5th Birthday Challenge @ WCG

crille · Post by **crille** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 12:27 pm

Dear members of The Scottish Boinc Team,

From the Nov 16th to Nov 22nd 2009 SETI.Germany is arraging a challenge at World Community Grid on the occasion of the grids fifth birthday:
The 5th Birthday Challenge

We would like to invite The Scottish Boinc Team to participate in the challenge and hope that many of you will be joining.

More information and statistics regarding the challenge can be found here.

Your participation is very much appreciated. :)
crille

PinkPenguin · Post by **PinkPenguin** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 1:29 pm

.... Now there's an interesting thought! WCG is a long way off our strong suite - OK by me all the same. Will put everything on WCG if we decide to participate (ain't much but it's what I can do). 8)

Post by **Megacruncher** » Sun Nov 08, 2009 12:41 am

Hmm, I'll think about it.

The reason we more or less abandoned WCG was the pisspoor credit it offers.
On the other hand I do like a good scrap & I have long spoken about securing that second WCG million.

So if Einstein is sorted by the kick-off of this project I'll give it a go, at least for the duration of the challenge.

Nightlord · Post by **Nightlord** » Sun Nov 08, 2009 8:07 pm

Sounds good to me, I'm coasting, so to speak on the other projects, due to the rewards enjoyed by the GPU's.

I don't have as many boxes as in the past, but a few cores here and there will help.

Post by **Megacruncher** » Mon Nov 09, 2009 12:14 am

Okay I'll enter us into the challenge (I only just worked out that I am captain for WCG

) when I can work out how to. After all it's only for a week!

Post by **Megacruncher** » Mon Nov 09, 2009 12:21 am

figured it. joined it. Also added their WCG medals thing to my sig.

MacDitch · Post by **MacDitch** » Tue Nov 10, 2009 3:50 pm

figured it. joined it. Also added their WCG medals thing to my sig.

How? I haven't time at the moment to dig... (Yeah, I'm being lazy!)

Post by **Megacruncher** » Tue Nov 10, 2009 9:27 pm

Click here and you'll find out how.

italian cruncher · Post by **italian cruncher** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 8:55 pm

we joined the challenge too!

have a good crunch :blob8:

PinkPenguin · Post by **PinkPenguin** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 10:00 pm

I believe that's a challenge... 8)

Have fun :blob:

Post by **Megacruncher** » Fri Nov 13, 2009 12:31 am

It's quite refreshing to be back running WCG. All their projects are meritorious, if rather shamelessly oversold -Cure for Cancer? Nah, I don't think I'll bother.- and the pisspoor credit doesn't seem to be as bad as it was. Yesterday, according to Temujin, I got 5,082 credits for WCG despite still running Einstein CPDN and others. It will be interesting to see what it climbs to once the challenge kicks in & I'm running it full time.

Post by **aardvark** » Sat Nov 14, 2009 2:14 am

Full steam ahead. Now hunting down all spare processors in house (one is busy dicing carrots at the moment

). WCG has been my staple diet for a few years now, I was a bit disappointed initially (on joining TSBT) when my WCG credit was converted into cobblestones, reduced my score by a factor of about seven. Seems to give as good a return as most CPU projects nowadays.
The signature "thingy" works quite well.

Post by **aardvark** » Sat Nov 14, 2009 5:51 pm

Having done a few sums

I recon that the best project on WCG in terms of points/day is the "nutritious rice". So will be runnung that for the duration.

PinkPenguin · Post by **PinkPenguin** » Sat Nov 14, 2009 7:16 pm

OK thanks. I note that Nutritious Rice is capped at 7 hours (it'll run longer only if it's near the end after 7 hours) and it requires a quorum of 10 out of 19 completed WUs for validation. Not sure how this affects the scoring but, last time round, the credits came in quite fast given the wu quorum/distribution ratio.

According to my calcs Childhood Cancer was a good second best (particularly on the slower machines) it sometimes requires a quorum of 2 out of 2 (not good) and sometimes requires only 1 out of 1 (very good)... The Proteome Folding project requires a large quorum with only a few spare wus so I suspect it isn't a great choice.

Post by **CycloneRanger** » Sun Nov 15, 2009 5:01 pm

Aw, prairie piss! I'm in for a week with my paltry two boxes!

Post by **Megacruncher** » Mon Nov 16, 2009 12:28 am

And I reckon that we are off! We'll see if we can finish in the top 100 for the challenge!

Post by **Megacruncher** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 1:26 am

Not overly shabby!
As of the first day of the challenge we are 24th!
Keep up the good work!

crille · Post by **crille** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 10:38 am

Congratulation: Rank 24 after the first challenge day.

Please visit our challenge statistics and the Scottish Boinc Team Stats

Best regards from germany
crille

Post by **CycloneRanger** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 2:52 am

Day Two: 21st place with 542,716 !!!

Woo-hoo!

Post by **aardvark** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 2:52 am

And now in 21st place :wav:

I wonder if we could make the top ten 8)

Post by **CycloneRanger** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 2:56 am

I dunno about top ten, but definitely top fifteen!

Crunch 'em up, team!

PinkPenguin · Post by **PinkPenguin** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 8:09 am

...All junkheaps are flat out! Had a bit of trouble persuading the Win7 box that "flat out" does not = BSOD... and it really does seem to have a thing against WCG I think it was a bit deluded after the nice little 64-bit SIMAP units which it chewed up quite happily.

I shall really have to give up doing junkheaps that no one else seems to want... (no I'm not giving away the macbook, it's the only half-way decent junkheap I got!)

Post by **jockmacmad2** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 1:15 pm

After having been shutdown for a while and now back off hols, the oven errm office is now up to forge type temps again. I threw most of the CPUs on this today.

Well I put them on last night but forgot to check the electric key. 4am nae leccy lol.

Key now recharged.

Post by **aardvark** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 6:50 pm

Welcome back Jock'. Still, look on the bright side, your central heating won't be on much

Post by **Megacruncher** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 8:01 pm

Welcome back Jock - I was worried I was going to catch you up there!

I have to say this challenge is going spectacularly well. Given that we were about 350th by RAC for WCG a couple of weeks ago, 21st in a competition entered by most of the big WCG teams is pretty damn good!

It helps that the credit for WCG is now pretty average. (Also if you've got a few GPUs your CPU activity hardly affects your overall credit)

At this rate we'll be able to rekindle our Top 100 for Everything hopes!

PinkPenguin · Post by **PinkPenguin** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 10:32 pm

Welcome back Jock!

Post by **CycloneRanger** » Thu Nov 19, 2009 1:38 am

Still a solid and respectable 21st with 915,532.

We could make the top 20 easily with just a few more crunches per day ...

Post by **Megacruncher** » Thu Nov 19, 2009 11:31 pm

I reckon that in a few hours we will be 20th! Our credit per day is rising and hasn't peaked yet.

We actually gained a WCG TC place today - rising from 131st to 130th! 8)

Post by **aardvark** » Fri Nov 20, 2009 2:24 am

Nineteenth :wav:

PinkPenguin · Post by **PinkPenguin** » Fri Nov 20, 2009 3:19 pm

:blob7: Yippee! got me a silver!.... got a feeling that another couple of places isn't out of our reach (always assuming that the "Pending Validation" and "Inconclusive" demons don't decide to have a party at our expense)...

Post by **CycloneRanger** » Sat Nov 21, 2009 1:25 am

18th

Top 15, anyone?

1,882,781

Post by **Megacruncher** » Sat Nov 21, 2009 1:27 am

With 5 days of the 7 gone we are 18th :wav:
17th is a possibility but anything better than 20th is well beyond my expectations for this.

Post by **Megacruncher** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 1:18 am

Still 18th. 17th isn't impossible but if in 24 hours we end in 18th I'll be more than content.

PinkPenguin · Post by **PinkPenguin** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 11:03 am

Bugrit, millenium hand and shrimp ! Got me a whole pile o' pendings....

Post by **Megacruncher** » Mon Nov 23, 2009 12:49 am

Well the challenge is over. I reckon we will still be 18th but I can't be bothered staying up for the count.

It was good to be doing some WCG again - especially for adequate credit. Nobody responded to my comment about trying for top 100 again. This last week has shown that it would be possible ( in a couple of weeks we have gone from nowhere to 88th by RAC). So if anyone is up for continuing the charge let us know. Otherwise I shall just finish off my WUs, wait for the pending credit to come through and then cruise slowly towards 2,000,000.

From now until the end of 2009 I shall maybe direct my CPU cores 20% to WCG, 30% to CPDN & 50% to Einstein. Unless, to dangle the bait for the third time, some of the rest of you really want to restore WCG to it's rightful place.

Post by **CycloneRanger** » Mon Nov 23, 2009 1:01 am

Well, let me issue a qualified maybe on the WCG challenge. With Andy Manzie breathing hard down my neck, I'd like to hold my place.

BUT

If enough others will sign on, I'll join in, FWIW.

What say the rest of ye?

Post by **jockmacmad2** » Mon Nov 23, 2009 1:33 am

Yup so 18th it was.

I can leave a couple of CPU's on WCG. The rest are getting shut off as there are no GPUs in them.

Post by **aardvark** » Mon Nov 23, 2009 1:49 am

I'm keen to keep going. WCG was my preferred workload for my CPU's before the challenge, would ne nice to get TSBT into the top 100.

Well done to all, 18th, nae bad ava min (Aberdeenshire speak)

PinkPenguin · Post by **PinkPenguin** » Mon Nov 23, 2009 5:58 am

At the moment I'm doing the rounds so this week it's Einstein and Leiden - I won't be able to make much of a difference on WCG between now and the end of the year.

... Congrats to all !

Nightlord · Post by **Nightlord** » Mon Nov 23, 2009 7:26 am

I can keep a few boxes on it - but will need to watch the impact on GPU's.

This last week I ran everything native, but normally my CPU's are crunched in a VM and that hits performance a wee bit on the CPU, but leaves the GPU clean and happy.

crille · Post by **crille** » Mon Nov 23, 2009 6:54 pm

Congratulation: 18th Place and you really increased your output. I hope you enjoyed the challenge and you will join the 6th birthday challenge in 2010.

Best regards
crille

Nightlord · Post by **Nightlord** » Mon Nov 23, 2009 8:32 pm

Thankyou crille. An interesting and worthwhile challenge.

So, guys, what do you think? Worth a blast for a few weeks to try to get back into top 100?

This chart is very interesting......

Post by **CycloneRanger** » Mon Nov 23, 2009 9:59 pm

Ahright, let's quit beating around the bush!

We're #167 right now.

We CAN break into the top 100!

Who's playing?

Post by **Megacruncher** » Mon Nov 23, 2009 10:45 pm

We're #167 right now.

We CAN break into the top 100!

Who's playing?

I'm playing.

Actually for Boinc purposes we are 130th. Pure WCG stats are weird and rank us either 167th (by results) or 140th (by points). So Boinc we shall stick to using Boincstats. We are up to 86th by total credit so some headway should be possible soon.

Post by **CycloneRanger** » Tue Nov 24, 2009 12:58 am

I'm playing.

Actually for Boinc purposes we are 130th. Pure WCG stats are weird and rank us either 167th (by results) or 140th (by points). So Boinc we shall stick to using Boincstats. We are up to 86th by total credit so some headway should be possible soon.

Acknowledged. Well, you alone can exert major influence on the stats, but it would be nice to see a real team effort.

Waiting ...

steve · Post by **steve** » Tue Nov 24, 2009 1:40 am

I"m in

Although may be reduced for a while took out the garage mains supply this afternoon
KW > thickness of wire .....

will have it back up and running by the weekend

Post by **CycloneRanger** » Tue Nov 24, 2009 2:27 am

Well, that's three.

<knock>

Anybody in there?

Nightlord · Post by **Nightlord** » Tue Nov 24, 2009 7:19 am

Four, if you count me!

I've had to drop back to running inside VM's on the ATI boxes so my CPU output on those are down a little: but still, WCG will be 100% on them.

Post by **CycloneRanger** » Tue Nov 24, 2009 10:53 am

All right, let's set some ground rules. (He modestly proposed.)

December 1, we shift available assets to WCG, and agree to run until the 31st, barring re-evaluation.

That gives everyone time to deplete their bloated CC caches, etc.

All in favor?

Post by **Megacruncher** » Tue Nov 24, 2009 9:46 pm

I'm up for that although, it won't be all assets, Einstein & Rosetta both need a little bit of stabilising, and my remaining CPDN models will take a few weeks part-time, also it's going to be a several month effort to get to 100.

FWIW the last Boincstats update has us in 129th place with 128th a certainty by the next update. Don't expect the gains to be all as simple as this!

That said, a continued WCG blast until the end of the year would get the long slog off to a flying start!

PS Of course what we need is a GPU version for one or more of the WCG projects.