Hi Fortunate,

The changes from the Sept vintage version 4s to the latest 5.x are really pretty small, and it's mostly in the sign up process (passwords instead of account keys.)

There may have been a few minor tweaks to the GUI, but nothing to make a real difference.

So if you don't plan to join another project, there is no need to upgrade, IMO.

Oh, there are slightly more informative messages sometimes, if the project implements them, but except for LHC being often out of work, your two projects rarely have problems.

Others may have different opinions on the 5.x GUI: since I use BoincView, I don't actually know much about the sequence of BOINC Manager interface changes.

If you do try another project at some point, it probably will be best to upgrade BOINC first: at some point they want to have all account creation through the password system, which requires 5.x

As far as problems with version 5, I've been using the release version 5.2.13 without any problems (Windows, I'm assuming here.) It's been the same since November 29, which is a fairly long time for a BOINC version, and I haven't seen any unusual complaints on the BOINC boards about this one, though you are right, some people reported problems with one or other of the earlier 5.2.x versions.

Whichever way you go, Happy crunching!

__________________
Ken

Visit the BAUT Team Page
BOINCview: Network control
and a superior UI!

I got some of the new WU's on one of my computers. Wow, they can be really small. They take ~9,400 seconds (~13 claimed credits) whereas the old ones took ~53,000! These new WU's might work well for folks who have dropped out because they have a slower machine.

I also have some of the new ones on my home computer, but I don't know how long they will take (I'm at work now).

__________________
Old laser physicists never die, they just become incoherent.
These days, every Tom, Dick, and Harry thinks he knows what a photon is, but he is wrong. - Albert Einstein

Glad you got 'em LJ!!

Only problem with use on a slower box might be that some are still normal length, and there's no way (ATM) to choose which size you get...

The indispensable honza posted this screenshot on the E@H board of the new graphics:
http://www.boinc.cz/img/Einstein_Alb...screenshot.png
But of course the graphics still way slow down the crunching -- use sparingly -- never make it your screensaver.

__________________
Ken

Visit the BAUT Team Page
BOINCview: Network control
and a superior UI!

True. My home computer (> 2.5 times faster) crunched one in 14,200 seconds. That's still ~7,000 seconds faster than the old WU's, but they sure to do vary a lot.

__________________
Old laser physicists never die, they just become incoherent.
These days, every Tom, Dick, and Harry thinks he knows what a photon is, but he is wrong. - Albert Einstein

...but the datafile is still used several times for different WUs!
see this host and the WUs that are finished within ~7500 seconds. They are all from datafile 'r1_0186.5_*'. Currently 12 WUs have been taken from this datafile.

As mentioned in an earlier response, my pc at home is still using WUs from a datafile downloaded in September!

Udo

__________________
Udo
Udos BOINC Stats

Hmm? What happened to the BAUT team page?

Yes Udo, and a very good point!

For each of us, it will no doubt seem that the new WUs all run at the same speed, but since they are all taken from the same master file that is to be expected.

We'll just have to wait for more experience to see if times vary for different master files.

...Or take it on "faith" (unacceptable here! ) that the new WUs really do vary between 25% and 100% of the old ones.

azazul posted on his forum (also now down) that he was going to grad school in physics; San Angelo University perhaps not offering a PhD program , I surmise he might be moving. His recent E@H RAC
on BOINCstats seems to show all his computers are down, activity from about Dec 17 no doubt being pendings coming in.

I assume it's a big operation moving and reassembling a big farm like his, his own webserver, etc, etc. I'm sure he and the pages will be back with us soon.
____

Meanwhile, with moi as a poor substitute, I don't think it's been mentioned that Udo was the first to go over 200,000 total credits and Binary has become the 8th person with over 100,000 (all according to BOINCstats.) And he will soon be the first BAUT member over 100,000 in seti@home.

Lance and Cyndi will be next in a week or so; though perhaps that is really just 50,000 apiece?

Anyhow, congratulations to all!

__________________
Ken

Visit the BAUT Team Page
BOINCview: Network control
and a superior UI!

Ah, thanks Ken. I suspected something along those lines but hadn't seen the mention.

Ken, as far as I understood Bruce Allen in his message thread (and own observations in my results) the different datafiles are for different frequencies. Different datafiles will have different computation times, but all WUs from the same datafile should have the same computation times (on the same CPU of course).

Again my new host:
r1_0930.0 - 26.000/26.700 seconds
r1_0186.5 - 7.500/7.600 seconds
r1_1137.5 - 24.600/25.200 seconds

The two different times (26.000/26.700 for example) are an intersting fact I noticed on the new server.
Currently there is no application running on this server except Einstein@home. Therefore all computation times should be nearly the same (on an other server with a single AMD CPU the difference between the computation times is smaller than 1%).
In this case the difference is caused by the Intel Hyperthreading architecture and the dual CPU core. Windows (and Boinc) 'see' 4 CPUs of which I have limited Boinc to 3 CPUs (for reasons which are to complex to explain in this forum).
An 'Einstein' (or 'Albert' to be more precise) application running on one CPU 'alone' is faster than 2 applications running on the other CPU with their corresponding (hyperthreaded) CPU... time is spent for flushing/reloading CPU cache and other CPU equipment which is available only once!

Udo

__________________
Udo
Udos BOINC Stats

It's still faster to run two at the same time on a hyperthreaded cpu that run them sequentially, so from a total computation point of view it makes sense to run them together.

__________________
And the "driving on the freeway on a scooter" analogy still holds true because the pilots are sitting in 7 to 30 ton aircraft o' doom and you are running around them in your very own Meatbody, Mark I. Beep, beep.
Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Udo: I believe we are trying to say the same thing! Sorry if my post was confusing.

We agree that WUs from the same file will complete in very nearly the same CPU time.

What I meant about "have to wait" was this:

Once I get a second Albert master file, will all of its WUs run at a different speed from all those in the first?

If so, and if which type master file one receives is random, it would not be possible to recommend Albert for people with slower PCs, because if they happen to get a slow master file, they will miss a lot of deadlines, or gum up their other projects by E@H going into Earliest Deadline First mode a lot.

Of course, the project knows the speed of your box, and so E@H could implement a policy of distributing fast WUs to slow machines and vice versa, but I don't know that they have done this.

Henrik: Welcome to the thread!

I'm sure you are correct in this. I believe the folks at CPDN said that running 2 WUs simultaneously on an Intel HT is about 15% faster than running two consecutively.

__________________
Ken

Visit the BAUT Team Page
BOINCview: Network control
and a superior UI!

I apologize for not posting here about the site going down.

Ken is right about me moving, but it is because of things not relating to school. I do plan to go to grad school, but I made that decision too late to get in this spring, so I will be waiting until fall to start (which means moving again). I plan to go to University of Texas Brownsville, depending on acceptance in the university and physics program of course. I should have the webserver back up within a few days.

__________________
www.csphysmath.com
BAUT Team Stats

No worries, glad it's on its way back and good luck with your continued education.

Thanks.
I should probably have mentioned that I'm basing my statement on a series of experiments on HT performance I ran a while ago when I was involved with debugging and tuning a fairly large cluster.
The result showed that the performance gain from running two processes on one HT cpu varied a lot with the software run, with everything from <5% to >50% depending on how well the software was optimised for the cpu.
The better the software was optimised, the less the gain from running two copies.
15% gain sounds like it's quite optimised to begin with.

__________________
And the "driving on the freeway on a scooter" analogy still holds true because the pilots are sitting in 7 to 30 ton aircraft o' doom and you are running around them in your very own Meatbody, Mark I. Beep, beep.
Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

First, Happy Birthday Henrik! :) And a warm and proper welcome to the Rosetta team!!

Yes a 240 node cluster is very impressive indeed!!, and I hasten to say that none of what I know about performance is based on anything like your experience, just what I read on the boards...

With BOINC of course the issue of HT performance is further complicated when you run more than one project, as all the science apps are compiled and optimized differently, by completely different teams.
_____

For very good reasons, this board doesn't permit graphics in signatures, but if you flaunt your BAUT on boards that do allow them, mundayweb now has team signatures, like this:



Unlike BOINCstats boxes, you can select colors and provide your own background image, but it is surprisingly difficult to pick an image and text color that display well together. You can just use the URL from this post, but then you will always be using my personal preferences; best is to register at mundayweb. I will put a stats box post up on azazul's board when it returns if there is interest.

Of course munday has individual stats boxes too, and also a version available as a desktop Yahoo widget, individual only so far.

Notable of course in this latest box is that seti has passed CPDN into second place; that all BAUT teams now have over 1000 credits; and our RAC has fallen quite a bit while azazul has been moving -- it should begin climbing again real soon now. :)

__________________
Ken

Visit the BAUT Team Page
BOINCview: Network control
and a superior UI!

A belated congragulations to Udo for passing 200,000 credits on Einstein@home.

Since the new, smaller WUs came out, I've really started building up the pending credits. I now have 49 WUs with ~1,400 credits pending. Most of the WUs are only for ~15 credits, but that's still a lot of WUs. Has anyone else seen similar?

__________________
Old laser physicists never die, they just become incoherent.
These days, every Tom, Dick, and Harry thinks he knows what a photon is, but he is wrong. - Albert Einstein

I am still mostly getting WUs that are about 45 credits myself.

Also, thanks for pointing out Udo reaching 200,000. Congratulations Udo.

__________________
www.csphysmath.com
BAUT Team Stats