Race polls - Everyone chips in

[NeoGen]

Welcome to the the race polls! The place where we will define what we are going to run on after Rosetta.


I myself have short knowledge on the tens of projects going on out there, so I need your help guys. And I mean everyone, not just the race participants.

I'm going to take your race project submissions and gather them here, list their good and bad aspects, and in the end we will race on the proven best ones, or in case of popular demand, the most favorite ones among everyone. (even if not proven best for race)

The minimum conditions that I ask for a project to be raced on should be:
- Have open account creation
- Being stable (minimal or no unforeseen downtimes)
- Have apps for both Windows and Linux (x86 minimum)
- Have steady flow of WUs (for both Windows and Linux)
- No GPU apps (sorry... this contest is CPU only.)
- No limit on WUs per host, day, etc...


The bonus points for the best projects would be for example...
- Credit equality for 32 & 64 bit hosts (this may be difficult...)
- Quorum = 1 (the best for instant validation... no wingmen needed)
- Fast WU validation (if not quorum=1 then at least a fast turnaround)
- Stable apps (little or no failing WUs)
- Dedicated 64bit apps (32bit apps run on 64bit hosts, but dedicated apps should be better)
- etc... (can't think of more right now, but I'm sure there's more positive aspects on projects)


I'll also need to confirm these things for us all, so for example if you are running the specific project X of the submitted ones, you can confirm if it is quorum=1, or if it is stable, or if the validation is fast... Confirmed information will help us all choose the best projects to race on.

And because everyone has their favorites projects, I thought I would take that into the process, so you can also say what are your favorite projects among the submitted ones. You can vote for more than one projects, and alter your vote at a later time if new better candidates appear. A project with many supporters may just win a chance (by favoritism) to be in a race, even if it has a few flaws compared to others.

So give me all the info you can guys, and I'll start filling up the submissions. Be it more projects for submission, confirmations, denials, your favorites, etc, I need it all.

In the next post I'll fill in already with a few examples so you guys can have an idea of what I'm building here.

[NeoGen]

Here are the submissions list, along with the positive (and negative) aspects of each.
We need all the information we can gather to make a good choice on the projects to race on.

Please everyone, chip in with what you know. I wanna see everyone here, not just the racers, ok?



Current top projects by features
(2 points for green, 1 point for orange, -1 point for red, no points for unconfirmed)
- GeneticLife (16 points) (selected for race 3)
- Rosetta@Home (15 points) (selected for race 1)
- POEM@Home (15 points) (selected for race 2)
- Enigma@Home (15 points) (selected for race 4)
- ABC@Home (14 points)
- NQueens@Home (14 points)
- Intelligence Realm (14 points)
- Docking@Home (13 points)
- VTU@Home (13 points)
- QMC@Home (12 points)
- Rectilinear Crossing Number (12 points)
- Primegrid (12 points)
- Yoyo@Home (ECM sub-project) (very high RAM requirements... up to 2GB per running WU)
- SHA-1 Collision Search (out of work)




QMC@Home (submitted by BobCat)
Favorite of: (BobCat)
- Open account creation (confirmed - see account creation page)
- Is stable (confirmed)
- Has apps for Windows & Linux (x86) (confirmed - see apps page)
- Has steady flow of WUs (confirmed)
- No limit on WUs (confirmed)
- * Dedicated 64bit apps (confirmed - But only 1 for linux and in alpha stage, see apps page)
- * Quorum = 1 (confirmed)
- * Workunits too long (>8 hours) (confirmed)



(selected for Race 2)
POEM@Home (submitted by BobCat)
Favorite of: (txt.file, velociraptor)
- Open account creation (confirmed - see account creation page)
- Is stable (confirmed)
- Has apps for Windows & Linux (x86) (confirmed - see apps page)
- Has steady flow of WU (confirmed)
- No limit on WUs (confirmed)
- * No dedicated 64bit apps (confirmed - see apps page)
- * Quorum = 1 (confirmed)
- * Dial-up friendly (confirmed)
- * WUs lenght ok (confirmed - up to two hours)



Yoyo@Home (ECM sub-project only) (submitted by BobCat)
Favorite of: (liuqyn, velociraptor)
- Open account creation (confirmed - see account creation page)
- Is stable (confirmed)
- Has apps for Windows & Linux (x86) (Confirmed)
- Has steady flow of WUs (confirmed)
- No limit on WUs (confirmed, no total limit but limit on caching, 50 WUs at a time)
- * Quorum = 1 (confirmed)
- * Dedicated 64bit apps (confirmed)
- * Credit favorable for 64bit hosts (confirmed)
- * Dial-up friendly (confirmed)
- * WUs lenght ok (confirmed)
(The evolution and Muon sub-projects do not have a linux client, and therefore are not elegible for contest. The OGR subproject has run times up to 24 hours, which is too much for a short timed race. The Yoyo@Home submission will be focused on the ECM)


Docking@Home (submitted by BobCat)
Favorite of: (no one yet)
- Open account creation (confirmed - see account creation page)
- Is stable (confirmed)
- Has apps for Windows & Linux (x86) (Confirmed - see apps page)
- Has steady flow of WUs (confirmed - just occasionally out of WUs)
- Limit on WUs (confirmed, 36/CPU/day)
- * Quorum = 1 (confirmed)
- * Dedicated 64bit apps (confirmed - see apps page)
- * Not dial-up friendly (confirmed)
- * WUs lenght ok (confirmed)



PrimeGrid (submitted by NeoGen)
Favorite of: (velociraptor)
- Open account creation (confirmed - see account creation page)
- Is stable (confirmed)
- Has apps for Windows & Linux (x86) (Confirmed - depends on sub-project, see apps page)
- Has steady flow of WUs (confirmed)
- No limit on WUs (confirmed)
- * Dedicated 64bit apps (confirmed - depends on sub-project, see apps page)
- * Credit favorable for 64bit hosts (confirmed - but depends on sub-project)
- * WUs lenght ok (confirmed - depends on sub-project)


(selected for race 4)
Enigma@Home (submitted by spikey_richie)
Favorite of: (sentient_life)
- Open account creation (confirmed - see account creation page)
- Is stable (confirmed)
- Has apps for Windows & Linux (x86) (Confirmed, see apps page)
- Has steady flow of WUs (confirmed)
- Limit on WUs (confirmed - 120/CPU/day, but the limit is unreachable by any current cpu)
- * No dedicated 64bit apps (confirmed, see apps page)
- * Quorum = 1 (confirmed)
- * Dial-up friendly (confirmed)
- * WUs lenght ok (confirmed)


SHA-1 Collision Search (submitted by vaughan)
Favorite of: (no one yet)
- Open account creation (confirmed - see account creation page)
- Is stable? (unconfirmed)
- Has apps for Windows & Linux (x86) (Confirmed, see apps page)
- Has steady flow of WUs (confirmed - out of work for the time being...)
- Limit on WUs? (unconfirmed)
- * Dedicated 64bit apps (confirmed - but only for Linux, see apps page)
- * Quorum = 1 (confirmed)
- * Dial-up friendly (confirmed)



Rectilinear Crossing Number (submitted by vaughan)
Favorite of: (no one yet)
- Open account creation (confirmed - see account creation page)
- Is stable? (unconfirmed)
- Has apps for Windows & Linux (x86) (Confirmed, see apps page)
- Has steady flow of WUs (confirmed)
- Limit on WUs? (unconfirmed)
- * Dedicated 64bit apps (confirmed, see apps page)
- * Quorum = 1 (confirmed)
- * Dial-up friendly (confirmed)



ABC@Home (submitted by sentient_life)
Favorite of: (sentient_life)
- Open account creation (confirmed - see account creation page)
- Is stable (confirmed)
- Has apps for Windows & Linux (x86) (Confirmed, see apps page)
- Has steady flow of WUs (confirmed)
- No Limit on WUs (confirmed)
- * Dedicated 64bit apps (confirmed, see apps page)
- * Quorum > 1 (confirmed)
- * Dial-up friendly (confirmed)
- * WUs lenght ok (confirmed, WUs are of variable lenght, mostly ok but a few WUs may be too long)





(selected for race 3)
Genetic Life (submitted by sentient_life)
Favorite of: (txt.file)
- Open account creation (confirmed - see account creation page)
- Is stable (confirmed)
- Has apps for Windows & Linux (x86) (Confirmed, see apps page)
- Has steady flow of WUs (confirmed)
- No limit on WUs (confirmed, no total limit but limit on caching, 8 WUs/Core at a time)
- * Dedicated 64bit apps (confirmed, only for linux, see apps page)
- * Quorum = 1 (confirmed)
- * Dial-up friendly (confirmed)
- * WUs lenght ok (confirmed)




NQueens@Home (submitted by liuqyn)
Favorite of: (no one yet)
- Open account creation (confirmed - see account creation page)
- Is stable (confirmed)
- Has apps for Windows & Linux (x86) (Confirmed, see apps page)
- Has steady flow of WUs (confirmed)
- No limit on WUs (confirmed)
- * Dedicated 64bit apps (confirmed, only for linux, see apps page)
- * Quorum > 1 (confirmed)
- * Dial-up friendly (confirmed)
- * WUs lenght ok (confirmed)



Intelligence Realm (submitted by liuqyn)
Favorite of: (no one yet)
- Open account creation (confirmed - see account creation page)
- Is stable (confirmed)
- Has apps for Windows & Linux (x86) (Confirmed, see apps page)
- Has steady flow of WUs (confirmed)
- No limit on WUs (confirmed, but limit on caching - 10/core)
- * No dedicated 64bit apps (confirmed, only for linux, see apps page)
- * Quorum = 1 (confirmed)
- * Dial-up friendly (confirmed)
- * WUs lenght ok (confirmed)




VTU@Home (submitted by vaughan)
Favorite of: (no one yet)
- Open account creation (confirmed - see account creation page)
- Is stable? (unconfirmed)
- Has apps for Windows & Linux (x86) (Confirmed, see apps page)
- Has steady flow of WUs (confirmed)
- Limit on WUs? (unconfirmed)
- * Dedicated 64bit apps (confirmed, only for linux, see apps page)
- * Quorum = 1 (confirmed)
- * Dial-up friendly (confirmed)
- * WUs lenght ok (confirmed)






(This one is just for comparison purposes. The Rosetta@Home project is already selected for Race 1)
Rosetta@Home (submitted by NeoGen)
Favorite of: (no one yet)
- Open account creation (confirmed - see account creation page)
- Is stable (confirmed)
- Has apps for Windows & Linux (x86) (Confirmed, see apps page)
- Has steady flow of WUs (confirmed)
- No Limit on WUs (confirmed)
- * Dedicated 64bit apps (confirmed, see apps page)
- * Quorum = 1 (confirmed)
- * Not Dial-up friendly (confirmed)
- * WUs lenght ok (confirmed - WU lenght is selectable on the options page)


And as you may have already guessed...
- Green underlined is good (and confirmed)
- Orange underlined is partially good (and confirmed)
- Red underlined is bad (and confirmed)
- Simple text lines are unconfirmed

* = bonus feature beyond the minimum requirements

[liuqyn]

yo-yo does have a wu limit of 50 per host at a time(as you report them you can get more), but that has never been a problem unless you like to download 2-3 days of work at a time. also I can't remember the last time they didn't have work for all sub-projects.

[NeoGen]

I added your info to Yoyo as one green (no lack of work), and one orange (caching limit).
The caching limit is not a bad problem, but may be a problem for some people, depending on their net connection type, that's why I'm marking as partially ok.



Tell me more people!
More projects? More info? Chosen (favorite) projects?

[txt.file]

POEM:
Quorum = 1
Has steady flow of WUs? yes (i had ever enough WU)
stable = i had never a problem ... if there was some error-wu i had not found them
i prefer POEM@home but i take a lookfor some other projects.

[liuqyn]

guess I forgot to add, if I had a favorite project yo-yo is probably it.
and for the last of your categories it runs stable as I've rarely had any problems with it other then on my ps3, which tends to require some babysitting.

also, I ran some QMC awhile back and didn't run into any problems, except it didn't enjoy sharing time with GPUGrid, but all my other hosts were ok. never seen work shortages and didn't notice any limits either. also quorum of one so no waiting for wingmen.

[NeoGen]

POEM and QMC are showing alot of green right now. And green is better.

Can anyone confirm that POEM has no daily WU limits, or per host, or things like that? It's the only unconfirmed topic on it.

Also, I added POEM as txt.file's favorite, and Yoyo for liuqyn. This can be changed later if you wish of course. You may even abstain from favorits at all.

[liuqyn]

well, I just attached to poem on my laptop and downloaded 5 days worth of work, 54 units, so I don't think there's any limit. at least not any sane limit.

[BobCat13]

POEM has a daily limit of 500/CPU, but their runtimes are long enough that few will exceed 50/CPU and I have never seen a limit on the number you can have cached.

QMC ran out of work for a few hours several weeks ago, but I haven't seen it do that again since. It is very stable, although some of the tasks can take 12-16 hours.

Yoyo only has 1 problem that I can see. One of the subprojects definitely favors 64-bit OSes, so that could cause x86 users to not have a chance against those x64 users.

Same thing goes for PrimeGrid. I just attached and am testing some of the 64-bit sieve applications. These things fly running x64.

Another project to consider could be Docking@Home. They have quorum=1, Win & Linux apps (x86 only for both). As for their stability, it's been pretty good other than last week when they sent out a batch of bad tasks. The hopper runs dry sometimes, so that might present a problem. They have a 36/CPU limit per day, but each task takes 2.5-4.0 hours so 36/CPU should be plenty. Be aware that each task download is about 1.25MB, so if anyone is on dial-up it can take a while to load up the cache.

As for personal favorites, for the projects listed so far, I would choose QMC.

[Frederic Brillouet]

DPAD! has everything but a 64 bit client (last time I checked)
open account, stable, (no linux, but through wine it works), you create your own wu's, no limit, no wingmen.