Formula BOINC

Gilthanis

[H]ard|DCer of the Year - 2014
Joined
Jan 29, 2006
Messages
8,718
I figured since we are starting to take a little more interest in challenges and competitions, that it was time to take a look and create a thread for Formula BOINC.

http://formula-boinc.org/

Rules for the Projects Classification and Teams Division.

In 2014 FB list of projects will be the same as the list at the end of season 2013
Permanent-testing projects and projects without real application (UpperCase) are excluded. Not applicable in 2014
Addition of a new project will be subject to having already distributed at least 1,000,000 credits since the creation of the project. Not applicable in 2014
Addition of a new project will be subject to enabling account creation during precedent 30 days Not applicable in 2014
After the criteria of Rules 2, 3 and 4 have been met, a message will be sent to Alpha projects informing them of the election of their project to FormulaBoinc.
Aministrators of Alpha projects have ability to cancel their participation in FormulaBOINC at anytime before points are actually awarded to teams working the project. Cancelling after that point will not become effective until the begining of the next FB year. Projects cancelling inclusion in FB will have to request inclusion in the future begining with the next FB year.
Indication of the status of any project " Either by Blacklist or Boycott of team AF ", which means that the AF team does not wish to crunch on this project, decided upon by any possible existence of non-ethical facts (based on the point of view of AF).
Nevertheless,unless the FB Steering Committee decide unanimously after an internal ballot, to remove a project, points of all projects will be counted and validated in FB.
Also, there shall be a link created towards our listed evidences of the Blacklisted-Boycotted project(s) (with at least a part of the text translated into English). Clause abandonned by AF.
Any Team that is involved in BOINC is automatically participant in FormulaBOINC, as long as it has been getting credits from at least 10 projects during November the year before.
Teams are splitted in 3 divisions, after calculation of their average RAC of November the year before. RAC Division thresholds are fixed to 0, 1 million and 10 millions credits.


Rules for the validation of points and classifications for FB ending on November-30th at midnight (UTC).

All points listed on the website are a close estimate for that time period. The "Official" final standings will only be announced after a definitive validation is done on 11/30 23:59 UTC.
To give any points, the project must award at least 2,000,000 credits in the current calendar year (January 1 to November 30).
The project can be started durning the current calendar year and give points if it respects this simple condition: all credits are counted since the beginning in the calendar year, including the 1,000,000 necessary to be added in FB.
On the contrary, an old project that gave points the year before may give no points if it does not reach 2,000,000 credits in the current calendar year.
If two or more teams have the same number of FB points at the end of the year, their ranking will be decided by the number of projects for which they received FB points. Then if still tie on this number, we shall count the number of 1st places, and if tie again, then, count the number of 2nd places, and so on...
 
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We are currently in the Second League. As of today's date we are coming in second place. Discussion of Formula BOINC and how to maximize our position should be discussed here.
 
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We should move up 6 spots in MaliriaControll in the next 4 or 5 days and we moved up to #2 in Wanless Mersenne +2. I will move to Volpex@UH and run it for a few days whenever it has any work available it stil needs about 500,000 to qualify for FB if it does it will give us another 25 points. We are currentley only 110 pointsaway for first in our class.
 
Good luck getting any where with CAS. They are always out of work according to some EVGA team members. After taking a look at their website I can believe it. Their forums is nothing but spam that has not been cleaned out for a very long time.

I happy to see I'm not the only one taking a look at the less well known/popular projects that are part of Formula Boinc. I find anything of interest I will pass it on. In case your all wondering, no I am not worried about competing with [H]. With Grandpa and brilong having access to a pair of data centers there it no way EVGA can compete so no point in worrying about it. Besides [H] will probably be in League one next year.

Happy crunching!
 
Khali, there is a strong possibility of us in League 1 unless we manipulate things around November. SETI sure takes a long time to validate anything...so we could easily keep our RAC down that month by supporting a project like that.

Yeah... CAS is tough to get a lot of work, but it was more of a suggestion for projects of scientific interest as an additional work buffer. Their site is regulated very little and the admins don't really respond. But if the science is legitimate, I can look past that.

Grandpa, I was just noticing the contribution to WEP-M+2 project. If I had more Linux setups, I would do it more. But I only attach that project when I happen to have a VM going for some reason. Usually when there are Linux WCG BETA only work. :) I knew you would be a good fit to give us a strong presence there. It gets little attention since they don't support Windows or Android.

I'm still doing some Dist. Data Mining. I'm shooting for a 1 million point goal there. I also have some scattered borgs playing in a few playgrounds as well.
 
Oh and Grandpa, I forgot to mention that Volpex rarely has work. So, it would be best to attach but not hold your breath. Their work units work a bit different, so when they do come, they need to have resources ready. Basically, don't run a large cache that puts other work into a panic state because the Volpex work may not start. The Volpex work is designed to work in parallel somehow with other hosts, and so needs to be ready to start. I don't know the exact workings though. Sorry.
 
Good luck getting any where with CAS. They are always out of work according to some EVGA team members. After taking a look at their website I can believe it. Their forums is nothing but spam that has not been cleaned out for a very long time.

I happy to see I'm not the only one taking a look at the less well known/popular projects that are part of Formula Boinc. I find anything of interest I will pass it on. In case your all wondering, no I am not worried about competing with [H]. With Grandpa and brilong having access to a pair of data centers there it no way EVGA can compete so no point in worrying about it. Besides [H] will probably be in League one next year.

Happy crunching!

Just to set the record straight I do not have access to any data servers, all of my rigs are built by me and run in my own home. I am just a simple construction worker who enjoys computers and likes helping out his fellow human beings and hope for a better future for humanity. And yes I am male and tend to be a bit competive so throw everything you got at us it makes things a little more fun for this old fart, P.S. I may have a rig or 2 sitting on the side lines for those special occasion. :D

And Happy crunching to you too. :)
 
Grandpa, you ever thought about running your own data center? :D
 
Just to set the record straight I do not have access to any data servers, all of my rigs are built by me and run in my own home. I am just a simple construction worker who enjoys computers and likes helping out his fellow human beings and hope for a better future for humanity. And yes I am male and tend to be a bit competive so throw everything you got at us it makes things a little more fun for this old fart, P.S. I may have a rig or 2 sitting on the side lines for those special occasion. :D

And Happy crunching to you too. :)

Wow, my mistake. You put out so many points its easy to jump to the conclusion you have a data center at hand. Ah well, I just proved another example of what happens when you assume something. I would hate to pay your electrical bills. :)

I considered rounding up all the old computers around here but then I concluded it would not be worth it to try and run a random collection of old Pentiums. Besides I would have to go buy windows 7 for most of them since they were almost all running windows 98 when they were last used. I could fire up the big gun 80386 I still have sitting on a shelf in the office. LOL
 
It appears that we now have points for Wildlife@home. We are ranked 9th and is pretty much just me so far. They don't have CPU work very often at all, so don't go jumping to it to expect to help. I just have rigs attached for when the sprinkle of work does get released. The admin is the same that does SubsetSum and DNA as well. He is the type to have a lot of big plans but no real help for execution.

Grandpa and sbinh have pretty well pushed us to 2nd in Wanless Mersenne +2. I want to encourage others to add a few projects that we currently aren't scoring in. Possibly even make them backup projects. However, there are several that have low amounts of work that could be added to just pick up work when it is available.
 
Here is a list of projects that are not as of today in the DC-Vault that we are not scoring any points at Formula-BOINC yet.

BURP
CAS
Constellation
DistrRTgen
Gerasim
Ibercivis
Mind Modeling
Moo! (this is technically in the DC-Vault because it pushes our standing at RC5-72)
Numberfields
OProject
Primaboinca
Rioja Science
SAT
Volpex (it apparently hasn't yet met the total 2 million points generated requirement. When it does we are currently 3rd place)
Yafu
 
Climate Prediction
Collatz
Einstein
Lattice Project
LHC@home
RNA
SETI
SZTAKI
 
Wow, my mistake. You put out so many points its easy to jump to the conclusion you have a data center at hand. Ah well, I just proved another example of what happens when you assume something. I would hate to pay your electrical bills. :)

Grandpa defies the norm for folks his age and accumulates DC hardware instead of cats. :D
 
Here is a list of projects that are not as of today in the DC-Vault that we are not scoring any points at Formula-BOINC yet.

BURP
CAS
Constellation
DistrRTgen
Gerasim
Ibercivis
Mind Modeling
Moo! (this is technically in the DC-Vault because it pushes our standing at RC5-72)
Numberfields
OProject
Primaboinca
Rioja Science
SAT
Volpex (it apparently hasn't yet met the total 2 million points generated requirement. When it does we are currently 3rd place)
Yafu

LOL it took me less than 5 hr to drain all the Mind Moldig Linux work, I have not been able to get any CAS work to this point I will try a few of the others and see what happns also Malira seems to be out of work at this time.
 
We could make easy points if we put some effort into some of the less popular projects. WEP-M+2 Project is Linux/Mac only and would probably be easy points for some of our big hitters to achieve. http://bearnol.is-a-geek.com/wanless2/team_members.php?teamid=768&offset=0&sort_by=expavg_credit

CAS would be another good choice. http://casathome.ihep.ac.cn/team_members.php?teamid=835&offset=0&sort_by=expavg_credit

Just informational on MP rigs do not expect CAS to run on more than 40 cores/threads they appear to have some kind of max WU's associated with this project. On AMD 62xx 64 cores it runs 40 instances ad uses 100% of all 64 cores same for 63xx with 48 cores on the Intel 64 core it runs 40 instances and only us about 75% of the cpu's.

I am dropping 1 of the i4P's to HT off 32 cores to see what it does there.
 
Just informational on MP rigs do not expect CAS to run on more than 40 cores/threads they appear to have some kind of max WU's associated with this project. On AMD 62xx 64 cores it runs 40 instances ad uses 100% of all 64 cores same for 63xx with 48 cores on the Intel 64 core it runs 40 instances and only us about 75% of the cpu's.

I am dropping 1 of the i4P's to HT off 32 cores to see what it does there.

Grandpa, could you try this first? http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1040597589&postcount=19

I am curious if this actually fixes the issue.
 
For those with Android tablets/phones, you can help our positioning at QCN by running BOINC. Our team is currently in 5th place and there are only 4 of us with points in that project. It is non-CPU intensive, so you could run it while running other work. Lenovo laptops, HP laptops with the 3D hard drive software, and Macbooks will also work without a special accelerometer. If you live in an area of interest to them like Southern California, they may even send you a free sensor. Please consider helping out.

By the way, QCN is a Stanford BOINC project but has no connection with FAH.
 
You mean CAS doesn't have a 64bit app or you don't have 64bit BOINC client? My post refers to 64bit version of BOINC client.

I mean they do not have a 64bit app, by the way the cc_config you posted does not make it run 64 cores/threads still only ran 40 after adding it.
 
Yeah I did and it does see the config, I do not think that was the problem to begin with, I believe CAS servers limits the WU's to 40 running for some reason

I would normally suggest posting in their forums, but they don't seem to respond to forum posts. Probably a situation where you write an app_config to limit number of work units so that it doesn't try to run more than 40. That way BOINC would assign the rest of the cores to other projects.
 
Volpex started getting work today but it is weird it is only using about 5% of the total CPU proccesor power. It is using 100% about 5% of the time it runs for a few seconds then sits idle for a few sec. :(

Edit

Well it must have been a test batch I got 125 of them and all but 1 errored out, I got a whole 2.73 points
 
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Yeah...it works totally different than all other BOINC projects and is all experimental from what I understand. It is basically running the work in parallel with other CPU's of other computers. So, that idle time is probably got something to do with waiting on other systems some how... Couldn't really explain it better than that because that is just my assumption from reading things.
 
Grandpa, could you try this first? http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1040597589&postcount=19

I am curious if this actually fixes the issue.

Actually this does work, I disabled HT on the box I added this to the config, I started Asteroids on it and noticed it was running 64 WU's today and I scratched my head for a while checked the bios settings several times :eek: and finally remembered I had changed the cc_config file after a few hrs of scratching my head. When I removed it from the cc_config Asteroids went back to 32 WU's ;)

This does confirm however that CAS does limit a Individual computer to 40 running WU's no matter what the core count is.

Moral of the story don't forget when you change the config file. ( It can be quite frustrating )
 
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Actually this does work, I disabled HT on the box I added this to the config, I started Asteroids on it and noticed it was running 64 WU's today and I scratched my head for a while checked the bios settings several times :eek: and finally remembered I had changed the cc_config file after a few hrs of scratching my head. When I removed it from the cc_config Asteroids went back to 32 WU's ;)

This does confirm however that CAS does limit a Individual computer to 40 running WU's no matter what the core count is.

Moral of the story don't forget when you change the config file. ( It can be quite frustrating )

Thanks for confirming this Grandpa... I'll probably report it to their forums even though they don't respond in them. That way there is at least an attempt to make things better....
 
We are now just 79 points behind first place. We have came a long way. Good job guys. I think with some careful planning we have a chance at really taking our League this year.
 
We are now just 79 points behind first place. We have came a long way. Good job guys. I think with some careful planning we have a chance at really taking our League this year.

That and a few projects that actually have enough work to run them for more than a few hrs. :eek:
 
You could always attach to BURP. They have a few work units listed and we are currently 14th place there... :) Perhaps we just need to make a list of low availability projects and have you attach to all of them....lol (but if you do attach to BURP, you may want to read the post if you have issues with it... http://burp.renderfarming.net/forum_thread.php?id=2285&nowrap=true#12822)

Edit: NM...it appears their upload/download server is disabled. At least the status page says so.
 
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Constellation on the other hand would serve two purposes... One it has plenty of work and we are currently 48th place with little points dividing us. Second, there is a very strong possibility it will become a Vault project and you could sling shot us to a very strong lead there....
 
You could always attach to BURP. They have a few work units listed and we are currently 14th place there... :) Perhaps we just need to make a list of low availability projects and have you attach to all of them....lol (but if you do attach to BURP, you may want to read the post if you have issues with it... http://burp.renderfarming.net/forum_thread.php?id=2285&nowrap=true#12822)

Edit: NM...it appears their upload/download server is disabled. At least the status page says so.

Tried BURP everything error-ed out on all rigs. I am currently running NumberFields@home we have moved up from 28th to 11th in the last couple of days should be #2 in a couple more. I will try some Constellation after we reach #2 and add a little cushion probably Saturday or Sunday. We got to #12 in MindModeling before the ran out of work I keep watching when they get some more work it should take less than a day to get to #1 or #2. We made it to #3 in CAS@home before they ran out of work so that was good. I have been trying to move us up in the less popular work in FB but allot of it will not run on my rigs for some reason ( bad work or incompatibility) I figure that in less than a month we should be #1 in our FB devision. :cool:
 
Tried BURP everything error-ed out on all rigs. I am currently running NumberFields@home we have moved up from 28th to 11th in the last couple of days should be #2 in a couple more. I will try some Constellation after we reach #2 and add a little cushion probably Saturday or Sunday. We got to #12 in MindModeling before the ran out of work I keep watching when they get some more work it should take less than a day to get to #1 or #2. We made it to #3 in CAS@home before they ran out of work so that was good. I have been trying to move us up in the less popular work in FB but allot of it will not run on my rigs for some reason ( bad work or incompatibility) I figure that in less than a month we should be #1 in our FB devision. :cool:

Did you get attached to our team at BURP? I don't see you on the list. http://burp.renderfarming.net/team_members.php?teamid=987&offset=0&sort_by=expavg_credit
 
Constellation on the other hand would serve two purposes... One it has plenty of work and we are currently 48th place with little points dividing us. Second, there is a very strong possibility it will become a Vault project and you could sling shot us to a very strong lead there....

I've thrown a few cores at Constellation. I hate that it's a quorum of 3 because it takes forever to start racking up points.
 
I have a few more upgrades to do, so am not really focused on anything particular like I had planned. I'm hoping to get to those upgrades this weekend, but the kiddo might run interference on that plan. Gotta do it soon, because my days are going to get real busy real soon....
 
Numberfields seemed to be a high point payout project for CPU's. I might be wrong, but it didn't take long to hit my goal there in the past.
 
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