BOINC Beta test will open soon

[Sir Ulli]

from the mailing list

We're preparing to enable account creation in the beta test,
in order to load-test our servers.
This will happen sometime next week.
In preparation we modified the project web site
(http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/ap/) a little.
The name of the project is changed from "Astropulse"
to "BOINC Beta Test".
We also added some warnings about participating in the test;
please take the time to read them.
------------------
There is ever-increasing interest in BOINC outside of SETI@home.
Work is starting on a BOINC-based version of Folding@home.
We have had preliminary conversations with CERN
about integrating BOINC with the Globus-based Grid systems
being developed at CERN and other physics research centers.
These are exciting times!

-- David


:cool: :cool: :cool:

Sir Ulli

[JigPu]

Mmmm... Hope some more of the seti folk here can jump on and help them beta test. That, and that they'll have the no credit problem(?) fixed so I can get some more :D

JigPu

[TC]

CERN stuff sounds cool - perhaps more interesting than seti and folding.

[eaglescouter]

Using the same scoring system for folding, seti and others sounds great! I can try out new things without loosing my rankings.

[SkyHook]

Originally posted by eaglescouter
Using the same scoring system for folding, seti and others sounds great! I can try out new things without loosing my rankings.

Your enthusiasm over the scoring system is surpassed only by my disgust for it. Any rewards system that bases the amount I get credited for work I perform on the basis of the performance of others is not my idea of great. By this I mean, I complete a workunit and BOINC says that I completed it in a time that is worthy of say 12 "cobblestones", now someone else does that very same WU but their time is worthy of only 2 "cobblestones", then the all important third person completes the same WU and is worthy of 7 "cobblestones. Currently the High and the Low get thrown out and everyone receives the 7 "cobblestones". And work you do today may not receive any credit whatsoever for as much as 14 days or more. Say goodbye to the current perception of TeamRaces.

And while the basic scoring system is universal to BOINC each project is still going to maintain their own scores, there is not one big BOINC central clearing house where "cobblestones" from SETI get mixed with those from AstroPulse and Folding and whatever else to arrive at one unified number of credits for a particular machine. If you stop doing SETI in favor of one of the other projects your ranking within the SETI team will be in danger by those that continue with SETI.

Sorry to be the bucket of cold water on others visions of how good BOINC is going to be, I just have not been able to grasp any of the excitment of others during my experiences with the BETA test period. Sure hope I am totally wrong about everything I say, but only time will tell.

Respectfully,
SkyHook

[eaglescouter]

Originally posted by SkyHook


Your enthusiasm over the scoring system is surpassed only by my disgust for it. Any rewards system that bases the amount I get credited for work I perform on the basis of the performance of others is not my idea of great. By this I mean, I complete a workunit and BOINC says that I completed it in a time that is worthy of say 12 "cobblestones", now someone else does that very same WU but their time is worthy of only 2 "cobblestones", then the all important third person completes the same WU and is worthy of 7 "cobblestones. Currently the High and the Low get thrown out and everyone receives the 7 "cobblestones". And work you do today may not receive any credit whatsoever for as much as 14 days or more. Say goodbye to the current perception of TeamRaces.

And while the basic scoring system is universal to BOINC each project is still going to maintain their own scores, there is not one big BOINC central clearing house where "cobblestones" from SETI get mixed with those from AstroPulse and Folding and whatever else to arrive at one unified number of credits for a particular machine. If you stop doing SETI in favor of one of the other projects your ranking within the SETI team will be in danger by those that continue with SETI.

Sorry to be the bucket of cold water on others visions of how good BOINC is going to be, I just have not been able to grasp any of the excitment of others during my experiences with the BETA test period. Sure hope I am totally wrong about everything I say, but only time will tell.

Respectfully,
SkyHook

Skyhook, I sincerely wish I could disagree with you. I'm a relative newcomer to SETI (started at the end of December of 2003), and the ONLY reasons I participate are:
1. The fellowship of this forum.
2. The competitive nature of the beast. (I want to climb the stats chart. I want to pass Mictlan. I want to get into the top 100 for the team. I want to be in the top 10 of daily crunching output for the team.)

If I cannot set goals and be competitive, then the project looses much of it's allure.

The ONLY positive thing I see about the boinc scoring is the ability to be competitive while donating computing power to any or several of the available platforms. (Which you report is not an option :( )

I am very unhappy with the decision to base units on hours of PC use, thus granting P1's effectively more points than I get for my investment in a modern 3.2Ghz P4's for crunching the same work unit. This effectively penalizes those of us who invest in new high power crunching tools and gives me no incentive to build anything new. In fact it gives me incentive to dust off the old 486's in the garage and crunch with them because they may earn more points per day.

Additionally I'm not pleased with the lack of immediate reward. The idea of waiting till someone else turns in the same unit is a cold shower. How can I moniter my daily farm production levels if points are not reliably credited.

It's pointless for me to keep upgrading my system, or to watercool my farm with the current mess that is the boinc point system.

In conclusion: I am doing my best to hit 10,000 before the end of SETI, and I don't know if I'll give boinc more than a 30 day trial. If these scoring issues are not mitigated rapidly I'll leave the program and find another use for my time, computing power, and money that could have gone towards IT upgrades.

[JigPu]

Actually, while your credit IS dependant on the speed the WU was crunched at, it is also dependant on the speed it should have theoretically crunched at.

From what I've read, it works sorta like this...
Each WU has a TFlop amount of work that it knows will be crunched (in SETI for example, SetiSpy shows this under Performance: Floating Point Operations to Process). Before you actually begin running any project, BOINC runs a benchmark to determine just how fast your computer should be able to do FLOPs by running a really quick sample WU. You then download a WU for a project you've joined and your computer crunches away. BOINC keeps track of how much CPU time was spent crunching and then determines how much time it theoretically should have taken.

If you are at the exact theoretical CPU time, you get a certian (I'm pretty sure constant) number of cobblestones for the WU. If you completed it faster than expected, you get a few more cobblestones. If you completed it slower, you get less cobblestones.

So even if somebody decided to dig out their P1 and crunch, it wouldn't highly effect the amount of credit granted since they would be crunching near their theoretical time probably. The only way it could really happen is if their chip (or something else) slowed down (since it measures CPU time, not running time) to make it actually take more CPU time.

In fact, on those lines you could even "cheat out" the benchmark system to claim more cobblestones. Run your system at stock (or underclock it), have it run the benchmark (which you can run at any time), and it will say your system should complete a WU in XXXX amount of time. Overclock it, and the client will claim more credit (since it's completed faster than expected) until BOINC auto-runs the benchmark again (1 month later)


I'm not 100% sure if that's how it works, but that's what I'm getting out of the FAQs at the site... It's not a great system, but it isn't exactly the work of satan either :D
JigPu

[Demont]

That actually sounds more like the work of satan to me... the results will be even less relevant if you can simply underclock to run the benchmark. The delta between underclocked as much as possible and overclocked as much as possible is liable to be in the hundreds of percentage points for pretty much any system. Especially AMD's where you can knock that multiplier down to 5 or whatever. I guess it depends on which interpretation of the FAQ is most accurate though. Not doubting anyone but I think I will get off my ass and read it myself is all I am saying.

[SkyHook]

My apologies for size, but needed for clarity:
http://www.swampgas.net/images/BoincScoring.jpg

In the above example taken directly from an actual WU's record you can see how crediting is handled. Each row is a different machine doing the same WU.

SkyHook

[psyshack]

Ok skyhook,,, maybe with a faster machine you can get more units done in a givin period. Say in 6 months a p4 would have 3 times the units done than a p2. Thus more points awarded. But same points awarded per unit. The p4 is just doing more of them. So could this be a lag problem in awarding points??? This looks like some of the hair brain college boy stuff we get into at work. Now Im depressed and havent even made it to work yet...lololololol

psy

Whats with the claimed credit??? This is starting to look like something the democrats put together... take from the rich and give to the poor. It is a lib. college----duh!!!

[Demont]

Originally posted by psyshack
Whats with the claimed credit??? This is starting to look like something the democrats put together... take from the rich and give to the poor. It is a lib. college----duh!!!

Yet another political comment. Please PM me and explain why this is a bad idea in principle and/or why this is a bad idea in moderation. (I think it is irrelevant to the staged competition of SETI where nobodies life actually hangs in the balance of getting cool looking stats.)

[KenCo]

Looking at SkyHook's example the system seems rediculously convoluted. However, it seems to be like psyshack says - faster machines will do more units and therefore will not be working with a penalty.

With the current SETI@home everyone gets 1 point per unit completed. In the example everyone who returns that particular unit gets 14.01 points. But a machine which is twice as fast will get twice as many points. So the stat numbers are higher but they are still proportional to the speed and number of your machines.

You could get unlucky with this system in the short term though. If you had a day where you completed 16 units on your FX51 each of which had already been completed by two Pentium systems you might only recieve 10 or 15 points for that whole day. If a guy with a Penium system that same day completed 1 unit which had already been completed by two FX51 systems he might receive 30 points. Of course that would be a rare case and the law of averages would eventually even out the scores to reflect ones actual contribution to the project.

The upside to this system seems to be that hacked clients will not be likely to skew the stats since super fast completion times will likey be dropped. I can't see other advantages at the moment.

The lag between completing units and seeing the results really sucks though.

[TC]

Unless my understanding of this is wrong, you don't necessarily get credit for units until at least 2 or 3 other people have also processed the same unit with acceptable results. So you might be doing more units with a faster machine, but you don't get credit for them until other people have done them also.

[psyshack]

at this point all i can say is.... lets support the beta testers in there efforts to start seeing thru this muck and myer. knowing we have some really good folks here in on the beta effort, im sure they will feed us good info as they fig. it out. just in our team there are some soild machines on the job. let them get some stats going and im sure we will see just how far the apples fall from the tree.

psy

[jstutman]

maybe its time to turn into a folder? lmao

[Xtc4u]

nah, if it turns out to be a joke i'll just go back to shutting my rigs down when not in use and save some money on the electric bill.

[Cuper]

Originally posted by Xtc4u
nah, if it turns out to be a joke i'll just go back to shutting my rigs down when not in use and save some money on the electric bill.

I second that:D:D

[cooldrum3]

Originally posted by psyshack
Whats with the claimed credit??? This is starting to look like something the democrats put together... take from the rich and give to the poor. It is a lib. college----duh!!!

I thought it was funny...lol!

[KenCo]

Originally posted by cooldrum3


I thought it was funny...lol!


Yes, a fairly innocuous joke. ;)

[aggies92]

I'm a little worried by this impending switch...My email address that I registered with SETI has long since been shutdown and I don't remember what password I used :mad:

Not sure how this switch and reregister will effect my current count or if it will even matter. Anyways, I guess time will tell.

[Mictlan]

Originally posted by eaglescouter

(I want to climb the stats chart. I want to pass Mictlan. I want to get into the top 100 for the team. I want to be in the top 10 of daily crunching output for the team.)

In conclusion: I am doing my best to hit 10,000 before the end of SETI, and I don't know if I'll give boinc more than a 30 day trial. If these scoring issues are not mitigated rapidly I'll leave the program and find another use for my time, computing power, and money that could have gone towards IT upgrades.

All worthy targets......I really hope you can get 3,000 WU done in one month and would be nice to see it......I dare you ;) :burn: ;)

[eaglescouter]

Originally posted by Mictlan


All worthy targets......I really hope you can get 3,000 WU done in one month and would be nice to see it......I dare you ;) :burn: ;)

3,000 in one month :eek: I hope seti lasts more than another month, I'm currently putting out about 58 per day which is about 1765 per month. I might be able to pull another 30 per day for a week or two, that would bring me to 88 per day or almost 2676 per month.

However, unless boinc starts to show some serious stats improvements, I will not be investing more $$ in the farm.

ETA to team position 100: 7.4 days or less
ETA to passing Mictlan: 56 days or less :D

[SkyHook]

Originally posted by aggies92
I'm a little worried by this impending switch...My email address that I registered with SETI has long since been shutdown and I don't remember what password I used :mad:

Not sure how this switch and reregister will effect my current count or if it will even matter. Anyways, I guess time will tell.

Well, your predicament should have no effect on your results as far as Phase I is concerned, HOWEVER, since Berkeley has previously stated that they will be sending emails to all registered members containing your info for the switch to BOINC and Phase II, and since a VITAL part of that info will be you project key and you won't be getting that email it would appear that you are going to have to register a new account with an active email address in order to participate. And trust me, YOU DEFINATELY NEED that project key! Basically you can't even go to the latrine without your project key with this BOINC Platform, and it is a most unwieldy alpha-numeric string of 20 or more characters.

Now since your WU credits from now don't carry over to BOINC, opening a new account is no real lose with the possible exception that you may find that you can't open your new account with the same name as you are using now because it will have been assigned to the user who is currently using it(who is you, but you won't get that info). It is possible that since you will be registering a new email address, you may be able to use the same user name, I just can't speak to how that is going to be handled.

Clear as MUD??

SkyHook

[aggies92]

So you think I ought re-register now in order to recieve the email with the key and keep crunching on my old account? I just don't want to stop crunching on my old account for obvious reasons. Maybe I'll put my PII, which is only good for a couple of WU a week, on the new account to keep it active.

[SkyHook]

That certainly would be one solution I guess, or what seems just as simple would be wait till they officially open the BOINC SetiatHome project to the general public and then create an account there and then join Overclockers.com Seti Team that way.

SkyHook

[TC]

There's not much point in joining yet. The program is still in beta and they aren't crediting work at all, not to mention what credit beta testers have will be lost when it goes public.

[eaglescouter]

Originally posted by TC
There's not much point in joining yet. The program is still in beta and they aren't crediting work at all, not to mention what credit beta testers have will be lost when it goes public.

My thought is: "join boinc, so you can test and thus you have the opportunity/right to provide feedback"

If we don't work with them then we deserve whatever they create for us.

[TC]

Well yes from that angle - I was thinking of aggies worrying about getting a head start on stats.

[aggies92]

I am actually only worried about stats insofar as my current standings under this system. I.e, I want to go as far as I can now before they change. What I am (was) worried about is getting the key and transferring over any information from my current account to the boinc account, but since that is irrelevent due to everyone starting from scratch, it is a moot point.

Bottome line is I will probably download Boinc and start playing with it on my older machines but continue crunchin' hard on my faster ones.

[eaglescouter]

I hope to get through the crack in the door and get registered for boinc, and will only do a few units, reserving the balance of my power for the Real SETI project.

I will crunch a few for boinc (what a nutty name) so that I have the opportunity to provide feedback to the boinc stats programmers, with a goal of doing my best to see that our collective needs are met by the time SEIT winds down and we are forced to boinc.

[psyshack]

I still have a bad feeling about the claimed credit thing. I would think one of the admins over this could shed some light on this scoring system, or are they affraid to many folks will bolt from the program if truths where known. Im seeing a mule in the wood pile..

psy

[papounet]

Originally posted by Xtc4u
nah, if it turns out to be a joke i'll just go back to shutting my rigs down when not in use and save some money on the electric bill.

just got my electricity bill : arrrggggghhhhhhhhhh !!!!
:confused:

I 'll be reviewing BOINC with an even more critical eyes.

[AudiMan]

Why do they have to change? Right when I started booming in SETI, this BOINC has to come out :(

[eaglescouter]

It's not here yet, and I'm not holding my breath on its release date.

Crunch on!

[Sir Ulli]

to all who are using something like an IRC Chat

Channel is up and fully functional now -
Fire up that dusty old IRC client (MIRC/Xchat)
Log on to any chatnet (us.chatnet.org) server and type /join #boinc

best time to look is from 17.00 UTC to 01:00 UTC

all peole are welcome

Sir Ulli