Why bother overclocking?

[Slicker]

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.

I'm pretty sure all of the ones participating in the EURO Crunch 2012 Series use CreditNew. It is hard to say for sure because there isn't a version x.y.z for the server code, but rather changset numbers and the numbers change daily. While they date the changes, one can't tell from the changeset number when it was last changed. All I can say for sure is that even though DA made the code change, only projects which have upgraded their servers since that code change are now using that new logic.

DA must watch COPS where are the criminals are idiots. His "fix" assumes that the person cheating who has all the tools necessary to build his own version of the BOINC client, is dumb enough to only increase the flops count. Yep. Like the hacker woudn't know that a P4 with a bazillion gflops is not normal but a 16 processor multi-core Xeon server would be. All they have to do is change the open source code to pretend to be a better machine and who would know the difference? No one. Not unless the "95th percentile" is ALL active hosts and not active hosts with the same type and number of processors. If that's the case, then the guys with those boxes truly are getting shafted. That's what worries me about this change.

[kaptainkarl1]

I'm pretty sure all of the ones participating in the EURO Crunch 2012 Series use CreditNew. It is hard to say for sure because there isn't a version x.y.z for the server code, but rather changset numbers and the numbers change daily. While they date the changes, one can't tell from the changeset number when it was last changed. All I can say for sure is that even though DA made the code change, only projects which have upgraded their servers since that code change are now using that new logic.

DA must watch COPS where are the criminals are idiots. His "fix" assumes that the person cheating who has all the tools necessary to build his own version of the BOINC client, is dumb enough to only increase the flops count. Yep. Like the hacker woudn't know that a P4 with a bazillion gflops is not normal but a 16 processor multi-core Xeon server would be. All they have to do is change the open source code to pretend to be a better machine and who would know the difference? No one. Not unless the "95th percentile" is ALL active hosts and not active hosts with the same type and number of processors. If that's the case, then the guys with those boxes truly are getting shafted. That's what worries me about this change.

Don't you have to turn in work to get credits? How does one make a quad core process more work units correctly and get the credits for it?

[Rattledagger]

I'm pretty sure all of the ones participating in the EURO Crunch 2012 Series use CreditNew.

CPDN doesn't use CreditNew, they're relying on the trickles as they've always done.


As for CreditNew, don't know exactly how it's working, or for that matter supposed to work...

... But, atleast if it wasn't just an artefact of not being "trusted" then downloaded the work for the pentathlon in WCG, atleast to me it looked like C4CW gave the same credit per wu for all work downloaded at the similar time.

So, if this wasn't just a fluke, overclocking would obviously have an effect, since 25% faster would mean 25% more credit, not per wu, but per day.

[Mad Matt]

I think this is another brilliant example why DA does not have any interest in speeding up science. What can you do if folks run a science project who do not care about speeding up the process and using resources in the best possible way? Little. It's futile to solve this with any logical approach. The only theory springing too my mind is: it does not matter how long SETI will not find a thing... BOINC should be run by somebody from a real science project who has urgent interest in scientific results.

After all, this is bitter for the CPUs, but GPUs will be less affected. Folks develop GPU apps to speed up things. CreditNew did not last for more than a few weeks at POEM after introducing the GPU app. So at least the GPU projects will always find a workaround, in their own vital interest.

Not really a solution, but at least good to know.

[Slicker]

Don't you have to turn in work to get credits? How does one make a quad core process more work units correctly and get the credits for it?

Let's say you have an E2160 that runs at 1.8Ghz. After changing the BOINC client code to report your machine as much faster CPU (a.k.a. 3.6Ghz and double the GFLOPS) you turn in a WU that takes 1 hour. BOINC looks up how much credit to award a 3.6Ghz CPU for an hours worth of work and grants the credit. Because BOINC thinks you have a faster CPU than you really do, it will grant double the credit it should. Or, it may average the credit it thinks you should get with your wingman's and you get 50% more than you should. Either way, you get more credit for each WU returned than if BOINC thought you had a slower machine.

That can't happen on projects which grant X credits per WU because on those projects, you get the same credit for each WU regardless of how long it took to crunch or what your computer claimed. Optimized apps or overclocking on those projects means more credits per CPU second. But, some projects awarded higher credit than projects. So, DA introduced CreditNew so that credit wasn't handled by the project admins any more but rather via DA's algorithm which takes into account the credit from all the other projects for similar types of hosts. Unfortunately, that means that if the Collatz ATI app runs 96 times faster than the CPU app, it won't get 96 times the credit. Rather, since the average GPU app is only 10 times faster than the CPU apps, it will only get 10 times the credit even though it finishes 96 times faster. That's considered fair in CreditNew. Likewise, if the GPU app only utilizes 50% of the GPU and uses an entire CPU as well, CreditNew awards the same credit as projects which utilized 98% of the GPU and use less than 1% CPU. That's why I don't like CreditNew.

[kaptainkarl1]

If that's the case then I say we overclock DA with a couple of nice heavy grandfather clocks so he gets the point.

[Aux10]

Why bother participating in BOINC?

For the science! Or so most of the newbies say.

[Slicker]

For the science! Or so most of the newbies say.

The science angle also helps when the wife sees the monthly electric bill which is always over $300.

[Rattledagger]

For the science! Or so most of the newbies say.

Oh, some old-timers also cares much more for the science than the worthless (atleast to me) points in some boring math- or crypto-project. But, I do like a challenge, so did still run Collatz during the pentathlon and nearly doubled my collatz-points.

[Aux10]

Oh, some old-timers also cares much more for the science than the worthless (atleast to me) points in some boring math- or crypto-project. But, I do like a challenge, so did still run Collatz during the pentathlon and nearly doubled my collatz-points.

You just haven't been bitten yet!