Aqua@home Returns

[AMDave]

Great news for the Aqua@home members.

Aqua returns.

The D-Wave Systems Inc. project team have done a lot of homework and testing to rebuild the client and it shows.

1st point to note, there is no CUDA client yet, and there may not be as it was discovered that in many cases the multi-threaded client on multi-core CPU machines was out-performing the CUDA client. However, given the work that has been put into the new client, we may hear more of further testing in the future.

2nd point to note, I believe the client is still for multi-core machines only, so single core machines will likely not get any work.

Now for the details.

The client and the work units are tiny in comparison to the previous version. The download is quick and low on the bandwidth (great news for me).

The client works smartly right off the mark and applies itself across the cores, as before. However, now that BOINC client version 6.6.40 is available, we no longer have the issue of the client starting the next work unit before the previous multi-threaded Wu has finished (which really slowed everything down and defeated the purpose of the multi-threading).

On a Phenom 9750 the work unit is completing in about 6 minutes (4 cores) and giving a return of about 9 credits. Looking closely, the Run Time and the CPU time are being very accurately recorded and the result is about 3.1 credits per core per 10 minutes (I prefer to measure all my CPUs and work units on this basis). So, this is slightly better than average - many projects are rewarding at about 2.0 credits per core per 10 minutes. This should put the credit awarding arguments to bed for good.

The initial "Completion Time" estimate is between 3 to 4 hours and is declining smartly.

In summary, they have put in some hard work and done a terrific job to come back with such a lean and mean client. Coupled with the latest stable version of the BOINC client (6.6.40) you can't go wrong.

Welcome back Aqua@home!