Anything "BOINC" specific can be commented on here...such as Project news and announcements etc. Also: any problems with BOINC or maybe you have found something interesting, tell us about it. Chat about the various 3rd party client applications used for some of the projects such as optimised clients.
I've only got the one computer and I'm running 20 projects. Does anybody run more than that? If so, how do they do it, seeing as each project is only running 5% each of the CPU time? I would guess that running a lot of projects on one computer means manually manipulating Boinc Manager just to keep to deadlines. Does Boinc Manager only let you sign up to a limited number of projects, depending on your number of CPU's?
Discuss! And don't forget, I'll be asking questions when I get back! :lol:
melter65 wrote:Right, this is your project for my Holiday!
I've only got the one computer and I'm running 20 projects. Does anybody run more than that? If so, how do they do it, seeing as each project is only running 5% each of the CPU time? I would guess that running a lot of projects on one computer means manually manipulating Boinc Manager just to keep to deadlines. Does Boinc Manager only let you sign up to a limited number of projects, depending on your number of CPU's?
Discuss! And don't forget, I'll be asking questions when I get back! :lol:
Hi,
On my main PC, (3GHZ P4 w/HT) I'm signed up to 49 projects...(!) with each having 2.06% resource share.
I manually set each project to either collect WUs if my mood takes me or otherwise. So, if I need to switch from one project to another, I set one project to "no new work" and let the other download WUs. BOINC Manager takes care that only enough WUs are downloaded.
On other PC's I have around, each is allowed to only work on maybe one project for an extended time. Then if needs be, I detach from that project and then attach elsewhere.
No probs with 40+ projects on one PC. Boinc Manager sorts it all out so you don't miss deadlines. On mine they all have equal resource share. If a long WU comes in for a project it gets processed with the rest. However it may then be a while before another WU gets downloaded for that project so all the others get their fair share of system resources.
Like Tim I occasionally set some to 'no new tasks' if I want to concentrate on another project for a while.
It is also a good idea, when a 'no new work' project has no WUs left on your machine to set the project to suspend. Otherwise when you allow work again it will get a disproportionate share of time till it 'catches up' with the other projects.
For long term control of which projects do the most work it is a simple matter to increase the resource share to a higher or lower value than the default value of 100. For instance if you have 4 projects say with resource shares of 100, 200, 300 and 400 the first will get 10% of work, the 2nd 20%, the 3rd 30% and the 4th 40%.
These are averages over time so if a WU comes in with a short deadline then it may temporarily get most or all of the CPU time to prevent it going over deadline. This is known as EDF (Earliest Deadline First) scheduling as opposed to the usual Round Robin scheduling. Boinc Manager works it all out for you so as not to miss deadlines.
I can beat that! One of my hosts is attached to 53 projects which is every single project I can be attached to (with the exception of Eternity and Gridfinity). All are set to accept new work and the resource share ranges from 1 to 1000. I never set projects to "no new work" and use BAM to adjust the resource shares to control the amount of time allocated to each project.
BOINC Manager does a pretty good job of managing this and in the medium to long term honours the resource shares. The latest versions (5.10.x) are a vast improvement on earlier versions. There is no need to micro manage and I don't think I have ever missed a deadline which can be attributed to the scheduler.
If you are going to attach to so many projects, it's probably best to run with a small cache. This is especially true when attaching to projects for the first time as some alpha projects have very poor estimates of the time taken to run a work unit. I specify 0 for the "computer is connected to the internet about every" and instead use the "maintain enough work for an additional" setting to control the size of the cache. 0.25 days works well for me.
It's also important to increase the "switch between applications" setting from the default 60 minutes otherwise you will find all your virtual memory used up by too many concurent work units. 180 minutes works well for me, as most projects have work units that take less than that.
You will find that at any one time, many projects have no work and some are "overworked", so in practice there will be 10-15 projects with work units downloaded.
:lol:
:D :D