| Index | Recent Threads | Unanswered Threads | Who's Active | Guidelines | Search |
 |
World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: BOINC Agent Support
Thread: Should we be moving to the BOINC agent? |
| No member browsing this thread |
|
Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 18
|
|
| Author |
|
|
Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
It was my understanding that the original Windows agent is stable/reliable (and can be slower since it is single-threaded).
Should I be moving to the new BOINC agent? Is that the goal or just expanding the grid by including BOINC? Happy New Years Eve Europe and Aisa! |
||
|
|
Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Happy New Year, Hechlerg --
The World Community Grid initially brought the BOINC agent onboard to support the Linux environment. The use of BOINC in the Windows environment seems to have been allowed only because they got it to work. There has been no statement of direction from the professional team to indicate a desire to move in that direction at this point. At the present time, my own personal position is that the UD agent is working well and I have no desire to fix what ain't broken. |
||
|
|
Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I would have thought that as a means of expanding the 'user' base and being able to offer a larger list to prospective customers, a goal of attracting the very large BOINC community would be, or even should be, a stated aim from the professional team, esp if you manage to get the Boinc Team element to work. I know there are lots out there who would like to participate but at the moment as it is only a benefit to an individual and not the team, they are holding off!
All the best. |
||
|
|
Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I use both and prefer the BOINC S/ware
 |
||
|
|
keithhenry
Ace Cruncher Senile old farts of the world ....uh.....uh..... nevermind Joined: Nov 18, 2004 Post Count: 18667 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
|
I recently switched from the UD agent to the BOINC Windows agent and am finding VERY few reasons to use the UD agent. I installed the UD agent back on 11/18/04 when I first joined WCG. I installed the BOINC Windows agent five days ago (12/29/05). From what I am seeing and have read, I can come up with these reasons to remain on the UD agent:
----------------------------------------
There are probably some more reasons but none that have much relevance to me. Reasons to switch to BOINC:
Granted, five days versus almost a full year does not make for a totally fair comparison but it makes for a good rough indicator for me :-) I've seen my typical average day's point go from 500-600 to 1300-1400 (so far). With the validation process for BOINC results, the points/results numbers I have from BOINC so far could actually still be low (the first couple of days may have skewed the overall numbers lower) but that would just mean BOINC will get even better. One last un-scientific note - in the last five days, my Points Generated rank has improved by almost as much as over the last three months of running UD. YMMV |
||
|
|
Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I believe that given time ALL windows users will see the advantages of using the Windows Boinc Client. I am using it and am certainly happy with the results.
 |
||
|
|
Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
2 things about boinc appeal to me: multi-threading and running on batteries. Maybe I will switch over my laptop so I can drain my batteries more often without losing compute time.
I did not look at things close enough to say boinc gives more points - it may or may not. What I noticed was getting more work done (multi-threading).  Of course that could be skewed if the work units for boinc happen to be smaller than UD, making everyone *think* they are working faster and simply getting more points.I'll ponder on this more before flipping to boinc. Don't want to take all the work away from fellow boinc-ers if I can get it from UD. |
||
|
|
knreed
Former World Community Grid Tech Joined: Nov 8, 2004 Post Count: 4504 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
|
BOINC appears to award more points for the same amount of work. This seems to be due to having a CPU ranked above the benchmark. The UD agent typically rated my machine in the low 130's overall but scored the CPU around 155. According to my device statistics, BOINC has a Total Run Time of 0:003:23:42:26, Points generated of 5269 and Results returned of 20. UD has a Total Run Time of 0:363:10:13:56, Points generated of 215,509 and Results returned of 1,113. Some quick math comes up with 0.4118 points per minute of runtime for the UD agent and 0.9176 for BOINC, 0.0021 results returned per minute of runtime for UD and 0.0035 for BOINC. I've run BOINC whenever my machine is running as I did for UD and believe I've run my machine just as much over the last five days under BOINC as was typical under UD. However, looking at it in terms of runtime minutes should remove that as a possible factor as well. So I get more points but also return more results (more importantly) using BOINC. To me, that says that there are some inherent differences that make BOINC a more efficient user of your spare CPU cycles (multi-threading is probably the main reason). A few comments: * BOINC reports actual process run time spent processing work. UD reports wall clock time that the process is running. This means that the UD agent will report more time than the BOINC agent. * BOINC points are awarded based upon the average (after throwing out the high and low points) of valid results in the quorum. UD grants points based on individual computers power and run time. The above two comments help show that it is an apples-oranges comparison for the points and any single computer will likely earn a different number of points under one agent versus the other. I strongly suggest that members use whichever agent they find most convenient for them to use. Additionally: The work loaded onto BOINC and UD cannot be predicted in terms of how long each result will take to run. There tends to be differences inside each batch that is loaded so sometimes longer workunits will be run and sometimes shorter workunits will be run. The first couple of batches with BOINC appear to have had more shorter running workunits than average. There should be no particular performance advantage to running either agent (other than that BOINC can run multiple workunits at once if the computer has multiple processors). |
||
|
|
keithhenry
Ace Cruncher Senile old farts of the world ....uh.....uh..... nevermind Joined: Nov 18, 2004 Post Count: 18667 Status: Offline Project Badges:
|
Quite valid points. Given that the UD agent is single-threaded and BOINC is multi-threaded, there is no real apples to apples comparasion possible. For a user trying to decide whether to switch to BOINC or not, they are going to have to work with an apples to oranges comparasion nevertheless. Based on the experiences of others with BOINC as mentioned in the forums and my albeit brief experience, it does appear to me that users with above-benchmark CPU's will tend to be more likely to fare better by switching to BOINC. Yes, that will not always be the case but I suspect one that is true far more often than not. There can well be non-performance related factors that may alter one's decision too. Of course, this and 75 cents will buy you a soda out of the local vending machines.
---------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------- [Edit 1 times, last edit by keithhenry at Jan 25, 2006 1:18:59 AM] |
||
|
|
Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
A point to keep in mind is that BOINC does not use compression, so dialup users would probably prefer the Windows UD client. Except that you have to use UDMon to download multiple work units but you can do this simply by setting your preferences in BOINC. BOINC is very new, and can use SMP and multi-core systems whereas the Windows UD client is resolutely single-threaded. So each system has advantages and drawbacks.
|
||
|
|
|