A little Boinc info

[LP]

I just want to give you a little more info on Boinc. The Boinc program is set up to run a certain way and benchmarks without taking into account your cpu features, such as SSE, SSE2, etc.
One of the first projects run on Boinc was Seti@Home. Some of the Seti people set about to create an optimized version of Boinc to specificly run Seti on. It actually makes use of your cpu features, like setting flags in F@H does. This only works for the Seti client!
Some people are now using that optimized version to run other Boinc projects.
The problem is that the optimized Boinc for Windows does nothing but tell the benchmark program what cpu you have. It does not turn on SSE, SSE2 or any other cpu "features". It only inflates your benchmark.
The problem being that projects run on Boinc use the benchmark to set the points your machine gets.
There is a big controversy over using the optimized Windows version, as some see it as cheating, as it doesn't do any more work than the regular Boinc program.
Ok, now to Linux. The Linux version of Boinc has a bug that undervalues your benchmark. It is ok to optimize Linux Boinc because that brings it up to an even standing with the regular Windows Boinc.
Now whether you choose to use these is really your choice. I just wanted to let you know that they exist and that the Windows version is in dispute.
They are thinking of going to purely Flops counting, and that will solve the problem.
I had the Linux optimized version when I was running a different Boinc project, but I found it didn't work for me with WCG.
I am not running any optimized versions, and you can see it hasn't hurt my points at all. WCG uses a quorum system to award points, with their quorum set 4. In other words they issue 4 copies of the same wu and after all 4 have been turned in, they throw out high and low and average the 2 remaining scores. Then all 4 people that turned in that wu get the same points awarded. That keeps it fair. They try to issue the wu's to like machines, so the points spread won't be too wide. That also means that it may take a day or two to get credit issued for all of your finished work units.
This only applies to the Boinc system.

[robbie]

Thank you for this.

[LP]

For the Linux users, you can compile your own version. The instructions can be found in this thread on another forum. Scroll down to where it says "Recompiling the boinc client". I was able to do it on 2 of my 3 Linux towers, and it ran the WGC wu's but it wouldn't connect to send them in.
You are welcome to try it, and it may or may not work for you.

The Windows version can be found here. It even tells you on the site that it doesn't do any more work than regular version, but I'm laying it all out for you to decide for yourselves.

[robbie]

Seems fairly quick on my Venice 3000+

[LP]

I'm very happy with what I'm getting too.

[robbie]

It will be about 6 hours total for this WU to run it's coarse.

[Daniel ~]

I just took a nap and came back to find my WCG client sitting idle waiting for a login. Is this because I just reinstalled it or is it going to sit there like a dummy waiting for me to login every time I complete a WU?

[LP]

Daniel, is this the WCG agent? or the Boinc version?

WCG agent- I would think it's because you were running a wu from a "restore" and at one time it had been uninstalled, and after the wu finished, then you needed to "sign in", just like with a new install. But it should only be a one time thing.

[Áedán]

I'm not sure that recompiling BOINC would help that much, as BOINC's really just a wrapper. The code that does the computation is pulled down from the WGC's website, which is the bit you can't recompile...

Adding flags to handle specific optimisations for the project code is a different matter however.

[LP]

You may be right in that respect, Aedan.
Here's a snippet of the instructions -

export CFLAGS="-march=i686 -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -funroll-loops -fforce-addr -ffast-math -ftracer" See this code ?? You need to REPLACE the stuff in red in that command with the output of your cpuflagtest.sh script !!!

Using my above example of -march=athlon-xp the line you need to enter next would look like this :
export CFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -funroll-loops -fforce-addr -ffast-math -ftracer"
It should return back to a command prompt...with no output showing up. What it did was put that long command into the variable CFLAGS.

Next....
export CXXFLAGS=$CFLAGS again.. this should just return back the command prompt, and no output is shown from this command.

It does pretty much double the benchmark, but it doesn't seem to matter as much in WCG as it does in some other Boinc projects.

[Daniel ~]

Originally Posted by LP

Daniel, is this the WCG agent? or the Boinc version?

WCG agent- I would think it's because you were running a wu from a "restore" and at one time it had been uninstalled, and after the wu finished, then you needed to "sign in", just like with a new install. But it should only be a one time thing.

Thank Goodness! All seems well with just the WCG .":O}

[cadaveca]

Seems like then i should be running the default client, and not BOINC, on my 2 machines?

[LP]

Originally Posted by cadaveca

Seems like then i should be running the default client, and not BOINC, on my 2 machines?

No, this is just referring to the "optimized" Boinc version.