Why "must" they agree? Projects admins assign credit as they see fit and they may have good reason to change them. It may be easier to just stop adding them up across projects.
It would be like the dollar being worth more in one state than another.
If this page takes an hour to load, reduce posts per page to 20 in your settings, then the tinpot 486 Einstein uses can handle it.
I also can't see why every project should agree on a similar credit system, but I'm perfectly fine with some projects providing "only" 4k credit per day while others provide 700k (or 7 million). To me, it's about supporting the science, and splitting things based upon computation time. Credits and badges are just a nice perk. ^_^
Why "must" they agree? Projects admins assign credit as they see fit and they may have good reason to change them. It may be easier to just stop adding them up across projects.
It would be like the dollar being worth more in one state than another.
But that doesn't take into account the fact that some projects have different priorities than others do, those with higher priorities often give higher credits than those with little to no priorities. We had one project, dead now, that even got paid for the results that we crunchers did, they gave much higher than 'normal, credits too. And in Europe the US Dollar IS worth something different in every Country!! Boinc is a piece of Worldwide software, putting just US values and restrictions on it isn't exactly fair.
The Boinc Server side software did or does come with the standard Seti 'credit new' credit system built into it, Admins at the different projects can change that but do so at their own peril as it can be tricky to change just one thing and not affect others parts of the software too. Once a project goes down that path going back is not usually an option, so changing things now is not very likely, especially since the software is 'open source'.
I also can't see why every project should agree on a similar credit system, but I'm perfectly fine with some projects providing "only" 4k credit per day while others provide 700k (or 7 million). To me, it's about supporting the science, and splitting things based upon computation time. Credits and badges are just a nice perk. ^_^
Credits are a good way of seeing how much work you've done for each project. Or they would be if they were standardised.
If this page takes an hour to load, reduce posts per page to 20 in your settings, then the tinpot 486 Einstein uses can handle it.
It would be like the dollar being worth more in one state than another.
It would be more like three worthless brown square things being worth more than four worthless big pink circular things.
The word credit sadly get associated with monetary term meaning "to add value to a money account", rather that the "acknowledge a contribution". It is a very bad choice of term in my opinion, you can not withdraw, spend or transfer credits, and it becomes never ending Oozlum bird debate.
In my opinion perhaps calling them ein-stones, seti-stones or milky-stones would simplify the problem. Then at least it becomes a who has the biggest rocks contest.
Credits are a good way of seeing how much work you've done for each project. Or they would be if they were standardised.
Even with supposed standardization, you would still have the massive difference between CPU and GPU users due to their different specializations... You'd then be forced to try and "standardize" even further so that the CPU guys don't feel like they're outweighed by the GPU guys, and then someone else will complain (say, the IGP guys) eventually.
On top of all of that, just how do you weigh the actual importance of the research being done compared to the others? Some would say the various mathematics projects out there aren't as important as the astrophysics, and then you have the biochemistry guys saying they're the most important. I say support the science you care about ^_^
It could be argued that some projects provide a similar PPD/RAC as others do.. Let's take POEM@Home as an example.... I get a similar amount of points in a day with POEM (700k ish) as I would Folding@Home (650k ish depending on the work units) on the same GPU, but they both have two different approaches to things. Yes I know they're two completely different platforms (one is via BOINC, the other is standalone) but still. PrimeGrid I can push upwards of 3kk (3 million) PPD if I want to, but I'm not really all that interested in prime numbers... It still pushes my graphics card as much as two WU's on POEM, or four WU's in Einstein (at least if one goes by load, and power consumption)
If one compares against others in a project, it is easier to tell how much work one has done, doubly so if it's a project that regularly keeps in touch with it's community (some of the ones I have and/or currently run are known for being bad about this, especially with other platforms such as Android, and even occasionally Linux or Mac, or lackluster ATI/AMD gpu support). Trying to standardize EVERYTHING would be like herding cats and richardson ground squirrels (aka gophers), all while trying to perform brain surgery..... At the same time.
Some things are easy to have everything the same, like say track lap times in various events as they scale easily with higher performance vehicles (solo2 autoslalom, circuit racing, rally stages, various Formula classes of racing, etc) but when you take several dozen types of science on a shared platform, each with completely different goals and pursuits.... Not so easy, and some would find it going against the whole open choice thing. Or something.
The obvious thing is to have credit equal to so many flops, so you can see how much work your computer has done.
No not obvious.
There is not even a standard list of a floating point operations.
There is no reliable method for counting floating point operations.
The work done by an application is not solely floating point calculations.
Each hardware platform has different floating operations
Applications use different flops on differing operating system versions and different hardware.
Some platforms are chosen for applications because they can do double precision floating point (slower) - are they less credit worthy because they can do difficult things?
Some applications do zero floating point operations, would their value therefore be zero?
The obvious thing is to have credit equal to so many flops, so you can see how much work your computer has done.
Except raw flops is just a measurement... It doesn't take into effect efficiencies different architectures might have, or even more so the fact that some projects favour ATI/AMD over nVidia (or vice versa), even if the hardware is comparable in other areas (be it benchmarks, gaming performance, or rendering in general). Some, like say MilkyWay with it's requirement for dual precision, also perform better on OLDER hardware due to there being more of a focus on such in the hardware (with Nvidia, Kepler will outperform Maxwell if dual precision is required).
This is why it has been, and will remain for quite some time, a never ending debate like another member linked to. Such is yet another reason why so many will say "choose your projects based upon the science you wish to support" instead of silly things like "I want the project that gives me the highest points in a day". Making a million credits in some projects can be done in a day if you have the right hardware (Collatz and PrimeGrid as an example) while others can take a while (Einstein@Home being one, especially if your focus is on cpu tasks), and some making 20k points in a day is something that not even everyone in the top 50 for that project are doing (Rosetta was used for this example), and even at that kind of production you're talking 50 days to reach a million points.
EDIT: Whoops, my bad, Rosetta@Home the top 55 are making 20k RAC..... Out of how many thousands of active volunteers? (end edit)
In the end, the biggest goal for any distributed computing project is progress towards their goal, be it finding the largest prime number in the world, searching for a cure for (insert disease here), wanting to know more about our universe in general, trying to solve mathematical theories and/or problems, or even just searching for extra terrestrial life through radio waves.
Well looking at the link given above, and estimating the points I should have got recently, it looks like Einstein is correct and SETI isn't. Depending on how annoyed I get, I may well withdraw from the projects that aren't doing things properly.
The other thing that annoys me is projects that aren't utilising GPUs, which are the main part of my (and presumably a lot of people's) computing power.
Run WUProp if you want to see how much work you've done between each project. That is the closest comparison you'll ever get between projects. Projects utilize hardware differently and you'll never be able to consistently get the same points between projects on a piece of hardware. Even a driver change could mess it up.
AgentB wrote:Why "must" they
It would be like the dollar being worth more in one state than another.
If this page takes an hour to load, reduce posts per page to 20 in your settings, then the tinpot 486 Einstein uses can handle it.
I also can't see why every
I also can't see why every project should agree on a similar credit system, but I'm perfectly fine with some projects providing "only" 4k credit per day while others provide 700k (or 7 million). To me, it's about supporting the science, and splitting things based upon computation time. Credits and badges are just a nice perk. ^_^
Peter Hucker wrote:AgentB
But that doesn't take into account the fact that some projects have different priorities than others do, those with higher priorities often give higher credits than those with little to no priorities. We had one project, dead now, that even got paid for the results that we crunchers did, they gave much higher than 'normal, credits too. And in Europe the US Dollar IS worth something different in every Country!! Boinc is a piece of Worldwide software, putting just US values and restrictions on it isn't exactly fair.
The Boinc Server side software did or does come with the standard Seti 'credit new' credit system built into it, Admins at the different projects can change that but do so at their own peril as it can be tricky to change just one thing and not affect others parts of the software too. Once a project goes down that path going back is not usually an option, so changing things now is not very likely, especially since the software is 'open source'.
WhiteWulfe wrote:I also can't
Credits are a good way of seeing how much work you've done for each project. Or they would be if they were standardised.
If this page takes an hour to load, reduce posts per page to 20 in your settings, then the tinpot 486 Einstein uses can handle it.
Peter Hucker wrote:It would
It would be more like three worthless brown square things being worth more than four worthless big pink circular things.
The word credit sadly get associated with monetary term meaning "to add value to a money account", rather that the "acknowledge a contribution". It is a very bad choice of term in my opinion, you can not withdraw, spend or transfer credits, and it becomes never ending Oozlum bird debate.
In my opinion perhaps calling them ein-stones, seti-stones or milky-stones would simplify the problem. Then at least it becomes a who has the biggest rocks contest.
Peter Hucker wrote:Credits
Even with supposed standardization, you would still have the massive difference between CPU and GPU users due to their different specializations... You'd then be forced to try and "standardize" even further so that the CPU guys don't feel like they're outweighed by the GPU guys, and then someone else will complain (say, the IGP guys) eventually.
On top of all of that, just how do you weigh the actual importance of the research being done compared to the others? Some would say the various mathematics projects out there aren't as important as the astrophysics, and then you have the biochemistry guys saying they're the most important. I say support the science you care about ^_^
It could be argued that some projects provide a similar PPD/RAC as others do.. Let's take POEM@Home as an example.... I get a similar amount of points in a day with POEM (700k ish) as I would Folding@Home (650k ish depending on the work units) on the same GPU, but they both have two different approaches to things. Yes I know they're two completely different platforms (one is via BOINC, the other is standalone) but still. PrimeGrid I can push upwards of 3kk (3 million) PPD if I want to, but I'm not really all that interested in prime numbers... It still pushes my graphics card as much as two WU's on POEM, or four WU's in Einstein (at least if one goes by load, and power consumption)
If one compares against others in a project, it is easier to tell how much work one has done, doubly so if it's a project that regularly keeps in touch with it's community (some of the ones I have and/or currently run are known for being bad about this, especially with other platforms such as Android, and even occasionally Linux or Mac, or lackluster ATI/AMD gpu support). Trying to standardize EVERYTHING would be like herding cats and richardson ground squirrels (aka gophers), all while trying to perform brain surgery..... At the same time.
Some things are easy to have everything the same, like say track lap times in various events as they scale easily with higher performance vehicles (solo2 autoslalom, circuit racing, rally stages, various Formula classes of racing, etc) but when you take several dozen types of science on a shared platform, each with completely different goals and pursuits.... Not so easy, and some would find it going against the whole open choice thing. Or something.
The obvious thing is to have
The obvious thing is to have credit equal to so many flops, so you can see how much work your computer has done.
If this page takes an hour to load, reduce posts per page to 20 in your settings, then the tinpot 486 Einstein uses can handle it.
Peter Hucker wrote: The
No not obvious.
There is not even a standard list of a floating point operations.
There is no reliable method for counting floating point operations.
The work done by an application is not solely floating point calculations.
Each hardware platform has different floating operations
Applications use different flops on differing operating system versions and different hardware.
Some platforms are chosen for applications because they can do double precision floating point (slower) - are they less credit worthy because they can do difficult things?
Some applications do zero floating point operations, would their value therefore be zero?
Peter Hucker wrote:The
Except raw flops is just a measurement... It doesn't take into effect efficiencies different architectures might have, or even more so the fact that some projects favour ATI/AMD over nVidia (or vice versa), even if the hardware is comparable in other areas (be it benchmarks, gaming performance, or rendering in general). Some, like say MilkyWay with it's requirement for dual precision, also perform better on OLDER hardware due to there being more of a focus on such in the hardware (with Nvidia, Kepler will outperform Maxwell if dual precision is required).
This is why it has been, and will remain for quite some time, a never ending debate like another member linked to. Such is yet another reason why so many will say "choose your projects based upon the science you wish to support" instead of silly things like "I want the project that gives me the highest points in a day". Making a million credits in some projects can be done in a day if you have the right hardware (Collatz and PrimeGrid as an example) while others can take a while (Einstein@Home being one, especially if your focus is on cpu tasks), and some making 20k points in a day is something that not even everyone in the top 50 for that project are doing (Rosetta was used for this example), and even at that kind of production you're talking 50 days to reach a million points.
EDIT: Whoops, my bad, Rosetta@Home the top 55 are making 20k RAC..... Out of how many thousands of active volunteers? (end edit)
In the end, the biggest goal for any distributed computing project is progress towards their goal, be it finding the largest prime number in the world, searching for a cure for (insert disease here), wanting to know more about our universe in general, trying to solve mathematical theories and/or problems, or even just searching for extra terrestrial life through radio waves.
Peter Hucker wrote:Well
Run WUProp if you want to see how much work you've done between each project. That is the closest comparison you'll ever get between projects. Projects utilize hardware differently and you'll never be able to consistently get the same points between projects on a piece of hardware. Even a driver change could mess it up.