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David Autumns
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Re: Smaller Work Units

Can anyone beat this 62 Hours of number crunching on an Athlon 64 3500+ and still only 67%?

I make that a 1830 pointer already!!!

Post your record breaking killer WU's here

Dave
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[Dec 5, 2004 2:14:43 PM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
David Autumns
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Re: Smaller Work Units

AARRGGHH

6 hours 23 mins 10 % on a 3200+

The attack of a killer work unit

we all get one in the end
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[Dec 6, 2004 6:16:47 AM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Alther
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Re: Smaller Work Units

You're not doing a full protein per work unit because there are only 30,000 proteins. I think the program is generating a structure and then analysing the position of each amino acid one at a time. Therefore the longer the protein, the longer it takes to finish one iteration of the program. I have no idea however, how that fits into the actual work unit.

You're on the right track.

OK. I'll try to answer most of the questions in this thread.

* We need to calculate thousands of structures for each protein.
* Each workunit contains a full protein sequence.
* Each workunit calculates only a fraction of the total structures necessary.

Thus, the same protein is "split" into some number of workunits. Each calculates n number of structures.

We can make the workunits, on average, take a shorter amount of time by having them each calculate fewer structures. However, there's a tradeoff. We are tuning it. We have to get some measurements back to see what we have.

Also, remember this:
* The time it takes to calculate each structure is non-deterministic. Thus we can't predict how long a workunit will take. Even workunits from the same protein sequence can vary greatly (some taking hours, others days).

* This is a HARD computational problem. That's why we put it on the grid. This is unlike SETI or prior UD projects, and for you veterans of these projects, this project probably seems "strange". With SETI and Cancer the amount of work that had to be done with each workunit was more or less predictable. On this project it is not.

As for how we know how far along the workunit we are, we know how many structures a particular workunit is supposed to calculate. When a structure is complete, we store the results, checkpoint, and increment the progress bar.

Finally, the grid.org workunits are generated exactly the same way ours are.
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Rick Alther
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[Dec 7, 2004 12:55:13 AM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
David Autumns
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Re: Smaller Work Units

Yes

Thanks for the Feedback Alther this is exactly what we've been looking for

I understand the tradeoff's and the requirement for tuning but given that this is just the start of project's on WCG would it be possible to reduce the WU's to about half their current size? This would improve the experience of completing WU something that will be a new one for most. By reducing the time you will improve the feel good factor for the new starters on WCG.

Are there timeouts running on the WU? Are they the same as over on grid.org? If so could this information be posted to the Community Maintained Forum, thanks

I like the work Knreed is doing setting up the new section for Teams

Thanks again

Regards

Dave
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[Dec 7, 2004 3:01:28 AM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Alther
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Re: Smaller Work Units

Yes

Thanks for the Feedback Alther this is exactly what we've been looking for

I understand the tradeoff's and the requirement for tuning but given that this is just the start of project's on WCG would it be possible to reduce the WU's to about half their current size? This would improve the experience of completing WU something that will be a new one for most. By reducing the time you will improve the feel good factor for the new starters on WCG.

Are there timeouts running on the WU? Are they the same as over on grid.org? If so could this information be posted to the Community Maintained Forum, thanks

I like the work Knreed is doing setting up the new section for Teams

Thanks again

Regards

Dave

We are going to reduce the length of time to somewhere between 2/3 and 1/2 of what we are currently doing now. Still working out the numbers. It doesn't affect all workunits the same so it's a bit complex. Also, this change won't happen until the next batch of workunits.

I believe our current timeouts are 2 and 3 weeks for CPU time and wallclock time respectively.
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Rick Alther
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[Dec 7, 2004 6:51:44 AM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
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Re: Smaller Work Units

When referring to "non-deterministic", do you mean stochastic?
[Dec 8, 2004 4:18:31 AM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
David Autumns
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Re: Smaller Work Units

Absolutely

"A property of a computation which may have more than one result."

I'm a big fan of Haphazard myself wink

Dave
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[Dec 8, 2004 7:56:31 AM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
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Re: Smaller Work Units

This fascination with credit and teams and points and all seems rather juvenile to me. As long as I can see that my CPU is making progress on a work unit and my results are being received and registered, i.e. that things are working as expected, I'm happy. The rest is just (increasingly annoying) cheerleading and hand-holding for the insecure.

I urge my fellow worldmates to focus on the goal, rather than the credit.
[Dec 9, 2004 4:55:52 AM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
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Re: Smaller Work Units

I fully agree. The accumulating global points indicate the processing power being allocated to this project. The individual points seem to me irrelevant; so do team results. We should stop focusing on rewards and let our computers get on with their jobs.
[Dec 9, 2004 3:05:43 PM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
David Autumns
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Re: Smaller Work Units

Azkar it looks like this thread hasn't been in vain. We may have seen the back of the Killer WU!

Viktors (Tech) has just posted this in the FAQ's http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread?thread=928

Over the last couple of days the work units seem to be of a more manageable size.

Thanks to everyone in this thread for their input.

Regards
Dave
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[Dec 10, 2004 6:13:59 PM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
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