News

Should the fixed credits be higher?

I have had a couple people mention that the fixed credits should be higher. I tried to set the credits to be in line with the cobblestone definition, but it's possible I missed the mark.



I will wait for feedback before making any changes. Please share your credit opinions.

17 Jun 2020, 18:21:19 UTC · Discuss



Expired SSL certificates in BOINC Client -- User Action Required

This was discussed in another thread, and it just occurred to me I should post a news item with more explicit instructions.



The issue is that the BOINC client comes bundled with SSL certificates and these expired earlier today. Here are the basic steps to fix the problem. (Note: this works on linux and I see no reason why it shouldn't work on Windows too.)

1. Download the new "ca-bundle.crt" file from here:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AsVDg7OAm7-whqEqBXKHuOie0UoBKA?e=VHwBAP

2. Replace the old ca-bundle.crt file with the new one (it should be in your BOINC root directory).

31 May 2020, 5:27:43 UTC · Discuss



Moving to fixed credit

I have replaced CreditNew (or CreditScrew as some like to call it) with a fixed credit system.



The fixed value is based on the average runtime from many samples from a single machine in a well controlled environment (one of my own computers). Obviously, the fixed value will change with each batch, since each batch has a different average runtime.



This should be a pretty fair system, especially after a host has processed enough WUs for the average to kick in. The main downside is the potential for cherry pickers - hopefully there won't be too many of them.

23 May 2020, 0:10:28 UTC · Discuss



Not enough available work

There are reports of not enough available WUs.



I believe this is caused by the "accelerated retries" mechanism. So I have temporarily disabled this feature.



This mechanism normally works very well, but I think the current Pentathlon is pushing it to the limit. In particular, if too many WUs are being aborted, then the work queue is flooded with "failed" jobs that now have a higher priority, and these jobs require a "reliable host". To make things worse, any host aborting too many jobs is flagged as unreliable, so won't be given any of these tasks.

11 May 2020, 6:39:44 UTC · Discuss



2019 Year in Review

So another year has come and gone. It has been a very productive year. Here are the highlights:

1. The results for the septic search, which were completed in 2018, were accepted and published in The Journal of Number Theory.

2. A GPU app was developed for the decic search. Versions were eventually introduced for both Nvidia and AMD cards, and for both the Linux and Windows Platforms. During development, I discovered an opportunity for optimizing the CPU version which was subsequently implemented.

3. The decic app completed the search over ℚ(√-5) (subfield 5).

4. The decic app completed the search over ℚ(√-2) (subfield 4).

5. Searches were completed over the lower discriminant bounds for subfields 6 and 7.

6. The search over ℚ(√2) (subfield 3) progressed further into the higher tiers. We now only have 3 more tiers to go in that search.



Thanks everyone and have a wonderful New Year!

1 Jan 2020, 22:30:05 UTC · Discuss



News is available as an RSS feed