Credits not being applied?

Forums › Cruncher's Corner

Bert Hyman
Bert Hyman
Joined: 5 Dec 05
Posts: 15
Credit: 6206746
RAC: 0
13 Dec 2017 15:32:02 UTC
Topic 211879
(moderation:
    )

    Or do I just not understand how it's supposed to work?

    I've been running Einstein@home on a small Linux system for a while and see the "average" credit go up and down as I and the other participant assigned to run the same task finish and get the results verified. I understand that much.

    However, lately I see the "average" just keeps dropping, even though the "Tasks for your account" continues to show new task being validated.

    The average peaked at about 7500 on November 19, and has dropped steadily to about 4600 today, according to the Boinc statistic display, and the Einstein@home Web site.

    On the other hand, the "user total" on the Boinc display went from about 2.1 million on Nov 19 to about 2.2 million today, showing a relatively straight-line increase.

    Einstein@home is the only project I'm running at the moment.

    Could someone explain what effect I'm seeing here? 

     

    Betreger
    Betreger
    Joined: 25 Feb 05
    Posts: 992
    Credit: 1596088969
    RAC: 781571

    The GW task which you are

    13 Dec 2017 16:20:27 UTC
    Message 163386
    (moderation:
      )

      The GW task which you are running were recently depreciated from 1000 credits to 600.

      "Today around 7:35 CET we generated the last workunits of "O1Spot1Hi", the high-frequency part of the "Continuous Gravitational Wave Galactic Center search" in O1 data. We then "opened" the "low-frequency" part "O1Spot1Lo" to all CPU models to finish it quickly. As these run much faster on the "fast" hosts that previously got sent "O1Spot1Hi" tasks, we reduced the credit and flops-estimation. Owner of "slow" hosts may therefore see a reduction of credit during the rest of the search and may opt-out of it.

      BM"

      https://einsteinathome.org/content/o1spot1-search-high-frequency-part-finished-low-frequency-task-sent-all-hosts

      archae86
      archae86
      Joined: 6 Dec 05
      Posts: 3157
      Credit: 7233031233
      RAC: 1171822

      The RAC is a form of

      13 Dec 2017 16:34:01 UTC
      Message 163387
      (moderation:
        )

        The RAC is a form of exponentially-weighted representation of your recent rate of credit production.  If you have a steady rate of actual work completion, and are not faced with major disturbances from delayed response by quorum partners, prolonged outage in the servers which check work and grant credit, etc., it will gradually approach the value you'd see with a simple average.  As the primary time-constant involved is scaled at one week, it corrects from major differences over the course of roughly a month (like Achilles in the old story, it never quite gets there, but gets close enough that random fluctuations hide the remaining error.

        On the numbers you gave, you received 100,000 credits in 25 days, which is 4000/day.  So your RAC of 4600 reported recently seems pretty close to right, and in any case, closer than was the 7500.

        Of the many things which can cause actual credit award rate to fluctuate:

        1. A user's system may not always operate the same number of hours per week.

        2. A user's system may not always process work at the same rate, because of interactions with other work on the system, temperature-mediated clock rate reductions...

        3. The work being run does not always give the same amount of credit for the same amount of user processing.

        4. The response time of one's quorum partners is not always the same.

        5. Sometimes one's first quorum partner delivers a bad result, and your credit is delayed further by waiting for a fresh unit to be sent to and returned by an additional partner.

        6. The project distributes more than one kind of work.  Not all of the kinds produce credit at the same rate on a given system.  Distribution of the kinds is not constant.

        7. And so on.

        If you'd like a graphical view of your recent Einstein credit production, you may find the 3rd party site BOINCStats to be interesting.

        Look here for a page of graphs for your Einstein account.

        Most people don't want to see the math which actually implements the RAC calculation, but in case you do, Stan Pope posted this quote in a thread here a couple of years ago, and I assume it to be descriptive:

        Quote:
        Each time new Credit granted, the following function is used to update the Recent Average Credit of the Computer, Participant, or Team:
        RAC(new) = RAC(old)*d(t) + (1-d(t))*credit(new)
        Where d(t) is the decay function, and t is the time (in seconds) since the last Recent Average Credit recalculation.
        d(t) = e^(-ln(2)*t / 604800)

        I see that while I was typing Betreger gave you the answer you were probably looking for.  But just in case you wanted some of what I posted, I'll leave it up.

         

         

         

         

        Bert Hyman
        Bert Hyman
        Joined: 5 Dec 05
        Posts: 15
        Credit: 6206746
        RAC: 0

        I didn't notice the change in

        13 Dec 2017 18:56:02 UTC
        Message 163395
        (moderation:
          )

          I didn't notice the change in "value" of the tasks, and even if I had, I probably wouldn't have even thought to calculate the average myself.

          On the numbers you gave, you received 100,000 credits in 25 days, which is 4000/day. So your RAC of 4600 reported recently seems pretty close to right, and in any case, closer than was the 7500.

          Put the two together, and I see exactly what was going on.

          Thanks to both of you.

          Ace Casino
          Ace Casino
          Joined: 25 Feb 05
          Posts: 36
          Credit: 1475518124
          RAC: 858496

          Check your Pending credits. 

          23 Dec 2017 16:03:05 UTC
          Message 163524
          (moderation:
            )

            Check your Pending credits.  Tasks you have completed but have not yet been granted credits.

            I've noticed in the last couple of weeks my Pending Credits have tripled from what I normally have.

            I might have 40-60 pending normally.  Up over 150 yesterday.

            Don't know if it's just a anomaly or something with Einstein?

            Betreger
            Betreger
            Joined: 25 Feb 05
            Posts: 992
            Credit: 1596088969
            RAC: 781571

            "Don't know if it's just a

            23 Dec 2017 16:12:25 UTC
            Message 163525 in response to message 163524
            (moderation:
              )

              "Don't know if it's just a anomaly or something with Einstein?"

              My pendings are up.

              mikey
              mikey
              Joined: 22 Jan 05
              Posts: 12714
              Credit: 1839116786
              RAC: 3624

              Betreger wrote:"Don't know if

              27 Dec 2017 14:09:50 UTC
              Message 163562 in response to message 163525
              (moderation:
                )

                Betreger wrote:

                "Don't know if it's just a anomaly or something with Einstein?"

                My pendings are up.

                Everyone I've talked too, my other teammates and I, are all having the same problems. Don't know what's going on but it's been more than a week now that they have climbed to higher than normal. Maybe the Holidays and people turning them off when they leave home?

                I just checked and you have about 190 and I have 235.

                Comment viewing options

                Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

                Forums › Cruncher's Corner