Andrew, have you tried altering priority as I posted above?

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yes.. it works.. but what about the people who download boinc from the berkley site and select gpugrid and don't visit this forum?

anyway.. jumping through loops is not acceptable.. i'll suspend the gpugrid project until it's fixed.

You don't need to play with priorities. Just wait a week and we will remove this.
It was a test to see if a little increase in priority would make things better as the performance on windows machines is sometime half of what it should be.
We were hoping to use a user preference for it, but it is not possible until we update the server software.

gdf

sure gdf.. i have patience.. but you need to ask yourself: does the standard user have it?

i have a 7000 lines vb.net project myself and i understand the problems that come with big projects.. but i don't understand why this severe bug got out to the users.. and i belive it is a big mistake that it ever got out. maybe you should have released it when you had the time to work on the bugs and maybe it should have been tested well before the release.

sure gdf.. i have patience.. but you need to ask yourself: does the standard user have it?

i have a 7000 lines vb.net project myself and i understand the problems that come with big projects.. but i don't understand why this severe bug got out to the users.. and i belive it is a big mistake that it ever got out. maybe you should have released it when you had the time to work on the bugs and maybe it should have been tested well before the release.

While I think your criticism is valid I do think you're overestimating the impact. People with a GPU capable of crunching for GPUGRID will mostly be gamers and other enthusiasts who should definitely be keeping an eye on the system and the projects it's running. For starters a certain version (and above) of nvidia drivers need to be installed to even be able to run the tasks. I'd say updating drivers is much more work than going to the projects forums to see if anything is known about a problem one is having and then perhaps changing a tasks priority. I doubt GPUGRID really has many "standard" users anyway, it's not like one can just attach a work pc to the project and forget about it from then on.

It is not a bug. Many people with top GPUs would not have problems with that increase in priority (in fact, it was the default in BOINC at first).

Everytime there is a change, there are problems because the heterogeneity is very large out there. Yet, we need to progress and accept to correct changes. We are going to change the priority only on device 0, the one attached to the display.

In the future, it will be a project preference.
gdf

sure gdf.. i have patience.. but you need to ask yourself: does the standard user have it?

i have a 7000 lines vb.net project myself and i understand the problems that come with big projects.. but i don't understand why this severe bug got out to the users.. and i belive it is a big mistake that it ever got out. maybe you should have released it when you had the time to work on the bugs and maybe it should have been tested well before the release.

Everytime there is a change, there are problems because the heterogeneity is very large out there.

i know (it is the standard problem with big projects) but what i don't understand is why the tasks aren't tested first in a "private" enviroment (with volunteer users or something) that reflects the complex structure of the public users.

i even had this computer freeze problem when on a project.. the software was tested on multiple computers before the release.. i fixed the freeze problem before it got to the users.

gdf:"Everytime there is a change, there are problems" .. "you'll have to wait 10 days as I am leaving for a 10 days conference tour to USA."
then you would agree with me that you made a big mistake because you didn't plan ahead.. releasing the tasks only when you have free time for the problems that come with this.

gdf, can you give us some statistics or a link that shows the number of users that were running gpugrid in an hour from when the new tasks were released? then we could see a drop and how big the impact was.

it's not like one can just attach a work pc to the project and forget about it from then on.

people invented things like: plug and play, launch and forget(aircraft missiles) etc. because it makes the life of the user easier. i think gpugrid should strive to achieve this too because it also makes less people upset and the number of people that cancel the project will be smaller.

it's not like one can just attach a work pc to the project and forget about it from then on.

people invented things like: plug and play, launch and forget(aircraft missiles) etc. because it makes the life of the user easier. i think gpugrid should strive to achieve this too because it also makes less people upset and the number of people that cancel the project will be smaller.

We used to call Windows Plug and Play "Plug and Pray"

Basically it's laziness on the part of the public, they wan't wonderful machines that can make their lives easier but don't know, and worse, don't want to know the basics of how that machine works and how to keep it working efficiently. The general public tend to treat a computer like a TV, plug it in and it will do everything itself.

As far as testing goes, they do, but the people who run Beta WU's on GPUGrid are usually dedicated crunchers who have powerful cards and dedicated computers so they wouldn't pick up a problem such as this one.

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gdf:"Everytime there is a change, there are problems" .. "you'll have to wait 10 days as I am leaving for a 10 days conference tour to USA."

then you would agree with me that you made a big mistake because you didn't plan ahead.. releasing the tasks only when you have free time for the problems that come with this.

Andrew3000,
This is a forum, not a courtroom. GDF is not the defendant, and you are not the prosecutor. Actually, you and GDF are on the same side, so please, try to be more constructive. Besides, just like every time, there were a discussion, and a beta testing before this release. The problems reported that time, were fixed before the release.

You say:

i know (it is the standard problem with big projects) but what i don't understand is why the tasks aren't tested first in a "private" enviroment (with volunteer users or something) that reflects the complex structure of the public users.

If you understand the problems of big projects you should be a beta tester in the future, this would help the project avoiding this kind of problems next time.

gdf, can you give us some statistics or a link that shows the number of users that were running gpugrid in an hour from when the new tasks were released? then we could see a drop and how big the impact was.

Boinc statistics are available in a couple of webpages. For example on this one. I don't see any significant drop in the number of active users, and in the number of active hosts.

Heterogeneity doesn't mean big project, it means variety in system architectures, and more specifically the range of GPU's. Presently, I see no problems on my GTX470's (these can multi-task at least to some extent) when running GIANNI_KKFREE tasks, but some lag still on TONI_AGG tasks. On GTX200 series cards (and earlier) the lag is still there and very high for TONI_AGG tasks. So the reduced GPU usage, while priority is still raised won't do the trick for older cards and requires lower GPU utilization on the Fermi's. You can manually change the priority in Task Manager for Windows. Anyone with more than one GPU need only do this for tasks running on the GPU supporting their monitor (usually GPU 0).

gdf, can you give us some statistics or a link that shows the number of users that were running gpugrid in an hour from when the new tasks were released? then we could see a drop and how big the impact was.

Boinc statistics are available in a couple of webpages. For example on this one. I don't see any significant drop in the number of active users, and in the number of active hosts.

The usual definition of 'active user' on the external stats sites is "earned credit within the last 30 days" (or 60 days, or some measure like that). This change is too recent to show up in a measure like that: only GDF, or somebody else on the project team with authority to run SQL queries on the database, would be able to speak with certainty at this stage.

The credit would have dropped anyway, irrespective of whether or not people left; the GIANNI_KKFREE tasks originally did not grant the correct amount of credit. This has now been fixed. Mind you after the fix these GIANNI_KKFREE task ran with lower GPU utilization, so credit might still be slightly down. On the other hand the TONI_AGG tasks are running at higher utilization, so that might go some way to offsetting the reduced utilization of the GIANNI tasks. Whatever the case application changes usually change things and the daily return stats will take a while to balance out as people make adjustments.

In the short run (a week or two) GDF will reset the application to run at Below Normal priority, and in the long run they will update the server to facilitate options for such settings (user choice).

I doubt that the research team even do such SQL queries on their own database; well at least not regularly. It not just the effort of putting this together and maintaining it, you have to constantly monitor the data for it to be of any use.

"Heterogeneity doesn't mean big project"
"GDF is not the defendant, and you are not the prosecutor."
you both are right. i never said these things.

"Actually, you and GDF are on the same side"
sorry if i don't identify myself.. on my domain if i let a freeze problem get to the end user and tell my client "you'll have to wait 10 days because i must go somewhere" the client fires me and gets a coder that fixes the problem in one day. i also ask myself while coding "do i need to put this in a tab somewhere or should i put it in the main form so that the user isn't made to jump through loops to get to this button?"

"you should be a beta tester in the future"
i already was one when the bug came out.. and i will be one in the future too.

i'm not getting personal or emotional in the dialog on this forum.
my personal interest is for the users to benefit of a very good user experience.

"I don't see any significant drop in the number of active users, and in the number of active hosts."
yes. you are right. there is no sudden drop yet. thanks for the graphs. we'll have to watch them in the future.

but that page has shown me an even bigger problem concerning the last 2 graphs:
http://boinc.netsoft-online.com/e107_plugins/boinc/bp.php?project=52






question for GDF: why in the last 3 months gpugrid had about 1400 new hosts (i presume they joined in order to stay) and instead of having an increase of about 1000 users in the active hosts the graph it shows a decrease of 500 active hosts? is there something going horribly wrong and people are leaving? or am i missing something?

also why out of 22.600 hosts ONLY 3804 meaning 17% are active?

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question for GDF: why in the last 3 months gpugrid had about 1400 new hosts (i presume they joined in order to stay) and instead of having an increase of about 1000 users in the active hosts the graph it shows a decrease of 500 active hosts? is there something going horribly wrong and people are leaving? or am i missing something?

also why out of 22.600 hosts ONLY 3804 meaning 17% are active?

Hi, The truth of the numbers of active users think it looks better: http://es.boincstats.com/stats/user_stats.php?pr=ps3grid&st=0 and the reality is that this project, like everyone, is actually supported by very few users.

GPUGRID has 12,532 registered users, the numbers are:

1380 with 60,000 credit in the last month.
1050 with 20,000 credit in the last week.

It does not take an expert in statistical analysis to see GPUGRID are actually about 1,200 users = 10%. Greetings.

"Actually, you and GDF are on the same side"
sorry if i don't identify myself.. on my domain if i let a freeze problem get to the end user and tell my client "you'll have to wait 10 days because i must go somewhere" the client fires me and gets a coder that fixes the problem in one day.

That's what the business world is like. This isn't a business venture. We are just volunteers so we cut the admins/devs a litle slack. We try to show tolerance and patience. Remember the team members are faculty at a university so they have lectures, grading exams/papers, faculty meetings and other duties that eat up their time too. You go too far when you guestion GDF's timing on the release of 6.14. Pull in your horns and back off.

I would like to think we are all on the same side, and just discussing logistics.

WRT the charts, the Host Count is just the total number of computer systems attached to the project. This is always going to rise and fairly steadily too; new crunchers come and go, and those that stay replace systems.
Over the last 100days the active host count was steadily droping for around 60days, but then started to level out; in the last 40days listed it only droped by around 100 systems. This might be explained by the arival of the GTX590, a dual GPU, the much predicted loss of lesser GPU’s, and a relative increase in the number of dual GPU systems.
The active user accounts match the active host count fairly accurately. The sharp decline in credit over the last 2 or 3 days was already explained by a mismatch in credit for some long task types, and the new app. It will take a while for things to equilibreate again. Such events are not overly frequent, once every several months.

This new application mainly present changes in terms of the science.

Thanks for the great news. I am always impressed by team GPUGrid's active approach to refining and improving the applications they have created to obtain better / more accurate results in advancing the science they are persuing !!!

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Thanks - Steve

Dagorath:" This isn't a business venture."
oh.. right.. then it's ok to realease versions that freeze the computer of users and force them to shut down the project. i understand.

" You go too far when you guestion GDF"
well.. at least you can move your mouse to navigate this forum.. but when your computer completly freezes (when i was able to move the mouse boinc wouldn't open.. at first i didn't even know what was going on..if i wouldn't have known how to shut it down from task manager i would have been forced to restart the computer and when i would have entered windows it would have been frozen again because boinc starts immediately)
.. then you might think that you have the right to ask a lot of "guestions" to the person that allowed this severe bug to leak beyond the testing team.

"I would like to think we are all on the same side, and just discussing logistics."
same side of the gpugrid project... yes.

Voice your concerns guys but keep it friendly, we share the problems and the tasks. There was no intention to cause problems, but each new application does change things, sometimes unexpectedly so. The remaining problems will be rectified in due course.

May I suggest that if your system is unacceptably unresponsive that you configure Boinc to not use the GPU while you are using the system.

In the future we hope to see advancements in Boinc that allow more configuration choices, especially those that better cater for GPU projects.