Coding Blues & Farm Plans.

I made a new site &, after lots of revisions, it seems to have been well enough received. I've some ideas for the content too. A major frustration has been getting the page centred. I have now figured out how to do that but at the expense of scrambling every element on the page.

I've said it before, but this time I mean it, and t I'm going to downsize the farm to an ultra efficient croft. I reckon with the 2 laptops, [1.5K/d optSeti], my work PC [1.2K/d optSeti], Jo's desktop [4K/day running PS3Grid & OptSeti] and just 3 Quads & a phenom in the farm [together up to 36K on PS3Grid & OptSeti] I could have enough crunching power to get into the top 200 & stay there. Losing 3 machines upstairs would reduce the heat & noise considerably. Selling the spare parts would raise loot which I could use to upgrade the current mATX cases which are so small that they need an awful lot of fast fans to keep them cool. My one full tower is almost silent & it would be nice if they could all be like that. So keep looking on ebay.

WCG is the poor, and also rather standoffish, relation in the SBT family. Nobody loves it and so after only a very brief stay at 100th it has drifted downwards again. I'm going to make it my #1 priority, even after bagging my WCG million to drive us back into the premier league even if it drops my RAC to 30K. The wonder of PS3/Gpugrid is that it frees you up to crunch poorly paid projects as the PS3grid returns dewarf everything else.

10,000,000, A new recruit & A Learning Curve

Well I beat Nightlord to 10 million. The fortunes of TSBT may be gauged by the fact that I am only ranked 3rd in the team (4th when Nightlord finally manages to stomp me) but notwithstanding my headlong fall within TSBT I am heading rapidly back to the world top 300 thanks to the miracle of GPU crunching.

The new kid on the team is Merlyn (previously Steve of Boinc UK) who is UK number 1 and whose contributions have added 50% to our output. Realistically we can expect to be top 50 by the end of the year!! Eventually we might manage to make a move on the UK #1 place!

I've decided that my sadly unloved & unlovable TSBT website [which recovered as soon as uploaded my last post] needs a total overhaul. Never having been able to find a decent Website Editor Program I've decided to become a hardcore, Notepad using, HTML/CSS code monkey. At present the learning curve is so steep that I keep falling back down but I think I'm getting the hang of it. So keep reloading that URL.

Website Down & GPUGrid Update

Bugger bugger bugger etc. The website is down, so is the Forum and my email. Obviously the weekend cleaner at the hosting company unplugged a server to plug in her hoover! I'll be onto them tomorrow.

Update on PS3/GPUGrid.
It has transformed my fortunes and boosted TSBT no end. I'm churning out about 20K per day on it. A few forays to my local PC shop & on ebay mean that I now have 4 PCs running it. The 260GTX that I got for the frankly rather feeble phenom gets thru a WU in 10 hours and as the value of each has increased to to 3232 that works out at 7760 per day meaning that the runt of the farm can manage 9,000 in total & out-crunch the Ubercruncher: Or at least it could if the ubercruncher hadn't been equiped with a 9800GT which cost 40% of the price of the 260 but manages 55% of its performance. So 3232 ever 18hr means 4300 per day, which added to 3 cores running optimised Seti means 9550 per day. Awesome!!

Awesome too, is the performance of TSBT, returning 100K per day on this one project. Our RAC has risen above 300K and we are going to be top 50 before long!

I'm going to use the miracle of GPU crunching to rationalise the farm: I reckon I can get down to 5 desktops & 2 laptops and still return 35K per day: And finance all the necessary upgrades by selling redundant components.

GPUGrid Works, a Demotion & some more figures.

Finally GPUGrid seems to work on Windows. My venerable 8600 takes 45 hrs to do a WU worth 1980ish credits. The rather newer 9600 takes 20 hours. The way it works is the GPU acts as a coproccessor to one of the CPU cores. This makes it an ideal upgrade route for the slower PCs but it wouldn't make much sense for say the ubercruncher where a single core doing optimised SETI can easily outcrunch the 8600 and is almost on a par with the 9600.

I got stomped yesterday by Buster who replaced me as team credit-leader. Cool!

For all you figure fiends here are more numbers for Milkyway & CPDN, each based on just 4 work units, running on the ubercruncher.

Project ______ 6WUTime ________ 6WUCredit _______ Credit/Day
Rosetta _______ 11.1hrs ___________ 286 _____________ 2474
WCG _________ 20.4hrs __________ 399 _____________ 1877
Einstein ______ 43.8hrs __________ 1425 _____________ 3123
Cosmology ____ 3.22hrs ____ ______ 300 _____________ 8944
Seti__________ 12.2hrs ___ _______ 374 _____________ 2951
Seti[optimised] _ 5.9hrs ___________ 431 _____________ 7013
Yoyo _________ 42.3hrs __________ 1692 ____________ 3840
CPDN .................. 879hrs ....................... 26749 ........................ 2920
Milkyway .......... 13.6hrs ....................... 784 ............................ 5534

BTW Cosmology has since altered its credit structure since the above and is now much less rewarding!

Quad Back Up

I got my stricken quad working again. Only now it's crunching optimised seti so I look forward to at least another 4800 per day from it!!! That is until I figure how to run PS3Grid on it. As well as a top end PSU for it I took the chance to get a decent graphics card for it so that with a little linux black arts I can utilise the GPU as well as the CPU!!!!

In praise of mobile internet.

For the first time ever I am able to address you from my country retreat in deepest Argyll, a delightful place but with no phone line and where previously hanging out the front room window got you a single wavery bar of Vodafone reception if you were lucky, and could thole the midgies long enough to complete a call.

Today however, I have 5 rock-solid bars, even from the sofa, & more importantly my USB Mobile Broadband dongle has got me on-line! Okay, so it's just at dial-up, not broadband, speed, and no doubt this will cost me much more than if I got the full contracted speed, only available in our major cities, but who cares? I can post and check my stats & even do non-boinc surfing should I so choose!

Several times over the course of my just completed holiday thru the Utter Hebrides have I been able to get thus online, most strangely on the Isle of Scalpay, a medieval Wee-Free ruled backwater of an island where alcohol is outlawed [yikes!!!] and which lacks all modern amenities, [except sheep] but you can get online from the room of your B&B where every spare surface is covered in admonishments against sin [although come to think of it sheep weren't specifically mentioned].

Anyway it's great that armed with a lap-top & dongle one can get online even in the depths of the Gaeltachd. The 21st century is here & here to stay!

Quad down!

As if making concessions to the risk of a fatal paternal hyperthermia wasn't threatening my RAC enough, I tried to fire up the farm again and one of the quads just wouldn't respond. Maybe it's a PSU not quite making the grade anymore, but whatever it is, it is totally deid! It'll be two weeks before I get a chance to sort it. Arse, arse & thrice arse!

Dilemmas, dilemmas!

My dad's come to visit. Which in most respects is a positive. But it does bring some dilemmas. Such as how hot and noisy is acceptable for a guest bedroom? As it is I switched 3 of the desktops in the farmyard/guestroom at tea time so that the ambient temp might drop below tropical.

At bedtime the other three went. The silence was just not natural; I didn't like it at all. As I post we have running only Jo's E6600 and the two laptops. Scary!

The next dilemma is how early can you fire them up again. Assuming his slumber survives the racket, it would take at least 3 hours for the room to become dangerously overheated, so a 6am boot up wouldn't be too antisocial, would it?

Is this cheating?

Prompted by my anonymous and indeed solitary visitor, I downloaded Crunch3r's optimised Seti application. Boy did it increase my enthusiasm for our biggest project. So far I have contributed just 0.5% of our 28 million. That will change and I hope to be a millionaire in it by Xmas.

Just look at these stats & drool! Or more constructively, and prosocially, download.

Project ______ 6WUTime ________ 6WUCredit _______ Credit/Day
Rosetta _______ 11.1hrs ___________ 286 _____________ 2474
WCG _________ 20.4hrs __________ 399 _____________ 1877
Einstein ______ 43.8hrs __________ 1425 _____________ 3123
Cosmology ____ 3.22hrs ____ ______ 300 _____________ 8944
Seti__________ 12.2hrs ___ _______ 374 _____________ 2951
Seti[optimised] _ 5.9hrs ___________ 431 _____________ 7013
Yoyo _________ 42.3hrs __________ 1692 ____________ 3840

As regards the post title: Of course it isn't. Doing the same science in 40% of the time is a major service to the project so getting 250% the credit is only fair.

Why is it never easy?

Having established Cosmology as the prefered suitor for the Uberchruncher, the project promptly went tits up, with little work to be had generally and sfa for this very willing host. Just as well then that Yoyo is proving a decent second. At less than half the pay of Cosmo but double the credit of WCG it's useful enough for now & even going half & half with CPDN means that the Ubercruncher is out perfoming the two PCs it replaced by a clear margin.

Project ______ 6WUTime ________ 6WUCredit _______ Credit/Day
Rosetta _______ 11.1hrs ___________ 286 _____________ 2474
WCG _________ 20.4hrs __________ 399 _____________ 1877
Einstein ______ 43.8hrs __________ 1425 _____________ 3123
Cosmology ____ 3.22hrs ____ ______ 300 _____________ 8944
Seti _________ 12.2hrs ___ _______ 374 ______________ 2951
Yoyo ________ 42.3hrs __________ 1692 _____________ 3840

Seti Update

I finally got enough Seti results to update the table.
It's not bad, unless you compare it with Cosmology!
Project ______ 6WUTime ________ 6WUCredit _______ Credit/Day
Rosetta _______ 11.1hrs ___________ 286 _____________ 2474
WCG _________ 20.4hrs __________ 399 _____________ 1877
Einstein ______ 43.8hrs __________ 1425 _____________ 3123
Cosmology ____ 3.22hrs __________ 300 _____________ 8944
Seti _________ 12.2hrs ___________ 374 _____________ 2951

The Ubercruncher finds a Sugar Daddy

Holy Moly! I knew Cosmology would be good but this is stop-the-experiment-I'll-just-stick-with this exceptional. And I happen to like the science of the Cosmology project so it's not even credit-whoring but true project lurve!

Project ______ 6WUTime ________ 6WUCredit _______ Credit/Day
Rosetta _______ 11.1hrs ___________ 286 _____________ 2474
WCG _________ 20.4hrs __________ 399 _____________ 1877
Einstein ______ 43.8hrs __________ 1425 _____________ 3123
Cosmology ____ 3.22hrs __________ 300 _____________ 8944

I'll report on CPDN & Seti once they're done. But for just now, flakey servers and all, I'm sticking with Cosmology on the Ubercruncher. The rest of the farm will of course be mainly doing WCG. For now!

The Ubercruncher does Einstein

I couldn't get any work from Cosmology so I did some Einstein. At last we have a clear leader. For now. The Seti test is started & looks as if it might be comparable to Rosetta.

Project ______ 6WUTime ________ 6WUCredit _______ Credit/Day
Rosetta _______ 11.1hrs ___________ 286 _____________ 2474
WCG _________ 20.4hrs __________ 399 _____________ 1877
Einstein ______ 43.8hrs __________ 1425 _____________ 3123

By the way, these tests are all being done on Windows XP professional. Once I've got loads of windows results I'll try it with 64 bit Linux.

The Ubercruncher Sallies Forth.

Okay here are some results for WCG now

Project ______ 6WUTime ________ 6WUCredit __________ PCPD
Rosetta _______ 11.1hrs __________ 286 ______________ 2474
WCG _________ 20.4hrs __________ 399 ______________ 1877

Dearie me. There's no doubt about it WCG - is one seriously stingy project. Once we hit 100 for WCG & I've got my million for it - got my Rosetta one today- then I'm off. Certainly it's no project for credit-whores. So CPDN it is now. You'll have to wait a couple of weeks for the results of that but I'll maybe do some Seti & Cosmology along the way, if the latter sorts out its work flow issues

Dawn of the Ubercruncher

Hi y'all.
I thought I'd post again. There's no point in banging on about the fortunes of TSBT, which are thriving, despite half a dozen projects going on strike. The TSBT forum takes care of all that.
No, instead I'll burble on about my personal Boinc quest.

The latest addition to the farm is Q9450 based cruncher with a Gigabyte P35 based mobo and 2Gig of DDR3 Ram which I have overclocked from 2.66MHz to 3.26MHz using a cheapo Thermaltake water cooling system. It replaces a Q6600 on a pisspoor mother board (this CPU will be reused in the fullness) and an AMD 64x2 6000+ (this will be sold ASAP, AMD just aren't competing these days). Finally it gets me down to just 7 desktops in the house!

I'm going to use it as the farm credit-whore & regardless of other targets will run it at whatever gets me and the team the most credits. Of course I need to do some experiments first.

To calibrate it I started it off on Rosetta which I hope to get to 1 million in the next few minutes. My method is to run a batch of WUs, select the final 6, total the time(T) & credit (C) granted and then calculate the projected credit per day (PCPD=(C x 96)/T ). So, the results so far

Project ______ 6WUTime ________ 6WUCredit __________ PCPD
Rosetta _______ 11.1hrs __________ 286 _______________ 2474

Not bad, but I'm sure it'll be beaten. Next up World Community Grid & CPDN.

Happy 2008

Happy New Year everyone.

Resolutions for 2008

1. Relegate personal ambitions to 2nd place to help get all TSBT teams to 100th place or higher.
2. Get Rosetta, WCG, Seti, & Cosmology to 1,000,000 credits each - that'll be 8 million plus projects.
3. Reach 10,000,000 overall & stay in the top 500.
4. Reduce my home PC farm from 10 to 9 machines (including 2 laptops) - upgrades over proliferation.
5. Sell all the sellable PC bits on e-bay. Recycle everything else.
6. Lose 2 stones, exercise lots, drink little & go to bed before midnight every night. Aye, right!

Top 100 Campaign

Buster and Nightlord (and in a smaller way, lots of others) have transformed WCG adding an extra 10K per day and moving us from 235th up to 223rd place in a few days. Rosetta is making steady but unspectacular progress with an RAC that would make us 66th and there are immediate prospects of Total Credit gains in the next week. Lots of new members seem to be flocking to join us.

Progress Update

Last update 00:45 16th December 2007
This update 00:30 6th January 2008
Total Active Members 322 (+23)
Recent Active Members 157 (+17)
Total Credit 49,813,936(+2,985,054=136K/day )
Overall Boinc Place 73rd (+2)