Challenge continued...

[Brucifer]

Drezha, Vaughan, etc.:

I like the idea of a good old fashioned team race. And I would preface this all by saying I'm not trying to start a project war or anything of the like. I'm into sieving, having done a ton of it for both RieselSieve and PSP. How-some-ever, with RS in the process of going boinc, I would rather see an effort run on the non-boinc level. Linux/Unix just isn't the rocket ship like Windows under the boinc platform. For the bulk of the linux users, running wine to run a boinc effort just isn't going to cut it, and most won't even put the effort into it due to system limitations.

However there is still the PSP sieving effort, and they really need the help. Add to that the fact that for sieving, that effort is also benefiting the Seventeen Or Bust sieving effort when participants sieve the "combined" ranges on the PSP sieve reservation page. So an effort on this would be benefitting two projects while also allowing a two team competition.

Currently amd_users has max points on the team thing, but new usernames or team names could be used to start both teams off at zero. I'm quite sure that Lars would be more than willing to accomodate whatever we would need to set up some rivalry scoring.

I would be game for this, but unfortunately I'm not crunching any boinc stuff at present as I'm a linux house here.

An alternative if the PSP effort is not everyone's cup of tea, would be to make a go at another of the non-boinc efforts, such as TSC, FAH... ??? Thoughts, comments?

Bruce

[NeoGen]

WCG would satisfy both the boinc and non-boinc lovers.
I don't run it but from what I see on the webpage it is now running three projects, Human Proteome Folding, FightAids@Home and Help Defeat Cancer (a new one)

Plus it has client versions for Windows, Linux and Mac. :)

I only got one question regarding WCG... Is there a single scoring table or is the boinc side apart from the non-boinc? I ask this because in boinc stats sites WCG's points don't match with the project site's stats.

[drezha]

WCG get's the BOINC points and then times them by 6 or something and that gives the points for the WCG...on the WCG site they use these to compare...obviously credit at 7 times higer on BOINCstats etc is a no no so they use the normal boinc system (time * benchmarks I believe)

The stats on the WCG therefore is there own stats and the BOINC side is mixed with the normal WCG client.

Here's there hlep file on it...

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/help/viewTopic.do?shortName=points

Reading it...linux and mac only use BOINC, something Bruicifer would appear to want to not use.

I doubt that TPR would be wanting to do this...:(
We're a very BOINC and Biology project orientated team and most effort is focussed into these.

if you really want an inter team race, we also have a large crunching focus on Folding@home. Unfortunatly non Boinc for the boinc lovers but credit system is fair and concise. Linux, mac and Windows supported with no unfair advantage for one OS over the other like BOINC currently.

We'll be happy to race in F@H as it's a project many of us run. AMD user'slooks like they need a boost there as well...;)

[Brucifer]

Any comments from the home team????

[vaughan]

I'm trying a couple of WCG BOINC tasks on one PC now to get an up-to-date feel for the thing. I tried UD-Grid or whatever its called now for a task or two on the laptop whilst I was away. Seemed to take ages to crunch so it rekindled my memories of long running molecules and why I stopped running United Devices way back.

I'll only consider the non-BOINC WCG on a couple of PCs if the team decides to go that way becuase it appears too slow for my tastes.

If we were going to vote for a non-BOINC application I'd say D2OL or TSC; haven't tried F@H for ages so cannot comment. For the Intel P4s I'd vote for Seventeen or Bust, the Athlons are hopeless at SOB'ing but are great at PSP or Riesel Sieving.

It really looks like BOINC is here to stay. For example, this week we had two new BOINC projects start: Riesel Sieve and Nano-Hive. Last week we had Protein at Home, and the week before Rectilinear Crossing Number so the list of BOINC projects gets longer and longer.

[gamer007]

Gotta agree with that. I have a lot of BOINC projects bookmarked in firefox (I think all BOINC projects currently running). W/ such a big list, we need a seperate page to list all of them at once. Unless the Matrix can list every single BOINC project + each non-BOINC project we are participating in.

I've ran some WCG WUs before, they are fine, no problems. IIRC, they took 1-3hrs each (on my former 1.4GHz PC).

[drezha]

gamer, that all depends what project it is you got. ;)

Some took 7+ hours on my A64 3500+

TPR no longer run D2OL really.

We managed to get to rank 7 in the world then someone cheated and reset it...and we all moved on.

I can see where Brucifer is coming with this...BOINC at the minute really favours Windows. Just check benchmarks between windows and linux machines! Awful discrepency between them. At least the new SETI enhanced is changing this and changing the way BOINC benchmarks therefore making it more fair.

Folding@Home is a LRM project. My current work unit will take 3 or 4 days..(thats one of the longest mind)
Some of the bigger work units have a bonus for crunching them (ie you get the score and some extra) It's very much like SETI@home classic in it's
upload/download methods etc etc. And you can't download a queue :(

BUT it is a project that is getting valid results :D Believe they realsed another news anonucement the other day saying they had a breakthough or something...

[Brucifer]

TPR no longer run D2OL really.

We managed to get to rank 7 in the world then someone cheated and reset it...and we all moved on.

I can see where Brucifer is coming with this...BOINC at the minute really favours Windows. Just check benchmarks between windows and linux machines! Awful discrepency between them. At least the new SETI enhanced is changing this and changing the way BOINC benchmarks therefore making it more fair.

Folding@Home is a LRM project. My current work unit will take 3 or 4 days..(thats one of the longest mind)
Some of the bigger work units have a bonus for crunching them (ie you get the score and some extra) It's very much like SETI@home classic in it's
upload/download methods etc etc. And you can't download a queue :(

BUT it is a project that is getting valid results :D Believe they realsed another news anonucement the other day saying they had a breakthough or something...

re:D2OL -- yes, I agree Drezha, when they did the reset it really ticked off a lot of people. And whether the D2OL admins/project_management care to really admit it, the projects realized a lot of work due to participants playing the team point thing. So I'm not into the d2ol thing anymore. Making the masses suffer due to some cheats really sucks. In the end, who lost??? The d2ol project that's who. And I just don't see many people crunching it anymore so I guess we can knock it out of the running. :)

re:FAH -- I've crunched it hard in the past. Then the units got longer which is okay, but they started playing with the boinc thing and I just moved on. They do good work with their results which is a big feather in their hat. Wonder what the "brokethrough" about. :) I would support doing some more crunching for FAH if for no other reason than it is one of the few really successful DC projects.

I fully realize that there is a constantly growing number of boinc systems and projects out there. And I also realize that linux farmers like myself are far fewer in numbers in the overall scheme of things on this planet. And so the development attention is devoted to attracting the windows users averaging one to six computers, and the business computing assets running windows that are willing to also let boinc projects run on their systems.

I can run a few windows systems, like 4 or 5 out of my 22 systems total. I also realize that there are a lot of boinc crunchers out there that do not care to run non-boinc projects, as everyone basically has their own thing. So I guess I just sit back and watch what develops IRT a suitable project for a team crunch-off contest, and then decide whether I'll participant and if so to what degree. Sorta like the rest of the people. :) I sure would have liked to see Lars get some help on PSP though, but that's the way the ball bounces.

[drezha]

FAH do not yet have a BOINC working project and there main aim is the client.

Oh and they are the first DC project IIRC that are making work units that will be able to be crunched on a GPU on video cards :D

Thing the breakthrough was listed on there main page (there papers section...)

[AMD-USR_JL]

Have they started yet or is it still internal beta testing?

[drezha]

The GPU crunching is in development still.
AFAIK they have just developed code that is capable of being run on the GPU. :)

There BOINC attempt AFAIK is in internal Beta (not even open to testers outside of Standford) and I'm not sure if they've given up or not.

Beta units for there current client are released though you have to apply to them with reason's why you should be a beta tester...

Anyhow...

I will tell those at TPR that a race is to be considered and we shall see what there view is :)

EDIT:

http://forums.teamphoenixrising.net/showthread.php?p=342730#post342730
;)