The only neg. I can see is, if something happens that causes you to lose the wu you are working on and you have been working on it for a day, there are going to be a lot of unhappy campers. And what speed cpu would you set up the longer wu for. If you make one day for a fast cpu, a slow one would take several days.
I'll be here no matter what.
> workunit by about a factor of five to ten. So the run time would go from
> 30-60 minutes to five to ten hours. The main purpose is because this will cut
> But I'd like to know what our users think of this. Are half-day or even
> one-day long workunits reasonable?
>
My $0.02:
First you need to have a reference platform for these numbers, so you don't compare Celerons to AMD64s (or XEONs or ...).
I'd say try to keep it under 12 hours on a relatively cheap system (Celeron 1.5GHz 256MB RAM).
PowerCrunchers are annoyed to see their crunching being interrupted by something trivial such as I/O, but with the stated goal of 1,000,000 participants (*) they aren't representative for this larger group. What would a group of students at a college or school want? People who use their computer mostly for e-mail, chatting, online purchases, etc. who learn about E@H in the newspaper? These are the ones that must find E@H exciting and 'worthwhile' in order to get them to participate. WUs that take too long (i.e. drag on and on for days) might not be as exciting as having a couple of WUs done at the end of the day. Also, these 1M people might not have their computers on 24/7.
> > workunit by about a factor of five to ten. So the run time would go
> from
> > 30-60 minutes to five to ten hours. The main purpose is because this
> will cut
> > But I'd like to know what our users think of this. Are half-day or even
> > one-day long workunits reasonable?
> >
> My $0.02:
>
> First you need to have a reference platform for these numbers, so you don't
> compare Celerons to AMD64s (or XEONs or ...).
>
> I'd say try to keep it under 12 hours on a relatively cheap system (Celeron
> 1.5GHz 256MB RAM).
>
> PowerCrunchers are annoyed to see their crunching being interrupted by
> something trivial such as I/O, but with the stated goal of 1,000,000
> participants (*) they aren't representative for this larger group. What would
> a group of students at a college or school want? People who use their computer
> mostly for e-mail, chatting, online purchases, etc. who learn about E@H in the
> newspaper? These are the ones that must find E@H exciting and 'worthwhile' in
> order to get them to participate. WUs that take too long (i.e. drag on and on
> for days) might not be as exciting as having a couple of WUs done at the end
> of the day. Also, these 1M people might not have their computers on 24/7.
>
> (*) "We hope as many as a million people will join the effort"
> Source: http://www.physics2005.org/events/einsteinathome/#einsteinathome
>
>
i agree.
I wouldn't have a problem with crunching a wu a day, but think of the new people, the ones that haven't done any other project before. They wanna see credits as soon as possible, and most of them are no PowerCrunchers, and that are the new people you wanna reach, to get their computer power. I guess, something like 5h per wu is ok, just like at SETI. Maybe you can send different sizes of wus to different computers, for example, depending on their speed, average credit, total credit, date of registration....
So, keep the crunching time as short as possible but as long as necessary for the project.
Or maybe you could give us the option in our prefrences if we would like to do the long or short wu's. I would like the long ones myself, but james,marco, and neo all have valid points.
Based on this discussion I think I will start planning workunits that are five to ten times longer than the current ones. This should allow most users to at least complete a workunit per day and get credit reasonably quickly.
In the long-term, perhaps we can make this a 'project preference' but for the moment it's not feasible: I need to keep things as simple as possible from an administrative point of view!
Longer WUs are no problem for
)
Longer WUs are no problem for me, Bruce.
... speaking as someone who has been running CPDN for the last year...
Cheers,
PeterV.
For CPDNers 1 day is FAST
)
For CPDNers 1 day is FAST lol
I don't think it would matter for the users, if thats how it is when they start they will probably just accept it.
No problem if the units are
)
No problem if the units are not too long . 1day is reasonable
I vote for wu´s not longer
)
I vote for wu´s not longer than 6 hours max.
Work units that are several
)
Work units that are several hours or even a day in length are not a problem for me. Do what is best for the project and the science.
Team MacNN - The best Macintosh team ever.
The only neg. I can see is,
)
The only neg. I can see is, if something happens that causes you to lose the wu you are working on and you have been working on it for a day, there are going to be a lot of unhappy campers. And what speed cpu would you set up the longer wu for. If you make one day for a fast cpu, a slow one would take several days.
I'll be here no matter what.
> workunit by about a factor
)
> workunit by about a factor of five to ten. So the run time would go from
> 30-60 minutes to five to ten hours. The main purpose is because this will cut
> But I'd like to know what our users think of this. Are half-day or even
> one-day long workunits reasonable?
>
My $0.02:
First you need to have a reference platform for these numbers, so you don't compare Celerons to AMD64s (or XEONs or ...).
I'd say try to keep it under 12 hours on a relatively cheap system (Celeron 1.5GHz 256MB RAM).
PowerCrunchers are annoyed to see their crunching being interrupted by something trivial such as I/O, but with the stated goal of 1,000,000 participants (*) they aren't representative for this larger group. What would a group of students at a college or school want? People who use their computer mostly for e-mail, chatting, online purchases, etc. who learn about E@H in the newspaper? These are the ones that must find E@H exciting and 'worthwhile' in order to get them to participate. WUs that take too long (i.e. drag on and on for days) might not be as exciting as having a couple of WUs done at the end of the day. Also, these 1M people might not have their computers on 24/7.
(*) "We hope as many as a million people will join the effort"
Source: http://www.physics2005.org/events/einsteinathome/#einsteinathome
- Marco
Team Canada
> > workunit by about a
)
> > workunit by about a factor of five to ten. So the run time would go
> from
> > 30-60 minutes to five to ten hours. The main purpose is because this
> will cut
> > But I'd like to know what our users think of this. Are half-day or even
> > one-day long workunits reasonable?
> >
> My $0.02:
>
> First you need to have a reference platform for these numbers, so you don't
> compare Celerons to AMD64s (or XEONs or ...).
>
> I'd say try to keep it under 12 hours on a relatively cheap system (Celeron
> 1.5GHz 256MB RAM).
>
> PowerCrunchers are annoyed to see their crunching being interrupted by
> something trivial such as I/O, but with the stated goal of 1,000,000
> participants (*) they aren't representative for this larger group. What would
> a group of students at a college or school want? People who use their computer
> mostly for e-mail, chatting, online purchases, etc. who learn about E@H in the
> newspaper? These are the ones that must find E@H exciting and 'worthwhile' in
> order to get them to participate. WUs that take too long (i.e. drag on and on
> for days) might not be as exciting as having a couple of WUs done at the end
> of the day. Also, these 1M people might not have their computers on 24/7.
>
> (*) "We hope as many as a million people will join the effort"
> Source: http://www.physics2005.org/events/einsteinathome/#einsteinathome
>
>
i agree.
I wouldn't have a problem with crunching a wu a day, but think of the new people, the ones that haven't done any other project before. They wanna see credits as soon as possible, and most of them are no PowerCrunchers, and that are the new people you wanna reach, to get their computer power. I guess, something like 5h per wu is ok, just like at SETI. Maybe you can send different sizes of wus to different computers, for example, depending on their speed, average credit, total credit, date of registration....
So, keep the crunching time as short as possible but as long as necessary for the project.
Or maybe you could give us
)
Or maybe you could give us the option in our prefrences if we would like to do the long or short wu's. I would like the long ones myself, but james,marco, and neo all have valid points.
Wow -- this is very useful
)
Wow -- this is very useful feedback for me!
Based on this discussion I think I will start planning workunits that are five to ten times longer than the current ones. This should allow most users to at least complete a workunit per day and get credit reasonably quickly.
In the long-term, perhaps we can make this a 'project preference' but for the moment it's not feasible: I need to keep things as simple as possible from an administrative point of view!
Cheers,
Bruce
Director, Einstein@Home