Team OcUK BOINC Crunchathon weekend * DISCUSSION *

Berserker · 19 Apr 2005 at 19:22

OK, as suggested in another thread, I think this will be a good idea to get some action in here, so here goes. This thread is for discussion only - any entries in this thread will be ignored. If you wish to enter this competition, a separate thread is [thread=17403632]here[/thread].

The Rules

The 'crunchathon' will take place from teamocuk.com stats collection time on April 28th, to stats collection time on May 3rd.
Should no stats be available on the stated dates, the deadlines will be moved backwards, and forwards, respectively, until suitable stats are available.
The following projects are included: SETI@home, climateprediction.net, Einstein@home, and Predictor@home. LHC@home will be added if workunit supply issues have been resolved.
A winner will be selected from each project, and an overall winner will be selected.
If stats have to be collected on different days, the overall results will be pro-rated to calculate the winner. This will be done after the end of the competition.
Should a project be 'down' for more than 50% of the weekend, or should there be significant difficulties on obtaining work or returning results, that project will be withdrawn.
Should there be a tie, joint winners will be declared.
Participants must request entry by posting in the ENTRIES thread, including the project-assigned ID numbers of the host(s) they wish to enter.
Each participant may enter up to two (2) hosts in each of up to three (3) projects.
Once entered, each participant may amend their entry up to the entry deadline, by editing their original entry post to add or remove hosts. Should any confusion arise, the organiser reserves his right to use best judgement.
The entry deadline is 11.59PM on Tuesday, 26th April.
This competition is subject to implementation of appropriate stats on teamocuk.com. Should implementation not be possible within the timescale, the competition may be postponed or cancelled as necessary. It is my intent that this will not happen.
All participants must be members of the OcUK team. Participants who choose not to list their hosts in the project stats may need to verify their identity.
In the interests of fair play, artificially raising a host's credit, by whatever means, is forbidden. This includes excessive withholding of results before the competition, and merging hosts during it.
Organiser's decision is final and binding.

Berserker · 19 Apr 2005 at 22:37

As for the entry format, something like this will do:

Einstein: 12345, 67890
SETI@home: 19283, 56473

BOINC username is optional but recommended as it will help pick up any mistakes.

Berserker · 20 Apr 2005 at 00:31

Sir Ulli said:
as i see on the many of replies, in the next times what will you think when you will take also outstanding Members from other Teams here to the Fun...

We'll see how this one goes. It's easier to sort out any problems if there is only one team involved.

Berserker · 20 Apr 2005 at 01:13

Added an extra rule, mainly to avoid any arguments later:

In the interests of fair play, artificially raising a host's credit, by whatever means, is forbidden. This includes excessive withholding of results before the competition, and merging hosts during it.

Berserker · 20 Apr 2005 at 03:04

You read it right - six machines.

I'm not too worried about flushing caches beforehand, as it'll tend to even itself out anyway (especially as you don't know the exact start or end times - although educated guesses can be used).

The main exception to that is CPDN, where insane stashing is possible.

I'm also not going to worry about multiprocessors this time, although if someone comes up with a 4-way Opteron or something, then I may have to rethink that.

Berserker · 20 Apr 2005 at 10:53

OK, it looks like people are trying to find me out on the multiprocessors, so I'll have to separate them. I'll amend the rules later today when I've worked out the best way of handling things.

Berserker · 20 Apr 2005 at 13:46

Dual CPU machines tend to get lower ops/sec than singles (with the exception of Opterons). I also notice that 4.2x-4.3x clients appear to benchmark all CPUs simultaneously.

Berserker · 20 Apr 2005 at 16:03

Mine, or theirs? :confused:

Berserker · 21 Apr 2005 at 00:02

OK - How's this for dealing with multiprocessors...

Hosts with two or more processors are permitted, but will have a handicap applied to their outputs. This will be applied by multiplying the reported credit by a handicap factor once for each reported CPU. The handicap will be: 0.89 for Xeon systems showing more than 2 CPUs with speed of 2.0GHz or more, 1.00 for Pentium 4 systems showing up to 2 CPUs, 0.71 for Opteron-based systems, and 0.85 in all other cases.

Just to show how this works, let's take a Dual Opteron, Dual Athlon MP, and Dual Xeon HT, all with 1,000 credit:

Opteron: 1000 * 0.71 * 0.71 = 504.1
Xeon: 1000 * 0.89 * 0.89 * 0.89 * 0.89 = 627.4
Athlon MP: 1000 * 0.85 * 0.85 = 722.5
Single CPU: 1000 (no handicap)

The weightings may still need a bit more tweaking, so I'm open to suggestions on those. The Xeon weightings are intended for the Nocoma core. I can't tell the difference between, for example, Nocoma and Prestonia, so older Xeons will be at a disadvantage.

The other alternative is to keep the multiprocessors completely separate.

Berserker · 21 Apr 2005 at 12:37

The restriction is two hosts (i.e. computers) per project, not two CPUs.

HT only counts as one CPU anyway.

Berserker · 24 Apr 2005 at 00:59

OK - update on the stats. I'm going to start a reload of SETI@home stats sometime tomorrow. Hopefully that'll be done inside 24 hours, but time will tell. Other projects take a few hours each.

Then I just need to do the stats page. Hopefully Tuesday/Wednesday for that.

So, here's hoping I can get it all done in time. :eek:

Berserker · 24 Apr 2005 at 01:26

At the moment, I'm trying to prevent the Team OcUK website from dieing for upwards of an hour during SETI@home updates (yes, it does - page load times of 20 minutes plus have been experienced personally).

As for meets, just don't think I'd cope on the BBQ/camping weekend, otherwise I'd be there in a flash. MB-organised events for the w1n.

Berserker · 24 Apr 2005 at 01:48

I'm currently booked for 4 meets so far this year, with more to come no doubt. BBQ meet is the only one I could do but have turned down - but only because I don't think my body would cope with overnight in a tent.

Berserker · 27 Apr 2005 at 14:21

OK - I'm removing the entry deadline. We need more people. I can take entries at any time, provided the host was present in the stats as at midnight tonight.

There will be no race stats page until Saturday/Sunday, but this does not affect stats collection, and you can still look up the host stats yourselves.

Berserker · 27 Apr 2005 at 14:44

Put 'em down anyway. Quick solution is to upgrade to 4.25 or later and suspend all but one project.

Berserker · 27 Apr 2005 at 18:12

TheBeansprout said:
Melted hard disks for dinner!

Yum Yum.

Berserker · 27 Apr 2005 at 20:06

No to all three questions.

Well, not so sure about the last one, but I don't think so.

Berserker · 29 Apr 2005 at 10:37

No probs - to either. I did notice the downtime even though I wasn't feeling that well. Stats all collected themselves.

Berserker · 1 May 2005 at 13:41

Berserker · 1 May 2005 at 15:51

shadyseti said:
Predictor 46793 & 78833

No problem - I'll change it to 95911.

Team OcUK BOINC Crunchathon weekend *** DISCUSSION ***

Team OcUK BOINC Crunchathon weekend * DISCUSSION *