calculating credit. No longer used by most projects. Einstein is one of the very few that still lists it on your account. Meaningless now. Most projects just set it to 1.


2) What is "scheduling priority", or more correctly how does this impact what each of "my" projects download, use, report back to Berkeley and when berkeley has actually given a validation?
In Einstein under BOINC Manager it is "-0.00". That is correct, it is not a typo. Negative zero? There has to be some explanation for this. Under the details section in computers for Einstein it is not listed.
In Milkyway under BOINC Manager it is "-0.01". This I can accept for what it's worth. Milkyway is not listing "scheduling priority" under the details for computers either.
In SETI under BOINC Manager it is "-0.06", and there is nothing in SETI's computer details either.

https://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/ClientSched


[3) In each of my projects I have listed "NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (4095MB) driver: 430.86" under coprocessors in their respective details section under computers, where as in Milkyway and SETI it ads "OpenCL: 1.2", but not for Einstein. Would this be because in BOINC Manager SETI and Einstein are showing "Running (1 CPU + 1 Nvidia GPU)" and it takes 1 thread away from running "normal"(?) tasks, whereas in Milkyway it shows "Running (0.978 CPUs + 1 Nvidia GPU)" and does not take away a thread from the eight threads. It will show the "opencl_nvidia_SoG" in a separate 9th thread, or is it an Nvidia thread?

The client lists the detected drivers for each API. The two common compute API platforms are CUDA and OpenCL. The science applications for any project use one or both of them.


4) In addition to question #3, I am wondering if my "NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (4095MB)" is listing my GPU as having only 4GB of memory instead of the 6GB listed by EVGA (& Nvidia) because that is the max memory allowed (possible?) by the SETI, Milkyway and Einstein projects? I also did a little checking on others in SETI with other GPUs like an RTX 2080-Ti that has 11GB, but shows only 4GB when identified under coprocessors within the SETI project.


The CUDA API is only detected by BOINC code using 32 bits so the maximum memory to be detected and reported is 4GB. But the applications do use all the memory on the card if it has more than 4GB. Up to a point. The OpenCL API can and will only let compute applications use 26% of the available memory, so for an 8GB of VRAM card, the apps can only use a little over 2GB of that memory. CUDA does not have that kind of severe restriction.
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Message 2005760 - Posted: 4 Aug 2019, 20:44:53 UTC

4) - a known issue with BOINC, but no obvious solution :-(

3) - "OpenCl" an API that is supposed to mean that only one application has to be written to cover a multitude of platforms. Note the word "supposed", as one has to be very careful when coding the application to make sure that all the various platform specific memory and other interface constrains are obeyed. Not every project has produced applications that use OpenCl as they either don't have the resources or don't see the need to develop these applications.

2) - Someone else can answer this one.......
One thing - only SETI is hosted at Berkeley, other projects are hosted elsewhere. Validation is under the control of each project, each having set up their own rules. e.g. CPDN does not do validation between users, but has some sort of validation built into its data and applications, while SETI has quite a complex set of validation requirements requiring each work unit to be analysed by at least two users.

1) - Not every project uses "DFC"..... And not every third-party manager displays things in the way one would hope
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Message 2005763 - Posted: 4 Aug 2019, 21:24:52 UTC

Thanks Rob and Keith. While I am exploring more of the workings or settings in SETI and others, when I find something that doesn't make sense to me then it's time to ask.

Thanks again.
George

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Message 2005764 - Posted: 4 Aug 2019, 21:31:26 UTC

5. Drupal is a content management system (CMS) written in PHP, it's been developed by Einstein@Home as a different front-end than the normal BOINC (combination of HTML, PHP and CSS) front-end.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drupal
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Message 2005767 - Posted: 4 Aug 2019, 21:55:02 UTC - in response to Message 2005764.  

Thank you Ageless for that link and your desription. I had not considered Wikipedia to look up Drupal. I had been wondering about that for quite some time.
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Message 2005893 - Posted: 5 Aug 2019, 19:36:12 UTC - in response to Message 2005757.  

I have another question regarding all three projects.

When I set my computing preferences in SETI (only) at the website online, the other two eventually end up with the same settings for each project. When I do the other two, one at a time with different settings for each, it doesn't matter. All three end up with the same settings, presumably the last project that I set preferences in.

Am I doing something wrong? Would it matter if I used an account manager within BOINC Manager to set preferences? Or... is that just the way it is?
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Message 2005895 - Posted: 5 Aug 2019, 20:00:23 UTC - in response to Message 2005893.  

Computing preference set on the same venue/location via the website are global within the BOINC realm. Your BOINC communicates those preferences back to all the other projects you've got attached with each communication with their schedulers. So yes, this is normal.
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Message 2005899 - Posted: 5 Aug 2019, 20:27:51 UTC - in response to Message 2005895.  

Does it make any difference if I set preferences on my machine as opposed to the web?
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Message 2005902 - Posted: 5 Aug 2019, 20:39:01 UTC - in response to Message 2005899.  

Not if you have just got one computer. The global preferences are great if you use multiple computers over the various venues (default, home, school and work). It doesn't matter much if you use local preferences on a computer or global preferences, they're both used by all projects on that one computer.
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Message 2005906 - Posted: 5 Aug 2019, 21:00:12 UTC - in response to Message 2005902.  

Okay, thank a lot. It's starting to make sense to me now.

So when I get another computer and I set preferences on the new computer for a different venue, like home instead of default, it will hold those preferences and keep them different than the computer I have presently which set to default. Correct?
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Message 2005911 - Posted: 5 Aug 2019, 21:10:06 UTC

Yes. Or use local preferences on the new computer to keep it separate.
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Message 2005971 - Posted: 6 Aug 2019, 7:26:04 UTC

The advantage of web preferences is you configure them on the web, just the once. Then all you have to do is select which preference to use on a particular system.
If you set the preferences on a system by system basis, then you need to make all of those changes on each & every system.
Even if you've only got 2 systems, making use of the web based settings makes more sense to me.
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Message 2005983 - Posted: 6 Aug 2019, 11:54:54 UTC

IMHO that`s is one of the wonders of the Boinc code, allow you to do the same thing following diferents paths.

Just use the one you feel more confortable with it.
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Message boards : Number crunching : I have five questions about SETI, Einstein and Milkyway... each.


 
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