Project Update

[Dingo]

I have done one task in this project and it took 18 hours on my intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 930 @ 2.80GHz, Microsoft Windows 7 Professional x64 Edition.  Looking at the forum it seems that it usually takes about 12 hours to complete but during processing I suspended the application which made it run longer.  It is supposed to checkpoint every few seconds.  I think the biggest problem is with validation in that there is a quorum of 3 and all three need to validate.  Because the tasks run so long it is a long time before they are resent out to get run again if one fails or is aborted.

Not a project to start on if you are impatient for credit  

[Mysteron347]

Units seem to take about 18 hours on my machine - but DON'T seem to be checkpointing. Had to reboot a few days ago and the 8 units running started again from scratch, having run for abou 13 hours each at the time.

Woe betide anyone running this project with Windows auto-update in place!

Units also seem to reach 100% complete and remain in that state for perhaps 2 hours before actually finishing...

Given the price of electricity, I'm having to turn my machine off overnight now, so I can only run this project on Mondays (Since my backups can take a number of hours and kick in at 1am Tuesday morning...) Any unit not started by about noon Monday gets suspended until the following Monday....

[JugNut]

Hi Mysteron,  i'll try some a bit later for you & see what happens with checkpointing.  The one's i'm crunching at the moment have been going for between 4 - 6hrs + so i'm not keen to see if I loose all that time during a test re-start.

Mine also go to 100% complete then crunch on for a while, no biggie really for me. 
Yea leaving Windows auto-update on is bad news for boinc in general,  I just let mine auto download & I install when I have the time.

On my slightly OC'd i7 3770 they take around +/- 9 hours each (GSCE-SV v1.05) on win 7.   On linux machines they seem to be taking half that time or less, 4 hrs,   so they done a lousy job with the windows app but good news for for Linux users.
The weird engines WU's take about 1min & the ALX's take 10min's.  Havn't done any of the Shor's Algorithm yet.(no work)

I'll post the results of checkpoint test later tonight when I clear the decks a bit.

Cheers JN


EDIT: Like you my GSCE-SV WU's seemed to restart from scratch, but apparently it's a wrapper problem similar to what POGS does.

This is a quote from Oproject admin
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QUOTE: "Checkpoints are performed but are not visible through the wrapper.

After discontinuation of the application, program is executed from the checkpoint. Execution time is counted only after the last run of application.

The progress bar does not work properly.

This is wrapper problem. I'm going to improve (several days)."
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This post was from last year so I presume it's still the same deal.  He says in another post it checkpoints every 2mins?

Hope any of this is of help..

[Mysteron347]

Well, confirms what I suspected. I'll continue with my policy regarding this project - current queue to start Monday morning, no new tasks until after the AA and /then/ suspend them for starting on Monday mornings until the next AA...

I use BOINCTASKS as a manager, which seems to suggest that this project DOESN'T checkpoint at all, regardless of claims. The run-time after reaching 100% is odd. Seems a bit loopy to be happy with maximising Linux performance and letting Win performance suffer. BOINCTASKS suggests that it's only using 50% of my CPU, too.

As for pogs - my experience is that it checkpoints and will resume where it left off when re-started, regardless of the fact that BOINCTASKS claims it hasn't checkpointed...

Now all I have to do is figure out why I've only been getting HCC/GPU tasks from WCG for the past couple of months. Other projects to NNW to attempt to starve it into grabbing some CPU tasks...

[Dingo]

I have run a lot of the apps on oproject and have found that the check pointing is spotty at best.  I have found that if you leave them running they do finish.  Patience is the best policy on this project, so crunch on after the AA and get some badges.