High Priority tasks taking over
15 Oct 2010 1:23:11 UTC
Topic 195383
(moderation:
I am running various projects on my i7 with all 8 threads running, 2 days cache and an avg of 12 hours per work unit. I have EH set for 10% of my processing time right now. I run this machine darn near 24/7. EH has now locked up all 8 threads with work units due in 14 days, all marked (running, high priority). What the heck? Is this a way that other projects get pushed to the back-burner or what? If this continues I will have to re-think my participation. As of this moment and many more to come it looks like EH is going to steal 100% of my computor time.
Is this a bug? 14 days is plenty of time for my computor to finish these tasks on time. What is EH's time settings before it's task go into high priority?
High Priority tasks taking over
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Hi Dan,
The BOINC client will switch to high priority if it detects a risk that workunits might not be able to finish in time for the deadline. This is a decision that the project has no influence on, it's something the Boinc client does on its own.
But the important thing is that this will not push other projects out of the way in the long run: BOINC has a "debt" system that makes sure that in the long run, the resource share you configured for the projects are observed. So after running E@H in high prio mode to ensure yopu will get credit for all the workunits, BOINC will fetch fewer work for E@H and more for your other projects. While E@H is now using all your cores, you will then see E@H being ignored by your BOINC clients for several days, until the 10% share is reached again. If you want to expedite this process, you can cancel several of the yet uncrunched tasks manually.
This situation is usually caused when BOINC is fetching too many tasks. I run only E@H on several PCs 24/7, and still see ferquently E@H in high prio mode. Note that it is the BOINC client that requests work from the project, not the project pushing/forcing work on the clients.
CU
HB
To check your debt settings
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To check your debt settings go into the Boinc Manager down by the clock and then to the Projects tab, hi-lite Einstein and then click properties to the left. Way down near the bottom under scheduling it will show you some numbers, what are they?
To expand on what Bikeman said...Boinc software is in charge and has some peculiar ways it does things, The individual projects are not responsible for the Boinc you and I use, they are just tweaking the Server side of the software. Some projects tweak a lot, some don't tweak at all, but most projects tweak some. Dr. David Anderson of Seti is responsible for the Boinc software and there is a Boinc alpha mailing list you can subscribe too. Just be aware that this is his baby and he has been working on it from the beginning, so he can be kind of sensitive to people questioning his decisions. He is also a programmer so can be quite technical sometimes in his discussions.
Well it's not an easy job for
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Well it's not an easy job for BOINC.
If we look at Dan's PC (added only recently to E@H), we see that the BOINC benchmark is somewhat too high compared to the per-thread run time of the tasks.
This could be a result of the fact that the i7 will automatically "overclock" itself ("Turbo boost" or whatever) when not fully utilized (Dan's PC's nominal clock rate is "only" 1.6 GHz but in "turbo" mode it is > 2 GHz).
If this happens during the BOINC benchmark run, BOINC will make a too optimistic first guess about the runtime of the tasks...and so BOINC will initially fetch more work than would be wise. Only after completing a few tasks, BOINC will "learn" that it has to make a more conservative assumption on the E@H tasks' runtime, and will fetch work less aggressively .
CU
HB
Thanks for the input.
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Thanks for the input. Patience must be my new virtue with this one by the sound of it. The i7 runs at 1.6ghz for all 4 cores and 8 threads but in turbo mode it shuts down threads and cores (to avoid heat issues) and runs up to 2.8ghz. Not sure if is 1,2 or 3 cores or how many threads it can ramp up to 2.8ghz.