BOINC Pentathlon 2011

[aendgraend]

Hello dear Friends of the AMD Users BOINC Team,

here's the official Invitation to the 2nd BOINC Pentathlon, again presented by SETI.Germany.

http://www.seti-germany.de/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/2boinc_pentathlon.png (http://www.seti-germany.de/boinc_pentathlon/22_en_Welcome.html)

SETI.Germany continues it's new invented challenge and invites all BOINC-Teams to participate in the 2nd BOINC-Pentathlon, following the ideals of the ancient Pentathlon.

It will start May the 5th 2011 (00:00 UTC) and will end May the 18th 2011 (23:59 UTC).

Like in the ancient Greece, the Pentathlon will be held in 5 disciplines. That means within 14 days the participants will have to crunch 5 different projects, all of them for a period of 5 days. That said, you can easily see that some projects will have to be crunched at the same time.

Each team that would like to participate has to sign up (http://www.seti-germany.de/boinc_pentathlon/anmeldung.php?&lang=en) until April the 27th. Like in the last year the favourites in the different disciplines can be chosen by every team on their own. The project that gaines the most voices will be crunched.

A list of the projects that can be chosen from can be found here (http://www.seti-germany.de/boinc_pentathlon/25_en_Disciplines.html), but you can also suggest other projects. (But before suggesting other projects, please check if the project and/or their servers would be able to withstand the combined BOINC forces. We do not want to bring any project server down.)

More information can be found here (http://www.seti-germany.de/boinc_pentathlon/22_en_Welcome.html).
Teams can sign up here (http://www.seti-germany.de/boinc_pentathlon/anmeldung.php?&lang=en).

In the last year it was very exciting until the end.
We hope your Team will join us.

aendgraend
SETI.Germany

[Dirk Broer]

Sounds great!

[vaughan]

OK guys, what projects do you want to propose? The choices we enter will go in the vote and that will help decide what the Pentathlon consists of.

I nominate:
1.WCG - Help Cure Cancer
2. GPU - Collatz
3. Physics & Chemistry (CPU) - QMC
4. Biology & Medicine (CPU) - Poem
5. Mathematics (CPU) - ABC

[Dirk Broer]

1. I do not yet participate in WCG, so every choice is right by me.
2. Primegrid (gets you most credits)
3. Leiden (I am AMD Users #1 on this project...but they are real Scrooge McDucks when it comes to credits)
4. Malaria (handles easier than Rosetta, my 2nd preference)
5. I do not yet participate in any of the given alternatives, so every choice is right by me.

[Ramjet]

OK guys, what projects do you want to propose? The choices we enter will go in the vote and that will help decide what the Pentathlon consists of.

I nominate:
1.WCG - Help Cure Cancer
2. GPU - Collatz
3. Physics & Chemistry (CPU) - QMC
4. Biology & Medicine (CPU) - Poem
5. Mathematics (CPU) - ABC

1. WCG (Any of the subprojects) sounds good to me
2. Poem always ran well
3. Collatz
4. Rosetta
5. Docking or Primegrid maybe?

But I'd be happy with WCG, and anything else that doesn't run out of work units right away, or crash the server :)

[NeoGen]

My 5 choices would be...

1. WCG - Help Cure Cancer
2. GPU - Primegrid
3. Physics - Leiden
4. Biology - Poem
5. Yoyo@Home

But I'll be equally happy with anything that the Team runs on... let's make a strong impression on this year's pentathlon! :)

[Dirk Broer]

The projects for the various disciplines to choose from are:
World Community Grid

Computing for Clean Water (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/World_Community_Grid/Computing_for_Clean_Water)
FightAIDS@Home (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/World_Community_Grid/FightAIDS%40Home)
Help Conquer Cancer (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/World_Community_Grid/Help_Conquer_Cancer)
Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy - Phase 2 (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/World_Community_Grid/Help_Cure_Muscular_Dystrophy_-_Phase_2)
Human Proteome Folding - Phase 2 (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/World_Community_Grid/Human_Proteome_Folding_-_Phase_2)
The Clean Energy Project - Phasen 2 (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/World_Community_Grid/The_Clean_Energy_Project)

GPU Projects

Collatz (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/Collatz_Conjecture)
DNETC (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/DNETC%40Home)
Einstein (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/Einstein%40Home)
GPUGrid (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/GPUGRID)
Milkyway (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/MilkyWay%40home)
Primegrid (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/PrimeGrid)
SETI@home (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/SETI%40home)

Physics & Chemistry (CPU)

Cosmology (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/Cosmology%40Home)
Ibercivis (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/Ibercivis)
Leiden (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/Leiden_Classical)
QMC (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/QMC%40HOME)

Biology & Medicine (CPU)

Docking (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/Docking%40Home)
MalariaControl (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/Malariacontrol.net)
POEM@Home (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/POEM%40HOME)
RNA World (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/RNA_World)
Rosetta (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/Rosetta)

Mathematics (CPU)

ABC (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/ABC%40home)
Mersenne@home (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/Mersenne%40home)
NFS@home (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/NFS%40home)
Primaboinca (http://www.seti-germany.de/wiki/Primaboinca)
Yoyo@home

Meaning that Ramjet has to formulate a new set of preferences......No Poem for Cat.2; Collatz only possible with Cat.2, not Cat.3; No Docking or Primegrid for Cat.5 (Primegrid could go -as Collatz- with Cat.2). AMDave might want to renew his preferences as well, as Seti is not amongst the CPU projects in this Pentathlon, Cat.1=WCG, take your pick, so not Yoyo; Yoyo and ABC are both Cat. 5

[AMDave]

May I add some parameters to the choices?
Bandwidth - Can we try to avoid the larger u/l & d/l volumes? Whilst I admit to doing a LOT of Mersenne@home, it is a bandwidth & connection hog
GPU types - having no double precision GPUs myself, Milkyway is out and GPUGrid consistently gives high rate of errors on completion every time I go back to try again with new h/w & drivers. Not worth it.
Stability - Rosetta has a bad habit of going off the rails whenever there is a contest on. Don't get me wrong, it is a very important project, it just isn't stable enough for a set and forget effort at max output.
Run-time - For a contest I prefer to stay under 24 hours wu-time, else there's too much invested when it comes time to change the primary project. Aborting 20cpus*1day's work sucks & I don't consider it an option. eg QMC, but QMC wu-time may have improved since my last effort there.

That's the negatives out of the way.

I am up for everything else though.

Here's my picks:

CPU:
1. Yoyo - small d/l u/l sub projects
2. SETI
3. WGC - any/all sub project/s
4. Cosmology
5. ABC

GPU:
1. PrimeGrid
2. DNETC
3. Collatz

the rest of the GPU projects are exclusive for one reason or another and will eliminate members due to hardware / OS

[liuqyn]

I would say,
1 - computing for clean water - I don't run this project much so any would be ok though
2 - collatz - most stable across multiple platforms
3 - leiden - could use a boost
4 - malaria or poem - others can be gready on b/w
5 - abc - haven't run it hard in a while so it's due

[Ramjet]

For those not so familiar with WCG, The Clean Energy project is the biggest bandwith hog with some uploads around 36Mb, and Help Fight Childhood Cancer and Fight Aids have the largest work units, some taking over a day to complete, so maybe not the best choice for a short race. Help Conquer Cancer and Clean Water both run very well with small wu's and short up and downloads.

[vaughan]

Thanks that's good advice Ramjet.

[Tamaster]

For those not so familiar with WCG, The Clean Energy project is the biggest bandwith hog with some uploads around 36Mb, and Help Fight Childhood Cancer and Fight Aids have the largest work units, some taking over a day to complete, so maybe not the best choice for a short race. Help Conquer Cancer and Clean Water both run very well with small wu's and short up and downloads.

I've had good utilization on HCC as well and it's a very mature project. The CW project is relatively new so I can't talk to the consistency of the work, but I've gotten very good credit from it.

[Scott]

I would vote for Voughan's projects.
I tried to install WCG 6 months ago on windows and did not exit the boinc manager - BIG MISTAKE, IT TRASHED MY WINDOWS INSTALL.
Since my last post I made it to the top 10 and passed 50 million.

[NeoGen]

Well done Scott, that's inspirational! :)

I am lucky to have never had a project trash my windows install, I don't know if I would ever go back to it.
You not only went back to it, as you made it to the top 10! Congrats! :)

[SuicideCabbage]

So I see that we signed up, I assume that means we already voted for projects. Out of curiosity, what did we end up choosing?

[Dirk Broer]

I hope we did not choose DNETC. It is belly-up for more than a week now, much to the comfort of my Milkyway ratings and to a lesser extent my Collatz ratings as well.

[plonk420]

For those not so familiar with WCG, The Clean Energy project is the biggest bandwith hog with some uploads around 36Mb, and Help Fight Childhood Cancer and Fight Aids have the largest work units, some taking over a day to complete, so maybe not the best choice for a short race. Help Conquer Cancer and Clean Water both run very well with small wu's and short up and downloads.

also Clean Energy only lets you run 1 unit at a time (best i can tell. i haven't read up any more on it) ... however it's not as bad as BURP. 600-700mb initial download, 20+MB uploads every 30 min or so ;)

[NeoGen]

I hope we did not choose DNETC. It is belly-up for more than a week now, much to the comfort of my Milkyway ratings and to a lesser extent my Collatz ratings as well.
Is DNetC still running?
Back in January there was rumours that both DNetC and AndrOINC were both going to be shut down...
http://www.tswb.org/Forums/tabid/173/forumid/16/postid/16925/scope/posts/Default.aspx

[Jason1478963]

There is a setting to change this, but it will make for a very loaded down machine. I would not choose it for a race as it would be a bit harder for people to meet the requirements of that sub project.

[Dirk Broer]

Is DNetC still running?
Back in January there was rumours that both DNetC and AndrOINC were both going to be shut down...
http://www.tswb.org/Forums/tabid/173/forumid/16/postid/16925/scope/posts/Default.aspx



Message 97842 (http://boincstats.com/forum/forum_thread.php?id=6315&nowrap=true#97842) - 22 Apr 2011 15:05:02 UTChttp://boincstats.com/graphics/info.gif (http://boincstats.com/page/faq.php#67)
In response to message 97736 (http://boincstats.com/forum/forum_thread.php?id=6315&nowrap=true#97736)
xyzzyxyzzy wrote: Any news on DNETC? Like if/when it will return?
to be honest i dont think they willhttp://boincstats.com/graphics/emoticons/scared.gif

[vaughan]

The BOINC Pentathlon will start on 05/05/2011. The first project is already announced: 05.05. - 10.05.: Help Conquer Cancer in the World Community Grid discipline.

The further anncouncements can be retrieved by
* Blog: http://www.seti-germany.de/blog/category/boinc-pentathlon/ (http://www.setigermany.de/blog/category/boinc-pentathlon/feed)
* Feed: http://www.seti-germany.de/blog/category/boinc-pentathlon/feed/ (http://www.setigermany.de/blog/category/boinc-pentathlon/feed)
* Twitter: http://twitter.com/SETIGermany
* Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SETI.Germany (http://www.facebook.com/pages/SETIGermany/177588328907)

All announcements are available in english, french and german.

The BOINC Pentathlon stats are here:
http://www.seti-germany.de/boinc_pentathlon/statistiken/pentathlon.php (http://www.setigermany.de/boinc_pentathlon/statistiken/pentathlon.php)
Your team stats are available at:
http://www.seti-germany.de/boinc_pentathlon/statistiken/teamstats_en_6_AMD+Users.html

[NeoGen]

On the blog it already says the second project, for the GPU discipline, will be Primegrid. :)

[SuicideCabbage]

Is there a way to allow BOINC to download but not upload?

[NeoGen]

I would say.... set your buffer to the maximum allowed on the boinc preferences (10 days of work? If memory serves...), let it download everything and then go to the boinc manager and disable the network communication.

This may or may not work, it depends from project to project... some projects let you run off with hundreds of WUs, while others don't allow you to have more than a few WUs per core at a time...

[BobCat13]

NeoGen has the correct instructions except WCG's HCC has a 7 day deadline, so you might want to set the preference to 7 instead of 10.

I believe WCG has a limit of 80 tasks per core / day.

[SuicideCabbage]

I already have a large batch of WCG precrunched, by disabling network communication as you said. What I wanted to do was download PrimeGrid WUs while not uploading any of the WCG ones.

[Ramjet]

3RD project of the Pentathlon is QMC@home, 4th project is Rosetta@home, 5th is still pending................

[SuicideCabbage]

Two CPU projects running 100% parallel this year, well that's new. Which one are we as a team going to focus on?

[vaughan]

I already have a large batch of WCG precrunched, by disabling network communication as you said. What I wanted to do was download PrimeGrid WUs while not uploading any of the WCG ones.
I think one solution is to have a dual boot setup to achieve this. I have this on my MacBookPro where I can run native OSX or run VMware Fusion and that has Win 7 64bit Ultimate installed. Effectively this gives two BOINC installations on the one computer.

[SuicideCabbage]

I figured out a way to do it, but during my messing around ended up erroring out about 40 unstarted units, no matter though I started a batch of PrimeGrid along with a new batch of WCG. Tonight when the Pentathlon officially begins I can restore the last batch of complete, upload, call home, then I should be able to put the batch of WCG and PrimeGrid I am crunching now back in, and keep network activity suspended until I can upload both projects. (If that makes any sense) Unfortunately I have about a three hour window to do this, before the ~80 units I already have done miss deadline, and I won't be home at the time. Hopefully I have this VNC stuff all setup right, have done remote administration a million times, just never served from the home network.

[Dirk Broer]

Two CPU projects running 100% parallel this year, well that's new. Which one are we as a team going to focus on?

I will concentrate on Rosetta, as I do not participate in QMC. I have already added two projects specially for this contest, and I'm not going to add a third.

[SuicideCabbage]

Alright then I will run Rosetta as well

[Tamaster]

I've got all mine pointing at WCG HCC (which I've already earned the gold) going for a Ruby Badge. Yeah... I'm that close already. Then I'll switch over to Rosetta and finish it out there.

I just love that this is a Pent-ATHLON :icon_cool:

[liuqyn]

ya, this is just a PHENOM-inal event isn't it....

[Dirk Broer]

Let's BULLDOZER those other teams outa tha way

[Jason1478963]

i might try and swing rosetta for a little bit too

[SuicideCabbage]

Not bad at all, unless we seriously lose output in the next few days it looks like 7th is pretty secure, a little bit of a push and we may secure 6th. Czech National Team is just 20,000 points ahead, and right below us is Meisterkuehler.de at nearly 500,000 points below. However ESL is 17th with ~700k points, and SETI.USA 21st with just ~170k points! Normally they are top 5, so if they are holding back WUs for later we may drop a few ranks once they report.

[vaughan]

Where's Free-DC they have some super heavyweights?
I'm switching over some more GHz to this effort but there are rare RALPH and BURP tasks to crunch too. Good thing its Autumn here and the night-time temps are 10-12C.

[Dirk Broer]

Good thing its Autumn here and the night-time temps are 10-12C.
Spring here and we had -3C this week as night temperature. At daytime we are already in the 20-25C, so the 37cm external fans are blowing too, as the computer room has a big window facing south-east.

[Jason1478963]

you guys need water blocks to help provide heat to a storage tank for domestic hot water use ;)

[Scott]

I'm going to run the QMC project, I don't like running rosetta.
I adjusted my sig, it now says "DONT TREAD ON AMD"

[Dirk Broer]

Thanks, the hot water is already a by-product of the central heating. My computer room is the back-up for that....

[Scott]

I'm going to stay on the HCC project for a month or two. My cousin from Martinsville, Indiana has stage 4 lung cancer.

[NeoGen]

Sorry to hear it Scott...

If it serves of any consolation, I can only say that every single workunit crunched contributes to the investigation, and gets mankind one step closer to finding a solution... I can only imagine how backwards our medical science would be if Distributed Computing had not been created...

[Dirk Broer]

HCC is a worthy project, I'll stay till I have at least a gold badge (but might go for sapphire). Cancer is the main killer in my family too.

Bronze - 14 days
Silver - 45 days
Gold - 90 days
Ruby - 180 days
Emerald - 1 year
Sapphire - 2 years

[Tamaster]

I just earned Ruby for HCC (I had already earned a Ruby Badge for the 'Help Fight Childhood Cancer' (HFCC) project. That makes my third (the other was with the 'Computing for Clean Water' project).

It's all good stuff. I'm in it for the long haul on all three projects, which have the potential to save literally millions of lives.

[AMDave]

@Dirk and TAMaster - right along with you there.
I just blasted max cores on WCG this week and went from Bronze to Gold on HCC.
Hope it helps along the way.

For the Pentathlon it looks about time to set no new work on WCG and open the QMC / Rosetta floodgates
I'll be doing Rosetta on my giggle of duallies and QMC on my beefy 'oxen

Great show so far, Team.
We snatched two team ranks on WCG and contributed a whole lot to HCC.

Lets see if we can turn up the heat!

Host 'em, Toast 'em an' Roast 'em.

I feel a 'Tim the Tool Man' moment coming on ... MORE POWER!!! AR! AR! AR! :D

[SuicideCabbage]

I made the switch from WCG to Rosetta, I am really impressed with how well we are doing this year, a big step up from last. With any luck we can finish in the top 10 this year, I just can't believe we lost 7th on WCG at the last minute, we held it from the start just to lose it at the end :(

[Dirk Broer]

I'm afraid we're dropping steadily....
http://www.seti-germany.de/boinc_pentathlon/statistiken/teamstats_en_6_AMD+Users.html

[Dirk Broer]

If you can read German (or if you're a fellow Jeep fan), you want to follow the Pentathlon reports from Jeepers: http://www.seti-germany.de/forum/das-hauptforum/5453-2-boinc-pentathlon-der-taegliche-bericht-zur-lage.html#post190035

[AMDave]

Are we favouring any particular Yoyo sub-project tomorrow?

[Dirk Broer]

Are we favouring any particular Yoyo sub-project tomorrow?
I'm having problems finishing the WUs
Ecm does not get past 0,00% (at least not after 15 minutes running)
Muon just keeps on adjusting it's time to complete esitimate (running 6 hours, wants 6 more) with some WUs. I do HAVE completed two of them though.
Evolution: 22 Hour WUs
Cruncher is the only one without prolems it seems
Euler and Evorobots WUs haven't started with me yet

[vaughan]

Are we favouring any particular Yoyo sub-project tomorrow?
Euler is running fine.

[Dirk Broer]

Had to abort most of my Muon's when they hadn't shown any progress past 50% after 7 hours running and still wanting 6 hours more

[AMDave]

bmmr
I hypothesize that the probability of getting a short Muon wu these days, where the greater number of particles dissipate beyond the optimal field-path, is less due to the on-going improvements in the algorithm over the last several years.

I'm sending back cruncher and euler wu's with great abandon today and banking a sizeable pending credit volume.

Yo yo yo yer boat gently down the stream ... lol

I'm targeting my 50K milestone, but it might be tight to get that in before the end of the 19th.
I might get a couple of Yoyo badges out of this run - finally!

The robots project is linux only (as per the apps page) and although I have it enabled I haven't espied any on my linux cores yet.

I see liuqyn leading from the front and gamer007, pauley starting to chase you Dirk and GLIS, vaughan and velo and NeoMetal have active cores.

This is a surprisingly small project team.
Hopefully a few more might join in during the next 3 days as QMC and Rosetta finish
We are not done until the 19th.

[Dirk Broer]

I am now processing a Muon for over 13 hours, and it still wants 6.5 hours more to go %$##&*!. The 22 hour Evolution Wu makes more progress...14 hours to go after 2 hours
On another machine a 58 hour evolution Wu has landed

[AMDave]

I'd mod your prefs to euler and cruncher now and let the rest of the work finish itself.
There's still at least 3 days to go so they should be done by then with some tidy points.

[Dirk Broer]

My first Euler has just been uploaded! Evolution is all about slow progress, as the name implies.
The Muon now at 17 hours, still 6 hours to go

[gamer007]

I see liuqyn leading from the front and gamer007, pauley starting to chase you Dirk and GLIS, vaughan and velo and NeoMetal have active cores.

Yup, I just started yoyo for the first time I can remember. I currently have a Muon WU crunching for the past 20 hours (With 9.5 hours estimated to go), so I disabled all the sub-projects except Cruncher right now. Going to join in with Euler as well.

[Dirk Broer]

As far as I understand it, Muon gets you credit based upon the iterations done for a WU. 20 hours of running (and another 9.5+n (where n=>0) to go) must give heaps of credit.
My Muon is now almost at 20 hours, and wants 7 more, being at 73.33% for quite some time (re-runnning a part 4 times because of a good result in-between it seems)

[AMDave]

A sweet Yoyo day.
Looks like a lot of my pending credit went through last night.
Got 2 badges AND my 50K milestone all at once!

Going for the 'tonne' by the end of the challenge will be a tall ask but I'll keep the foot to the floor in hope.

/me throws the brake pedal out the window. Dead weight, yah?
Gear stick ... gone.
Not changing down anytime soon.
Wing mirrors ... gone.
Passenger seats ... take to the curb.
Feeling the heat from the bare metal floor after the carpet and shoes went airborne.
More speeeeed!
Ditching the sunglasses and the head-rests.
Come onnnnnnnn!
More speeeeed!
Who needs a steering wheel when all you want is a straight line?
... no wait.
When I get close to light speed I'll probably need something to hold onto. =}
Nooooo!!!
The radio stays.
Rocky sound-track MUST stay.
Pray for a tail wind.
Pray for a tail wind.
Ommmmmmm.

[Dirk Broer]

When I get close to light speed I'll probably need something to hold onto

I blew a 100Mb hub when trying to emulate you, replaced it with a 100 Mb switch
(what's the use of a 1Gb switch when your router only does 10 Mb?
For the internal network 100Mb is enough, as most of my NICs are that speed)

[Jason1478963]

I think most of my onboard am2 and up are all Gb... I think even a few 939 are Gb. For most of our crunchers I agree with you on 100Mb being more then enough. If you start moving large files around on the network from a dvr or network backups I could see where Gb can be a nice upgrade to reduce any internal network bottlenecks. I have a few chunks that are Gb but I should have picked at least 8 ports as you lose to many ports on the 5 ports with switch to switch connections. I would like to have a 24 port Gb if the price was right :)