Remaining Work Units
2 Nov 2006 5:22:31 UTC
Topic 192011
(moderation:
The server status tells us how many work units are left. How do we know how many are short units and how many are long? Is it possible that we run out of short units must earlier and then all computers get long units?
Just curious.
Remaining Work Units
)
The duration of the workunits depend on the datafile they are referring to. Our workunit generator creates the workunits evenly distributed over all the datafiles, so in principle there will be short WUs 'till the end.
Usually in the transition to a new run (next is expected for Feb 2007) we push the WU generator to create all remaining WUs and put them in the database. From then on the distribution depends on the "usage"; it might happen that we run out of short WUs in the, say, last two weeks of the run.
BM
BM
Maybe you should send more
)
Maybe you should send more large WUs to fast hosts... or make an option available to volunteer... PCs like my workstation could easily do large ones and leave the smaller ones for slower hosts, but as it is, the chances of getting large and small WUs as soon as I need a new datafile are about equal.
Just a suggestion, of course, I have no idea if and how that is possible...
The slowest 20% of PCs only
)
The slowest 20% of PCs only get short units, the remaining 80% get randomly assigned ones. It the past what you're asking for was declined because it would leave the potential open for credit manipulation if the relative credit rates weren't exactly equal, and it would leave some room open for the two sizes completion rates going out of sync and resulting in an extended period of only one type left at the end of the run.
You 50/50 perceived rate is just an artifact of your recent assignments, short WUs make up a smaller percentage of the total than that. They consist of signals below 400hz and the detectors go up to at least 1500(2000???)hz, and this is farther scaled by the thier shorter length.
Thanks for explaining that.
)
Thanks for explaining that. Of course, I'm wouldn't want to make it easier to cheat, I know the trouble credit manipulation has caused for other projects.
But the other point is even more true when there are less than 50% short WUs... it seems like a waste to send them to really fast hosts whose owners maybe don't even want small ones. Maybe one could simply add something like "only large WUs for the fastest 20%/25% of hosts? As it is possible the other way round, I guess that could be done without too many technical problems. Of course, it is still possible that credit wasn't 100% equal, but this way it couldn't be manipulated deliberately...
What do the other crunchers and project staff think about this?