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Thread: Really long work units & multithreading

  1. #1
    Dungeon Master alpha's Avatar
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    Really long work units & multithreading

    I had no idea this project had such computationally demanding work units these days. I picked up one a few days ago and it had an ETA of over 200 hours. I'm now 51% through after 92 hours.

    One impressive thing to mention is that the application is multithreaded, so its using both of my CPU cores on the one work unit (so that 92 hours previously mentioned is actually 184 hours CPU time). I wish more projects had a multithreaded application.

    Anyways, I'm interested to see what kind of credit gets granted for this monster. Then I'm moving on to something else.

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    Old Fart Bigred's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by alpha View Post
    I had no idea this project had such computationally demanding work units these days. I picked up one a few days ago and it had an ETA of over 200 hours. I'm now 51% through after 92 hours.

    One impressive thing to mention is that the application is multithreaded, so its using both of my CPU cores on the one work unit (so that 92 hours previously mentioned is actually 184 hours CPU time). I wish more projects had a multithreaded application.

    Anyways, I'm interested to see what kind of credit gets granted for this monster. Then I'm moving on to something else.
    The last time I ran it was when it had a Cuda application. The credit at that time was nothing impressive but it wasn't terrible either. I happen to like long work units because it cuts down on my network traffic but if you have one fail, it is a lot of wasted time.
    19 primes found. The largest: 1351*2^617684+1 (185945 digits)

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    =>Team Joker<= LAURENU2's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bigred View Post
    The last time I ran it was when it had a Cuda application. The credit at that time was nothing impressive but it wasn't terrible either. I happen to like long work units because it cuts down on my network traffic but if you have one fail, it is a lot of wasted time.
    I think that is way to long for a WU
    4 to 10 hr is what I like even 4 cores on 1 WU is OK
    But 200 hrs is nuts

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    Dungeon Master alpha's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bigred View Post
    The last time I ran it was when it had a Cuda application. The credit at that time was nothing impressive but it wasn't terrible either. I happen to like long work units because it cuts down on my network traffic but if you have one fail, it is a lot of wasted time.
    Absolutely, if one of these failed I'd probably leave the project for that reason alone. I used to have my Rosetta preference set to 24 hours but after a couple of those failed I ended up bumping it back down to 8. That's why I'm not brave enough for Climate Prediction.

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    Member zombie67's Avatar
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    The credits at AQUA are big enough, even to make up for the occasional failed WU. Seriously. But I don't recall any tasks erroring out for me.

    Also, there is no risk to Climate Prediction. They do trickles. You get partial credit each day. Do even if they fail, you already have the credits for the time spent.


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    Dungeon Master alpha's Avatar
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    zombie67, admittedly, I haven't run CP for a while but when I did try it a while back it seemed like hardly anyone's simulation reached the end. They were erroring out or crashing, resulting in people restoring backups of the project directory and other such nonsense. I realise this doesn't affect credit because of the trickles, but is that kind of stuff still involved?

    AQUA work unit progress update: 112 hours elapsed, 74 remaining.

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    Member zombie67's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by alpha View Post
    zombie67, admittedly, I haven't run CP for a while but when I did try it a while back it seemed like hardly anyone's simulation reached the end. They were erroring out or crashing, resulting in people restoring backups of the project directory and other such nonsense. I realise this doesn't affect credit because of the trickles, but is that kind of stuff still involved?
    It's been at least a year since I ran it. So I am very far removed. I never did that backup/restore nonsense. I ran them normally, and about 10% of them failed to complete successfully.


  8. #8
    Dungeon Master alpha's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by alpha View Post
    AQUA work unit progress update: 112 hours elapsed, 74 remaining.
    All done now. ~189 hours run time (~366 hours CPU time) - 48,206.63 credit granted. I haven't done any calculations but that seems like way more than I would get with this CPU on most other BOINC projects.

    I've seen enough - I'm done here!

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