NEW PROJECT - Pi Segment (not boinc)

[NeoGen]

There is a new project starting that is aiming to bring the chinese people more into Distributed Computing. This is probably one of the first DC projects started in China, if not the first one. :)


Pi Segment is a distributed computing project held by an university student. It aims to propagandize distributed computing, encourage people to make full use of their computational power and challenge the world record of calculating Pi. There are many popular distributed computing projects in other countries, but there's none in China. We hope that Pi Segment can change this situation.


Website --> http://pisegment.vicp.net/ (http://pisegment.vicp.net/)
(If you see the site in chinese characters, look in the top right corner and change the language to english)


To join the project, all you need is to download the client application, the link is on the main page. When you run it for the first time you will be able to create a new account or attach to an already existing one.

TIP - When the application is running you can close it and it will keep on working with only an icon on the system tray.

Here's a picture of the client application.
http://neogen.amdusers.com/pisegment.JPG
NOTE - Do not follow my example regarding to the cache of WorkUnits. It is recommended to have around one day of cached WU's in case of network problems. Measure how long a WU takes on your machine and adjust the "fill up cache to" number accordingly.


Once you have created an account and started crunching, you should go to the website, log in, and update your information on the "My Account" section. This may change in the future, but up to client v1.0.5.1 the Country setting could only be modified on the website. When you register you are assigned to the "Other" country. (means it's undefined)

Also, it's on the "My account" section that you can join a team, so go there and join AMD Users!:icon_thumright:

[Scooter]

up and running and joined the team already :icon_cool:

[NeoGen]

Forgot to mention something...

In this project, credits are a kind of currency, the points for the rankings are workunits finished.
- Everyone starts with 2,000 credits.
- Each workunit downloaded costs 100 credits.
- Each workunit finished and uploaded grants 150 credits (or 120 if it's uploaded past the deadline)

Manage your credits well... :icon_wink:

[BlackAdder]

Hummm....curious credit system....I'm in. :)

[Lagu]

I have change the case to 24 WU´s on my Intel and 12 for my AMD but did it help if they have network problemss because a finished work will be uploaded or will it be on a output queque and released when the network problems is solved?

[NeoGen]

The client will try to upload workunits on output queue for several times until it reaches a maximum number of times. Usually you don't need to do anything, but if the network problem takes long to solve you will need to press the "Upload" button to send the workunits once the problem is solved on the server. (Or restart the client)

[JUST]

Hi guys! I'm the founder of this project. Thank you for testing it!

Usually, it can download, compute and upload automactically. Moreover, it can keep the finished WU in cache and upload it when network is fine.

Different from BOINC, the credit in this project is only used to prevent users from downloading too many WUs and to fulfil some requirement, e.g. creating group.

I'm not so good at English. So I hope you can understand my expression:)

[Lagu]

When I changed the case my credit wents down to 700???

[JUST]

When I changed the case my credit wents down to 700???
well, your credit will decrease 100 when you download a WU successfully. Then, it will increase 150 or 120 after you upload its result.

[vaughan]

Hi guys! I'm the founder of this project. Thank you for testing it!

I'm not so good at English. So I hope you can understand my expression:)
Welcome to the AMD Users forum JUST.

Its an honor and a privilege to welcome a Project Founder :wav:

Your English is much better than my Chinese. Ni hâo :icon_wink:

[Evil-Dragon]

Site is dead for me, looks like it's pointing to 127.0.0.1.

[NeoGen]

That's interesting... if I send pings to the site it replies as 127.0.0.1, but I can see it perfectly on IE.

[NeoGen]

And by the way... once you reach 20 uploaded workunits, a surprise gift will show on the "My Account" section. :)

Just like this one but with your name on it... :icon_wink:

http://pisegment.vicp.net/sign/signid.aspx?userid=21c92be1-b568-49d0-8ff8-44d7cfb2bad5&language=en

[drezha]

Like the idea of the fluctuating credits scheme :) Thats a very nice touch.

Any plans for a linux port?

[JUST]

Like the idea of the fluctuating credits scheme :) Thats a very nice touch.

Any plans for a linux port?
Exactly.

I'd like to create a linux version but I'm a freshman in Linux programming. And currently I am the only one who is responsible to design the client. Maybe we could implement it after I found a good partner familiar with Linux.

[JUST]

Site is dead for me, looks like it's pointing to 127.0.0.1.
I'm sorry the server lost its connection in last 8 hours because of ISP (Internet Service Provider) problem.
It has been recovered now. I will explain this failure in website for details.

If your client still cannot upload, just try to restart it.

[Evil-Dragon]

It is back up for me and i'm processing some WU's :)

[Lagu]

Should it be a good idea ask the developer of this project if he can get the icon to blink for example in red colour when the connection fails? Otherwice we are wasting our computing time and if it takes long time to solve we can change to another project rather to let our computers go idle?

[NeoGen]

I have a question for when JUST comes to our site... what will happen when the number of assigned workunits equals the number of total workunits? out of work?
I've been keeping an eye on the graph on the statistics section and it's very close to reach it.

[JUST]

Should it be a good idea ask the developer of this project if he can get the icon to blink for example in red colour when the connection fails? Otherwice we are wasting our computing time and if it takes long time to solve we can change to another project rather to let our computers go idle?
Although its connection failed, it can still compute the WU in the cache unless the the cache is empty. You can check it in "CPUX" page.
Anyway, I will add some warning when CPU is idle.

[JUST]

I have a question for when JUST comes to our site... what will happen when the number of assigned workunits equals the number of total workunits? out of work?
I've been keeping an eye on the graph on the statistics section and it's very close to reach it.
When all the WUs are assigned to clients, it will display a message like "No available WU to download".
The current task in total will compute the digits near the forty trillionth bit of Pi. This result has been reported by PiHEX, an old DC project. So we can compare the result to confirm the client works normally.

Also, I plan to add some more WUs to test the client for a longer time in order to check its stabilization.

[vaughan]

Welcome Snoopy to the AMD Users team at Pi Segment. Nice entrance at Rank Number 1. Looks as if Lagu has somebody to chase now :icon_eek:

[NeoGen]

With Snoopy and dyliu we suddenly jumped to third place! :icon_eek:

Don't know if you'll see this, but welcome to both you guys and enjoy your stay! :)

[JUST]

I know Snoopy. He is an active user in EQUN.com and owned two AMD64 X2 3800+ machines.

[gamer007]

Is it possible to merge computers? I had to reset the client on my main computer for some reason so it shows up twice.

[gatekeeper53]

As long as nothing has changed it's simple. Go to the Computer Summary at the bottom click on "Merge Computer" chech the one that shows up and your done. Opps I take it you're talking about a non Bionc project sorry.

[Lagu]

Hi Just

Please greet Snoopy wery welcome to AMDusers. We is proud have a Chinese friend in the project of PI Segment. Snoppy have give us a real bost. Other Chinese is also welcome. I´m only unsure if they understand English but I beleive most all young peoples understand and talk English very good.

And I wish to tank you Just because you have developed a client as allow Dual 2 Cores, HT, and SSE2 at the same time.:icon_thumright: It is more I can say about other oroject out there as run the same old clients. Both my Intel Dual 2 Core and AMD Athlon 64, 3200+ run your project and the AMD run a WU at 0,55 minutes whish is 0,09 minutes faster than Intel.

The Intel Is newer and with more speed byt yet AMD is faster. It is a great mashine. I have even a AMD Athlon 1001 GHz, 640 MB memory but I think it is to slow and a WU will takes hours to be finished but I perhaps should testrun it. What is your option?:)

[NeoGen]

I wouldn't try it... my AthlonXP 2000+ (1667 MHz) takes around 5 hours to crunch a Pi Segment workunit.

[Evil-Dragon]

Ouch and i thought my machine crunched a WU slowly...

I only got it on the one machine at the moment.

[Scooter]

my 1 ghz celeron took 4:23 to do the last one it did

[gamer007]

My P4 3.0GHz takes about 2h to do 1 WU. I'm trying one of my brother's computer which is my old AMD Athlon XP 1700+ (1.4GHz), taking forever.

[NeoGen]

My P4 3.0GHz takes about 2h to do 1 WU.
I guess this is a project best suited for newer AMD's and dual cores then. My Athlon64 3200+ at work, clocked at 2GHz I think, sweeps them at little over 1 hour each.:icon_cool:

[JUST]

Is it possible to merge computers? I had to reset the client on my main computer for some reason so it shows up twice.
well, I'm sorry there is no similar function yet. Maybe I will consider adding it like BOINC.

[JUST]

Hi Just

Please greet Snoopy wery welcome to AMDusers. We is proud have a Chinese friend in the project of PI Segment. Snoppy have give us a real bost. Other Chinese is also welcome. I´m only unsure if they understand English but I beleive most all young peoples understand and talk English very good.

And I wish to tank you Just because you have developed a client as allow Dual 2 Cores, HT, and SSE2 at the same time.:icon_thumright: It is more I can say about other oroject out there as run the same old clients. Both my Intel Dual 2 Core and AMD Athlon 64, 3200+ run your project and the AMD run a WU at 0,55 minutes whish is 0,09 minutes faster than Intel.

The Intel Is newer and with more speed byt yet AMD is faster. It is a great mashine. I have even a AMD Athlon 1001 GHz, 640 MB memory but I think it is to slow and a WU will takes hours to be finished but I perhaps should testrun it. What is your option?:)
My pleasure, I will notice him and I think most Chinese young people have a better English than me:lol: The current client can support machine with 8 CPUs at most:)

About Athlon 1G (1001 G is terrible:5eek: ), I think it will be very slow. But, anyway, you can test it.

AMD K8 is a very advanced architeture which is suitable to run Pi Segment. It has double FPU (the unit used to compute float numbers) and short pipeline.

Specially, I optimized Pentium 4 by SSE2 a lot but it is also less efficient than K8.

[gatekeeper53]

Everyone is always screaming about a level playing field, I don't see how one could get anymore level than this. It looks like fun and a great way to promote DC'ing in China. Welcome Just.

[Evil-Dragon]

I wonder how many WU's till the Pi record is broken?

[JUST]

I wonder how many WU's till the Pi record is broken?
The current test is to compute Pi's 40000000000000th bit and it spend about 28 days. But the speed is not equal during the test: at the beginning, the speed is less than 300 results per day.
The newest record is the 1000000000000000th bit, 25 times as we have just finished. My plan is to double this record. Moreover, we need the same number of WUs to verify the result's precision.
In sum, 100 times as we have done. As the users will increase after deployment and the process is improving, I hope we can get it within two years. In addition, the huge computation resources is wasted in China. I expect the project can use them so that it will certainly accelerate the progress.


BTW, the WUs have been assigned over. After analyzing the results, I will add some more WUs.

[gatekeeper53]

Can you give us an idea on when there will be more wu's? I only got to play for a couple of hours but I really like the 40 minute wu's.

[NeoGen]

Work is out already... 7,000+ WU's. Look at the statistics chart! :icon_eek:

[gatekeeper53]

Only a short time down. Just must really be on top of things.

[NeoGen]

Pi Segment on my work machine was giving network errors, didn't want to upload or download, but I restarted it and everything was ok again. All my pending uploads went up and I stocked my cache again.

[NeoGen]

Guys... check the group stats! :biggrin:
At current rate we'll be ranked 2nd by tomorrow, and 1st probably on the weekend! :)

[Lagu]

Have anyone notised our logo inder "Other project"? It is a minilogo as is so sweet and clean. It looks better than or ordinary large one.:icon_cool:

[Lagu]

Just

I tried my AMD Athlon 1001 GHz on PI Segment. All went well but when the agent began crunch WIN XP reported “An unwanted failure”. I tried again but as soon the agent began calculate the same thing happened. I didn’t understand anything but then it went up for me the fact this computer doesn’t support SSE2 only MMX and 3DNOW!
I think it was the cause.:icon_wink: :icon_cool:

[NeoGen]

I emailed JUST asking if it was possible to add banners to the team pages, but he said he had a place especialy for banners and he would put it there.
Had not seen it on the page yet. It's very nice! :)

And it's empty_5oul's banner, not a copy of it, so if we alter the banner to have another message it will show there too.

[gatekeeper53]

Is it the one that says "Defend World #1 @ Rank Reisel Sieve (Bonic)? On this page: http://pisegment.vicp.net/project/projectother.aspx Is there any way to put world #1 Tampaku on there also?

[NeoGen]

Yup, it's possible, but our banner editor is currently away. Empty_5oul entered college this year, and hasn't been around here much since the start of the semester. He's probably still getting the grip of things there.

And if we push it a little this week, we could also add #1 on Pi Segment :icon_wink:

[gatekeeper53]

Giving it all I got. I hope Empty does well, the first year sets the mold for the next three (or more). I see too many that come to drink on daddies dime. Then have to go home and flip burgers for the next 30 years.

[NeoGen]

Giving it all I got.
Me too. This batch of workunits will not last longer than next weekend if my predictions are correct. I think there will be a pause for results examination and further client development after this, so we gotta make it to #1 before work runs out.
Another #1 spot would be a nice early xmas present for us. :icon_santa:

[Scooter]

Im doing my best!!

[gamer007]

After several BOINC WUs crashed from switching OSes (Vista Ultimate and XP), I've decided to put my computer to this for the time being. :)

[JUST]

Pi Segment on my work machine was giving network errors, didn't want to upload or download, but I restarted it and everything was ok again. All my pending uploads went up and I stocked my cache again.
I found this problem before. That may contribute to a component the client use to connect the server and it always remember the IP resolved from pisegment.vicp.net. It's okay when server is connected. But when server is temporarily down, this domain may refer to 127.0.0.1. If the client just connect the server in this time, it will remember the 127.0.0.1 and try to connect it forever:(
I have not found any options to force the client to resolve the domain so the client still suffer this problem.
Anyway, it will be handled after deployment for server will have a static IP.

[JUST]

Just

I tried my AMD Athlon 1001 GHz on PI Segment. All went well but when the agent began crunch WIN XP reported “An unwanted failure”. I tried again but as soon the agent began calculate the same thing happened. I didn’t understand anything but then it went up for me the fact this computer doesn’t support SSE2 only MMX and 3DNOW!
I think it was the cause.:icon_wink: :icon_cool:
well, I forgot it. The current client have to use SSE or SSE2 instructions.

but since the SSE instructions is not used in critical section, I can replace them by general X86 instructions. I will add this to my to-do list.

[NeoGen]

We are #2!! :)

Everybody take cover! There's a hurricane "Terry" going up the charts at an amazing speed! :icon_eek:
I think not even Snoopy is safe from this one! :P

[gatekeeper53]

:wav: Congrats everyone on becoming #2!!!:wav:

My help might come to an end in about 24 hours. You have to love this St. Louis weather, over 70 degrees here today and an ice storm predicted for tomorrow. Ice is the thing that will stop my isp since it's wireless and the antenna is prone to fall off the grain elevator with the weight gain. Of course the tornado that took out their tower last spring wasn't easy to fix like this will be and they were only down for 3 days then.

[NeoGen]

Vaughan... or Jeff... could one of you (the one with most free time) create us a forum section for Pi Segment please? :)

[gamer007]

How do we know when the work in our cache expires? The date is way off, unless I'm reading it wrong.

2006-10-29 22:59:22

EDIT: I'm guessing the dates are 1 month off and the times are related to the computer's?

[gatekeeper53]

If Just should read this it would be very nice to have a slot on the "My Devices" page that would tell you the date and time that each machine last contacted the server. I run several machines and had one that for some unknown reason just quit uploading wu's. All I had to do was to go in there and hit "upload now" to fix it but I lost about 20 hours of processing on it. This is in no way the projects fault I should have checked the machine more often. But, it would be very nice to look on the my devices page and be able to tell at a glance that all machines are active.

[JUST]

How do we know when the work in our cache expires? The date is way off, unless I'm reading it wrong.

2006-10-29 22:59:22

EDIT: I'm guessing the dates are 1 month off and the times are related to the computer's?
Yeah, you're right. It's 1 month off. I'll correct it in next version.
The time is based on local time according to the computer settings.

[JUST]

If Just should read this it would be very nice to have a slot on the "My Devices" page that would tell you the date and time that each machine last contacted the server. I run several machines and had one that for some unknown reason just quit uploading wu's. All I had to do was to go in there and hit "upload now" to fix it but I lost about 20 hours of processing on it. This is in no way the projects fault I should have checked the machine more often. But, it would be very nice to look on the my devices page and be able to tell at a glance that all machines are active.
Thank you for advice. I'll add it to my to-do list.

You said the machine failed to upload.
Could you tell me details? Or send me the LOG?

[gatekeeper53]

Since the machine is in my daughters room I'm positive that she was to blame and not the client. I think she might have just shut it down without knowing. She runs about 6 instant message programs at all times and at 14 can create one heck of an enviroment along with online gaming and lord know what else. She's sleeping now but when she goes off to school in the morning I'll try and get the log to you.

[vaughan]

We have a nice group running Pi Segment now. There's 20 of us leading the way now. :icon_thumright:

[jmblazek]

If LeBo keeps up his rate in pi segment, he'll overtake #1 in 14 days!!! Go LeBo!!!

[NeoGen]

The Dutch Power Cows are coming up strong, with even more members than us... we might have to fight for our #1 spot soon.

[LeBo]

You're right NeoGen, the COWS are coming. C'mon guys.

[steinfal]

I'd like to create a linux version but I'm a freshman in Linux programming. And currently I am the only one who is responsible to design the client. Maybe we could implement it after I found a good partner familiar with Linux.

Many users may be curious if you will release your source code if you do a Linux port. I remember reading on your website that you don't release your source for security reasons. Would you do it if you did a Linux client? You wouldn't have to.

[JUST]

I'm sorry I don't get you (my English is poor:sad5: ). What do you mean by "Would you do it if you did a Linux client? You wouldn't have to."?

[NeoGen]

Steinfal's question is, would you release the PI Segment source code to public if you created a linux client?

[JUST]

No, the source code will be only disclosed to some cooperative developers rather than public before the project is completed.
Also, it is not easy to develop a Linux version because the client used many system related techniques.

[gatekeeper53]

People just keep dragging more machines into Pi Segment! I just counted 287 machines just in the top 100 users. Lord only knows how many cores that represents.

[LeBo]

All that I run are duel cores. I don't even have a single core machine.:icon_rolleyes:

[gatekeeper53]

5 of my 11 are duals and 5 of the singles are 939 boards that I'll install duellies in in the next couple of months.

[gatekeeper53]

Just,

It might be nice if you added pages to the standings pages sometime so that all contributers could see their scores as well as the top 100. I hope that you will need many extra pages.

[LeBo]

5 of my 11 are duals and 5 of the singles are 939 boards that I'll install duellies in in the next couple of months.


All my boards are DFI 939's. Right now my 4400 X2 is down waiting on memory and a PS. It's also a DFI 939.

[gatekeeper53]

I wanted to experiment with this last bunch I built so I have an assortment. Asus, Abit, Epox, and DFI. I find that I like the DFI the best.

[JUST]

Just,

It might be nice if you added pages to the standings pages sometime so that all contributers could see their scores as well as the top 100. I hope that you will need many extra pages.
Yes, you're right. I'll do that.