Hi Graham

It will be as a result of knreeds new "Only send out 3 WU's if we can get away with it" policy which should improve the grids efficiency as we move forward to yet more projects to crunch.

If someone doesn't return a WU because its the weekend or they simply don't spend as much time as we do crunching away the WCG server will only then once some timer has expired send out a 4th WU which you will then have to wait to get crunched and that result returned (or a 5th or a 6th etc) This will improve the efficiency of the grid but more pending validations will stack up particularly at the weekend.

It probably hasn't been help by the outage today see

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread?thread=7364

All the best
Dave

Just one last thing (My Thanks go to Columbo)

We've had a batch of 10 hours+ WU's come through which will stall the quorum process instead of the almost instant quorum with the 1 1/2 hour WU's

(Exit stage left)

Dave

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Date....................Runtime...................Daily Points.......Daily Results.........Place
05/21/2006..... 0:270:03:59:05.......... 198,120................ 648................. #11
05/20/2006..... 0:276:15:56:52.......... 200,169................ 724................. #11
05/19/2006..... 0:305:06:40:55.......... 218,921................ 841................. #12
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(Stats-Image Generator by WCG Member Börni)

Morning Windflowers

To make sure the results of our crunching are absolutely reliable and accurate a work unit is sent out to a number of users to crunch. A result is deemed valid once at least 3 PC's arrive at the same answer after all their hard work.

This has always been the case as this is medical science the accuracy of the results is a tad important.

Previously on BOINC 4 work units were sent out initially running on 4 computers but only 3 are needed for the so called quorum. So one PC was effectively wasting it's time, but not really, because a WU might get allocated to someone who crunches once a blue moon and so they never return a result.

We now have plenty of work queuing up to use the WCG resource and so knreed is trialling a lean and mean alternative of only sending work units out to 3 pc's initially (instead of 4) and only sending out a 4th WU if there isn't a suitably quick response from the first 3.

The conditions out there for a work unit are still the same so it is more likely that 2 out of the 3 WU will be returned and you are waiting for the 3rd (previously you would have had 2 chances to get the third result - now only one)

so the upshot of all of this is that you are likely to have more pending validations than before but the big plus is we get more effective use of the 50,000+ PC's crunching out there for the full 24 each day.


Hope this is clear

Dave

Mr. Autumns. Thank you very much for that explanation. I guess you learn something new everyday.