I notice XtremeSystems moved to the RAC top on Rosetta (not Ralph) so I go t nosey.

Question,
How does Rosetta gauge it's work thorughput as you cannot be using Cobblestones/credit due to the technically pointlessness of it with Rosetta,

I for one claim more than the 'recommended boinc client' but that because I use some features it adds (truxoft)

But Looking throuhg XtremeSystems who are competative their second user has some high RAC's
(at least he show the computers)


Sempron 2800+
Measured FPU 3756.18 million ops/sec
Measured INT 11433.38 million ops/sec

Which way too large


One of my computers at least says its an optimised client
<core_client_version>5.3.12.tx37</core_client_version> but I know all do not.

my 3200+ (truxoft)
Measured FPU 2154.35 million ops/sec
Measured INT 6311.89 million ops/sec
my 3200+ (boinc normal)
FPU ~1500 region
INT ~4500 region


So how is the floating point benchmark comming along (or are you not bothering)
OR if his Time based workunits settles down well are you going to move over to blanket scoring, where 8hrs = xxx credit ?


At the moment the league tables are a shambles, I have seen it mentioned over the web (giving rosetta a bad name :( and it hugly distorts the overall 'boinc' tables as well. Also you're work rating cannot be used as they are not meaningful along with the part of your front site

Queued: 0
In progress: 757
Successes last 24h: 565
Users (last day ) :
323 (+16)
Hosts (last day ) :
431 (+27)
Credits last 24h :
12,310
Total credits :
44,638
TeraFLOPS estimate: 0.123

i.e. credit, teraflops parts :(

---

RALPH is a ALPA testing project. Credits are a total non-issue for RALPH. This question would better be asked in the Rosetta Forums, as this project will not be addressing how credits are granted in BOINC.

I don't understand why this isn't a good place for FluffyChicken to post this. The change he is requesting would need to be implemented and tested in RALPH.

Personally, I agree with FluffyChicken. The current points system is so badly flawed that it takes the fun out of competing. People who enjoy the points competition have to go somewhere besides rosetta to find a level playing field.

RALPH is a ALPA testing project. Credits are a total non-issue for RALPH. This question would better be asked in the Rosetta Forums, as this project will not be addressing how credits are granted in BOINC.

I don't understand why this isn't a good place for FluffyChicken to post this. The change he is requesting would need to be implemented and tested in RALPH.

Personally, I agree with FluffyChicken. The current points system is so badly flawed that it takes the fun out of competing. People who enjoy the points competition have to go somewhere besides rosetta to find a level playing field.

The credits system is done by BOINC not Baker lab. So why would you not bring the issue to BOINC instead? I dont think this has anything to do with ralph. The testing for this would be done at BOINC, not here.

The credits system is done by BOINC not Baker lab. So why would you not bring the issue to BOINC instead?

BOINC provides a credit system, but it works really badly for a no-redundancy project. And as BOINC is open source, this probably can't be fixed.

A project doesn't have to use the BOINC system, though, it can use some method of it's own to estimate the amount of work done. For instance, the project's client could count the number of times certain low-level subroutines are called and base its estimate of work done on that.

Such a solution would presumably be implemented and tested with RALPH, then moved to ROSETTA once it was ready.

Actually the Boinc credit system itself isn't bad. It's all the people attached to seti and rosetta or just rosetta that are using third party optimized core clients that's bad. The OP CC artificially inflates the benchmark to adjust for the increased speed of the (third party) optimized seti application. The problem comes in when the user attachs to a project and doesn't have an optimized app for that project. he claims several times more than he should <read cheating>. In other projects the damage is lessened by the validation process used in projects with redundancy, but Rosetta has no redundancy so users get what they claim. (fertile ground for cheating).

Note: some don't even know they're cheating. They hear "optimized client" and jump to the third party website to download it. The host of the third party website doesn't even post any warning about it. I find the whole situation distubing.

Actually the Boinc credit system itself isn't bad. ... In other projects the damage is lessened by the validation process used in projects with redundancy, but Rosetta has no redundancy so users get what they claim. ....

I think the point is that this issue has been beaten to death on all of the project and team forums. The Rosetta people have already said that they are not going to switch to a canonical validation system because it cuts down on the amount of processing that can be done. It is also very clear that they do not plan on modifying the BOINC software beyond the baseline, unless there is a science based reason to do so. So the whole issue is moot for the rosetta/ralph project and it is therefore a BOINC issue.

In any case this project does not seem to be about credits. Did I miss something? I can't count the number of times I have seen that said on the boards here. The fact is that no matter how many credits are awarded, you can't even use them to get a cup of coffee. So they are totally meaningless in a "not for profit" project environment. Now if people were being paid by how many credits they got I could understand the rabid obsession with them. But that is not the case. This is about curing sickness and saving peoples lives, not useless credits.

Even if you concede that credits are important to some people for whatever reason, it is a game, not a life and death problem. You would think people would want the application to run right first and worry about the credits later. People are constantly threatening to leave the project or suspend the project unless they get the 20 credits they lost from a failed WU. Well, lets forget the credit system for a while and fix the failed WU problems that are aggravating people and slowing down the science. You know, like Ralph is trying to do. As you point out there are ways to cheat the credit system, so why make such a big deal out of them. At best they are just for bragging rights.

Hello,

Section title
Feedback
Comments, recommendations, etc.

So I posted a recommendation and it was relevant to the new time frame system of the workunits.

Although I just notice a flaw in my 8hrs=xxx credits ;-s wasn't too awake at the time.

No it is not a boinc issue as such, since boinc have options in place (and at least testing a bnew one) to over come or at least reduce it. (although it is a boinc community problem when one project gives out whatever points credit/cobbles the member would like)

Anyways although Ralph is not a credit project it is a place to test out solutions, Rosetta is not.

---

I think the point is that this issue has been beaten to death on all of the project and team forums. The Rosetta people have already said that they are not going to switch to a canonical validation system because it cuts down on the amount of processing that can be done. It is also very clear that they do not plan on modifying the BOINC software beyond the baseline, unless there is a science based reason to do so. So the whole issue is moot for the rosetta/ralph project and it is therefore a BOINC issue.

In any case this project does not seem to be about credits. Did I miss something? I can't count the number of times I have seen that said on the boards here. The fact is that no matter how many credits are awarded, you can't even use them to get a cup of coffee. So they are totally meaningless in a "not for profit" project environment. Now if people were being paid by how many credits they got I could understand the rabid obsession with them. But that is not the case. This is about curing sickness and saving peoples lives, not useless credits.

Even if you concede that credits are important to some people for whatever reason, it is a game, not a life and death problem. You would think people would want the application to run right first and worry about the credits later. People are constantly threatening to leave the project or suspend the project unless they get the 20 credits they lost from a failed WU. Well, lets forget the credit system for a while and fix the failed WU problems that are aggravating people and slowing down the science. You know, like Ralph is trying to do. As you point out there are ways to cheat the credit system, so why make such a big deal out of them. At best they are just for bragging rights.

If you have been around Distributed Computing since it's infancy, you should realize by now that a fair and equitable credit system is what keeps people at a project.

Sure, you get a few percent who are in it "for the science", but reality is that the biggest portion of the crunching power comes for the credits, and leaves rather quickly when the credit system goes awry.

---

If you have been around Distributed Computing since it's infancy, you should realize by now that a fair and equitable credit system is what keeps people at a project.

Sure, you get a few percent who are in it "for the science", but reality is that the biggest portion of the crunching power comes for the credits, and leaves rather quickly when the credit system goes awry.

On a production project you'd be right. That is why on Rosetta, the sister production project, David has put work in to correct errors that lose people credit.

On a test project, like this, we do not need very many people, and we particularly want the people who are interested in building up the science. So while you are still right that when the credit goes awry a lot of people will leave, the difference is that here it won't matter - it could even be an advantage if it leaves us with a higher proportion of those who will give constructive feedback over problems other than credit.

Like, a thousand crunchers is more than enough for a test project (so long as there is a good distribution of different speed boxes and different operating systems). If the only-in-it-for-the-credit crew self select themselves onto another project that is good news, not bad.

Personally so long as they stay on any BOINC project I'd be delighted - I guess the official project view is to hope they'd move over to Rosetta in particular.

---

The whole point is that RALPH is the right place to test fixes to credit issues, as well as science, or download size, or any other Rosetta-specific issue.

The broken credit problem is a Rosetta issue, self-inflicted by their chosen method of the implementation of BOINC.

---

If you have been around Distributed Computing since it's infancy, you should realize by now that a fair and equitable credit system is what keeps people at a project.

Sure, you get a few percent who are in it "for the science", but reality is that the biggest portion of the crunching power comes for the credits, and leaves rather quickly when the credit system goes awry.

On a production project you'd be right. That is why on Rosetta, the sister production project, David has put work in to correct errors that lose people credit.

On a test project, like this, we do not need very many people, and we particularly want the people who are interested in building up the science. So while you are still right that when the credit goes awry a lot of people will leave, the difference is that here it won't matter - it could even be an advantage if it leaves us with a higher proportion of those who will give constructive feedback over problems other than credit.

Like, a thousand crunchers is more than enough for a test project (so long as there is a good distribution of different speed boxes and different operating systems). If the only-in-it-for-the-credit crew self select themselves onto another project that is good news, not bad.

Personally so long as they stay on any BOINC project I'd be delighted - I guess the official project view is to hope they'd move over to Rosetta in particular.

Angus seems to understand, Rosetta/Ralph should be seen as one, but Ralph is just a test section to see if and check things work before it get put into production. (not a sister, brother, long distant relation, but one in the same project.)
What we do here directly effects Rosetta.

This is also a SUGGESTION section. It should not be distingued as a seperte identity to Rosetta. Credit certainly doesn't mean anything here at Ralph (and hence they should stop people from collectiong the xml stats files for places like boincstats, but they should still create them)

Here we can bash out ideas for improvment to the client without the mess associated with the main forum (rosetta).


But for thoose that think they are different and seperate project...
If we get the credit system sorted here at Ralph then we have a good chance it'll a lot better at Rosetta when it moves accross.
It does not matter if we bugger it up along the way in here ;-)

Priority, that's up to the developers :)




Seti@Home - Enhanced is testing a flops based measurement ?
Can it be used here ?
Is it easy to implement ?
Can it be tested ?
Does it restrict the boinc client version numbers ?

Dismiss my hour=xxxcredits unless someone can find a way to use it properly. (for some reason I was thinking fixed 'work done' length work units, not time which is completely different)

---

All versions 5.2.6 and above are capable of the new counting system.

Seti@Home - Enhanced is testing a flops based measurement ?
Can it be used here ?
Is it easy to implement ?
Can it be tested ?
Does it restrict the boinc client version numbers ?

Or Rosetta could go the CPDN route and do non-standard credits.

Since the new app shows how many models you do, a credit value could be assigned to each model.

---

Or Rosetta could go the CPDN route and do non-standard credits.

Since the new app shows how many models you do, a credit value could be assigned to each model.

I 100% agree. I'd want Rosetta to implement its own system. Btw, model times vary greatly between WU, sometimes my PC might do ~100 models in 8hrs and other times ~50 models (in 8hrs).

One BIG objection I have with current BOINC stats, is that "standard" Linux BOINC client benchmarks at about half the speed under Linux, than the very same hardware does under WinXP (whereas science apps run at the same speed under Linux and WinXP), resulting in ridiculously low credits for Linux.

So, after a month, I used an "optimized" BOINC client for Linux, which still doesn't fix things for projects that give out the lowest of 2 credits demanded (Predictor). So I get better credits from R, lower than fair from every other project, so overall should even out.

Also, personally I really DON'T WANT to see projects send the SAME WU to 5-7 different PCs, presumably "for redundancy of the science". E.g. both R@H and F@H are fine, in that they don't WASTE donor resources.

My CPU / bandwidth may be free to THEM, but it's NOT FREE to me. So I feel the projects have to respect donated resources and not waste or abuse them.

E.g. a few days ago I set "no-more-work" from WCG/HPF because after 1month since I pointed it to them, they still haven't fixed their BOINC-side to compress files (e.g. uploads results 2.5MB textfile, easily compressed to 500KB via gzip and even more with bzip/7zip/etc). And because they run a quorum of 5-7 afaik.

In some cases, where I'd really like to contribute to science, I'm willing to be extra patient with e.g. bandwidth requirements of Rosetta (until the recent fix).

I also hope the Rosetta team is considering a SSE-enabled science app, esp. since they said they use single-precision-floats mostly. SSE alone would boost TeraFLOPS by 4x (in reality 3.5x), so R would jump to 70 TFLOPS from current levels of 20-22TF.

Obviously, as Angus said, the majority of CPU power only cares about credits anyway, so I know I'm the minority.

---

Credit certainly doesn't mean anything here at Ralph (and hence they should stop people from collectiong the xml stats files for places like boincstats, but they should still create them)

My view on this is different, as I siad on the Rosetta boards before Christmas when the possibility of this project was being discussed.

I agree that credit should not be a priority in terms of it being accurate, I agree that credit should not be a priority in terms of the project team trying to retrospectively repair past errors on Ralph, as and when they occur, which they will.

Where I differ is that I still think credits should be exported and picked up by BoincStats, etc. The reason is that even tho the exact amount of credit will be understated, the fact of participation in a dev project is something I am proud to have recorded in my stats and in my sig.

Personally, I am more proud of the 111 credits I curtrently hold on Pirates than the almost 1000x as many I hold on CPDN, precisely because the Pirates credit reflects contribution to a development project.

So while getting the dredit exactly right should not be a priority here, getting some credit to every participant in due course should (in my opinion) be allowed to happen and to be reflected in the stats sites. This opinion seemed to be generally supported in the Ralph pre-launch dicsussion last year.

River~~

ps: see those 111 credits ... aren't they so cool -

---

Also, personally I really DON'T WANT to see projects send the SAME WU to 5-7 different PCs, presumably "for redundancy of the science". E.g. both R@H and F@H are fine, in that they don't WASTE donor resources.

My CPU / bandwidth may be free to THEM, but it's NOT FREE to me. So I feel the projects have to respect donated resources and not waste or abuse them.

A lot of projects feel this is needed to ensure calculating accuracy. Some work done on mainframes is similarly repeated - eg when a new record is claimed for so many billion digits of pi, the claim is never allowed unless that many digits have been calcualted twice and by differeing algorithms.

Some participants also support redundancy, feeling that otherwise credit scores are meaningless - these are mainly the participaants who see BOINC as a sporting contest and enjoy the stats races.

Equally a lot of project participants dislike feeling their work has only a one-in-N chance of being used - some like you because of their bandwidth, others because they value the cpu time, or others who think of their cpu cycles as valuable donations, or maybe count the cost of the electricity.

The only advice I'd offer is to choose a project that suits your own preferences - and for some participants this would mean going outside BOINC, for others it means careful choice of projects within BOINC.

I think it is clear low redundancy will be an attractive feature to many prospective participants.

---

RALPH is a ALPA testing project. Credits are a total non-issue for RALPH. This question would better be asked in the Rosetta Forums, as this project will not be addressing how credits are granted in BOINC.

The Project Team has asked that posters keep the RALPH boards specific to reporting for RALPH issues.

Please do not create a lot of off topic threads in the RALPH forums, and keep your posts focused on issues related to RALPH.

Periodacally we will be purging the forums of off topic subject matter. So expect this and some other threads to disappeaar.

RALPH is the alpha-testing project for Rosetta@home, and its point will therefore be to test any improvements/changes to Rosetta@home before it's released on the "public" project, to make sure the Rosetta@home application works and doesn't crap-out most of the time.

In Rosetta@home there's been numerous threads discussing the problems with the current crediting, and possible ways to improve crediting. Let's take a quick look on the methods BOINC has to improve crediting:

1; Using redundancy, there granted credit is either lowest claimed if 2 validated, or remove highest and lowest and average the rest if 3 or more. Since Rosetta@home has decided they don't need redundancy to make sure the science is correct, using redundancy will not be a good method since this gives lower throughput.
2; Using fixed credit for each wu-type, like CPDN and Folding@home is doing. But, in Rosetta@home different wu from same wu-type can still give huge differences, so isn't really usable.
3; Using boinc_ops_per_cpu_second, application-specific benchmark. Any project wanting to use this must add a customized benchmark to their application.
4; Using boinc_ops_cumulative, application "counts flops". Seti_Enhanced is using this method, but just like for boinc_ops_per_cpu_second it means any project wanting to use this must add code to their application to "count flops".

So, the BOINC-developers has supplied the neccessary support in BOINC-client and server-backend to give better granted credit, that an individual project isn't taking advantage of this support isn't really anything the BOINC-developers can do much with.


This basically means, the Rosetta@home-developers has 3 options, starting to use redundancy that they've already said they won't do, don't do anything but at the same time risk alienating many users that gets fed-up with the broken credit-system and therefore hurt the science, or add boinc_ops_cumulative that a couple of their developers already have hinted to atleast looking into...

But, adding boinc_ops_cumulative means code-changes to the application, meaning any likely change to Rosetta@home's crediting should be alpha-tested by RALPH before it's released, and is therefore on-topic in this alpha-project.

Redundancy just for credits (i.e. not when there's a legitimate science reason) is a really wasteful choince, as it hurts overall TFLOPS throughput, cutting it to 1/2 or 1/5th or even less of the "raw" TFLOPS donated to the project.

I can't imagine a real-world situation where one would take a similar WASTEFUL decision. Would an employer ever give the very same task to 5-6 different PAID employees? Not a chance (unless it's the public sector, trying to "create jobs").

Unless we're talking life-and-death (e.g. searching for a cure of a pandemic where every second counts) kind of results, using short deadlines (1 week) allows a project to re-issue any lost / errored WUs quickly enough.

BOINC projects should look at the credit model of Folding@Home, enjoying >200 TFLOPS sustained real processing power (not nominal speed), much higher than any DC project (SETI is very close in what is offered to it as "raw" TFLOPS).

I think many people would reconsider their CPU time donations to some projects, if they understood the amount of CPU time that they pay for, which is wasted.

---

RALPH is a ALPA testing project. Credits are a total non-issue for RALPH. This question would better be asked in the Rosetta Forums, as this project will not be addressing how credits are granted in BOINC.

The Project Team has asked that posters keep the RALPH boards specific to reporting for RALPH issues.

Please do not create a lot of off topic threads in the RALPH forums, and keep your posts focused on issues related to RALPH.

Periodacally we will be purging the forums of off topic subject matter. So expect this and some other threads to disappeaar.

RALPH is the alpha-testing project for Rosetta@home, and its point will therefore be to test any improvements/changes to Rosetta@home before it's released on the "public" project, to make sure the Rosetta@home application works and doesn't crap-out most of the time....

But, adding boinc_ops_cumulative means code-changes to the application, meaning any likely change to Rosetta@home's crediting should be alpha-tested by RALPH before it's released, and is therefore on-topic in this alpha-project.

First and foremost the credit system in Rosetta is not broken. You may not like the way credits are awarded, but they are awarded using a standard BOINC calculation method. Not one single participant of the rosetta (or Ralph for that matter) project that has successfully completed a WU has not been awarded credit. So the basic assumption for the entire discussion is wrong.

Some may feel that redundancy might fix a perceived credit awarding fairness issue, but the lack of redundancy is not an application bug, it is a conscious decision about how the project is conducted. In other words it is a condition of play for those that are focused on credits, and it makes for faster science production which is what the project is really about.

The current series of tests in RALPH does not include anything to do with credit calculations, credit awarding, WU redundancy, or changes to ANY of these features of the BOINC/Rosetta system. Currently serious issues with the running of the application, failing WU runs, the Work units and their structure/format, and helping with bandwidth problems ARE the focus of the testing.

I think David Kim an others have made it very clear that they want the Ralph forums reserved for discussions of the CURRENT Ralph testing, and that credits are of no concern. How can a thread about credits and awarding them constitute "feedback" on the results of an application alpha test that does not involve credits in any way? They did not over look possible credit issues which you are only now reminding them to look at. They were specifically left out for the purposes of THIS test series. So no one at UW is going to suddenly jump up, yell OOPS! and put credit testing in this test phase.

If and when Rosetta decides that they want to test possible credit system changes, THEN and ONLY then, that discussion would be part of the RALPH testing, and therefore topical for Ralph and these forums. But until that announcement, I would agree with the position that this thread is in fact off topic for the project and the RALPH forums. The place for this discussion is at rosetta, as a "PROPOSAL" for something to test, or at best in the Ralph Cafe under a thread topic like "Proposal for credit system testing in RALPH". But there is no proposal in any of this, just more talk and complaints about what people don't like.

I would agree with Fluffy Chicken who points out the relative "Mess" on the discussion boards at rosetta. But then why sow the seeds for the creation of a similar mess over here to discuss things which do not apply to this project at this time, by creating threads that do not bring CURRENT Alpha test issues to the foreground, but instead serve only to conceal those issues in the litter of off topic discussions?

I would agree with Angus when he points out that a lot of people are obsessed with credit awards. But that is unfortunate because that is not what projects like predictor and rosetta area about. I comment the Rosetta project for trying to steer a different course.

I would also agree with River~~, that if the credits were turned off completely for RALPH and some flat rate were given as a token of participation, it would be beneficial to the testing environment, for the very reason that Angus cited. People who are focused on and obsessed with credit awards would not attach and try to refocus the project direction by dredging up the same issues over and over again about credit awarding. There is not one single new idea in this thread, and the ideas that are here have been discussed to death on every other BOINC project forum, including rosetta.

It is absolutely amazing how often people return to the credit issue when it was made clear at the start that credits and awarding of credits would be of "no concern" on this project. (Although it is frequently the same people) While that may change, it has not changed yet. I can only hope that the project people stay focused on the real issues facing rosetta, ignore this thread completely and do not waste a lot of time on the gaming aspects of the BOINC environment. There are something like 40,000 people crunching rosetta and the vast bulk of them have never said one single word about credits. A lot of those people would stay if credits were turned off tomorrow.

From my point of view, any of the mods can delete this post and the thread along with it.

Snake Doctor, I don't think anyone in this thread is talking about credits with regard to RALPH. I think everyone understands that RALPH is just a test project and any such stats are meaningless.

However, regardless what people here may think about credits, the issue of credits is very important for many "crunchers". At R's forums, you can see how often people compain about not being awarded points for errored WUs. Look at e.g. thread about fair points at WCG forums. I read concerns about R's stats in many DC forums.

I wouldn't start a thread about credits or participate in such thread in R's forums, as if it became a hot topic of debate, it'd just waste project human resources. So, personally I feel we are discussing a valid subject, with the R project's best interest in mind.

---