Why bother overclocking?

[Slicker]

I keep talking about K.I.S.S. and why I think BOINC is headed in the wrong direction. Here's one more reason. I was reading through the server_stable release notes this morning and came across this little note about a fix that I don't recall ever being discussed on the boinc_dev mailing list:

David 9 Jan 2012
- scheduler: the p_fpops value reported by clients can't be trusted.
Some credit cheats (e.g. with credit_by_runtime) can be done
by reporting a huge value.
Fix this by capping the value at 1.1 times the 95th percentile
of host.p_fpops, taken over active hosts.

No wonder the credit is so crappy on many projects. Anyone with a machine that doesn't fit the norm is assumed to be a cheater. What's the point of overclocking by 25% or more if you are going to be limited to 1.1 times the credit of that of the 95th percentile. Assuming that less than 5% of people crunching overclock their machines (e.g. the masses of set and forget certainly aren't overclocking!), then the 95th percentile is a stock machine. The assumption is that the same machine running on all operating systems returns the same GFLOPS calculation which it doesn't. Then again, isn't this a catch-22? If a machine is overclocked, it doesn't count towards the top 5% because it is assumed to be cheating and the number is capped at 1.1 x stock when it should instead be raising the bar and causing the value for the 95th percentile to be increased.

Note that it doesn't say the 95th percentile of MATCHING hosts either. So, if you have a new top of the line computer, you also get screwed because the majority of people will have much slower computers and your credit then gets capped because of their average.

Or, am I looking at this one all wrong?

[zombie67]

[...] and came across this little note about a fix that I don't recall ever being discussed on the boinc_dev mailing list

Of course not. Nothing is EVER discussed prior to implementation. DA's opinion is the only one that matters. Or at least it's the only opinion that DA will listen to. The only discussion that goes on, is dealing with problems after the fact.

It's been pretty fun lately, watching all the other admin/developer folks bitch slapping DA for moving from SVN to git, without telling anyone first. Even Eric Korpela (SETI@home admin) was throwing punches.

[Beerdrinker]

It seems to me, that they are digging their own grave? If people with high-end systems get slapped for having such a system, why bother participating in BOINC?

[kaptainkarl1]

When did communism become vogue?

[Duke of Buckingham]

VOGUE and Communism

[trigggl]

I guess I better keep an eye on the credit reward differences between my two 3GHz computers. One of them is 1.8GHz stock.

[DrPop]

Oh man...this is insane. You mean I've been wasting probably hundreds of watts by O/Cing my rigs for how long??? Obviously this must not count toward GPUs, because I see a big increase in credit when I O/C mine. But CPUs...man, they suck down the juice when O/Ced, and I'll be awful sore if we aren't getting paid back appropriately for our work. What kind of a ship are they trying to run here, anyway? Aren't they wanting MORE folks to come on board the Distributed Computing club?

[Fire$torm]

Oh man...this is insane. You mean I've been wasting probably hundreds of watts by O/Cing my rigs for how long??? Obviously this must not count toward GPUs, because I see a big increase in credit when I O/C mine. But CPUs...man, they suck down the juice when O/Ced, and I'll be awful sore if we aren't getting paid back appropriately for our work. What kind of a ship are they trying to run here, anyway? Aren't they wanting MORE folks to come on board the Distributed Computing club?

Only projects that use CreditNew. Best just to avoid them unless your into M&Ms...

[Bryan]

The issue of OCing or not isn't quite as straight forward as it appears. If you have a project that has WU where the amount of computing varies greatly then it makes sense to pay X credits per flop times the amount of time it takes to finish a WU. The 95th percentile is probably approaching the high end machines. So if you are OCing 25% and they are paying 10% above the 95th percentile computers then you may be losing 15% per WU. Your net gain however will be higher than the 10% level because you will turn in MORE WU by OCing to 25% than if you dropped to a 10% OC. Ye olde Catch 22!

Where you could really get screwed would be on something like the old Aqua that had a multithreaded CPU app. If the majority of the folks were running quads or early V8s and you throw down a 6 core AMD or 6 core HT Intel then you might really get screwed. You'd still make more credits by OCing to the hilt but only becaues you turned in more WU.

This could also affect GPU projects like Moo where they use all GPUs. Just imagine if that was implemented on Moo and you put two 7990s (when they come out) in a single machine. Talk about blowing away the 95th percentile!!!!

As usual, DA has his head where the sun don't shine. This gets back to his philosophy (my interpretation) that 24 hours of computer/GPU time should pay the same regardless if you are running a 6 core or 1 core machine! In his eyes an abacus would qualify! Socialistic crunching ya know!

[kaptainkarl1]

Only projects that use CreditNew. Best just to avoid them unless your into M&Ms...

Which projects run the Credit Poo? I would very much like to avoid them if at all possible or at least until this DA character drops dead and reality sets in again.