I know the real place for this is in the Wish List but there is more likely to be a discussion and exchange of ideas here.

With Seti Classic finishing in the not too distant future and the likelihood that there will not be enough Seti WU’s to keep everyone going all the time with the increase in Seti Boinc participants. I believe that being able to set projects as backup projects would be a good idea as not everyone wants to run multiple projects or has a computer that is capable of running multiple projects. I would not think that adding this feature to Boinc 4.57 would be a big change with the features that it already has. When there is the likelihood that the computer will run out of work Boinc should download about one day’s worth of work form a backup project. When work from the primary project is then downloaded Boinc would switch back and forth between the projects WU’s until all of backup projects WU’s are finished. It should be possible to have multiple backup projects, I can think of three different ways that Boinc would select which backup project to try to download WU’s from first. 1) A completely random selection. 2) In rotation. 3) In the order set by the participant.

I realise that this would be more of a benefit to people with a permanent Internet connection. I feel that anything that makes Boinc more user friendly or gives the user more control of how their computer is used can only be a good thing for all of the Boinc projects now and in the future.

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Anthony

There are already several other BOINC projects available. Just set their priorities to a very low setting so that u get minimal work, until you run out of SETI WU's and then u will automatically get work from your "backups".

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Kolch - Crunching for the BOINC@Australia team since July 2004.
Search for your own intelligence...

My personal take on this is that you should always have at least 2 and preferrably 3 or more projects. My only caveat here is that the no connect / no work messages are a pain in the seat of the pants.

With SETI@Home and Climateprediction running I have never run dry yet. Though I am looking forward to LHC@Home, Einstein@Home, etc. to come out of hibernation (Predictor@Home is sort-of live again) ...

One other side note is that Astropulse is supposed to come out "real soon now" (as a famous author used to say ...). When that does come on-line we will see longer processing times on larger work units ...

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All very good points Paul.

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Kolch - Crunching for the BOINC@Australia team since July 2004.
Search for your own intelligence...

> All very good points Paul.

I got a million ... :)

Your Mileage may vary ... :)

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> There are already several other BOINC projects available. Just set their
> priorities to a very low setting so that u get minimal work, until you run out
> of SETI WU's and then u will automatically get work from your "backups".
>

The problem with this is that if you only want to run one project you are taking CPU time away from the main project and the WU’s projects with very low priorities may run out of time.

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Anthony

> The problem with this is that if you only want to run one project you are
> taking CPU time away from the main project and the WU’s projects with very low
> priorities may run out of time.

The processing time for a CPDN work unit is about a year. And it uses "Trickles" so you get instant gratification in the credit department.

If you do a 10% / 90% resource share, you will have one project dominating.

I do grant the point that if you really, really, really only want to do one project that you will lose some cycles with the sharing. However, and this is *MY* opinion only, that most people want to contribute to science in general. SETI@Home has gotten the lions share mostly because it is, and has been, the most stable project.

Now with the potential of multiple projects, even if you are only interested in space related projects, that still leaves you with SETI@Home, Astropuls, and Einstein@Home (I also grant that these are not on-line yet).

We would problably need to poink the stat sites to have them do a crunch to see how many people are doing what number of projects to prove this out ...

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> The processing time for a CPDN work unit is about a year. And it uses
> "Trickles" so you get instant gratification in the credit department.
>
> If you do a 10% / 90% resource share, you will have one project dominating.

But the real goal should always be to complete the WU’s. There is a lot of people out there (some with good computers) that would not even be able to complete a single WU of CPDN (even running it as the only project) as their computer is not on for long enough. Running multiple projects (even with short running WU’s) could cause the WU’s to run out of time. As I said at the start backup projects would make Boinc more user friendly and give the user more control of how their computer is used.

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Anthony

> But the real goal should always be to complete the WU’s. There is a lot of
> people out there (some with good computers) that would not even be able to
> complete a single WU of CPDN (even running it as the only project) as their
> computer is not on for long enough. Running multiple projects (even with short
> running WU’s) could cause the WU’s to run out of time. As I said at the start
> backup projects would make Boinc more user friendly and give the user more
> control of how their computer is used.

Well, the broader point I was trying to make is that this feature already exists through the use of Resource Share, and though I used the example of CPDN, if you are concerned about the length of CPDN work, you can always go to LHC@Home and Predictor@Home, projects which, when operating, have Work Unit processing times comparable to SETI@Home. With a 90/10 split, which I have used (when Predictor@Home first came online) it does work reasonably well.

I guess we just are not going to agree ... :)

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> > But the real goal should always be to complete the WU’s. There is a lot
> of
> > people out there (some with good computers) that would not even be able
> to
> > complete a single WU of CPDN (even running it as the only project) as
> their
> > computer is not on for long enough. Running multiple projects (even with
> short
> > running WU’s) could cause the WU’s to run out of time. As I said at the
> start
> > backup projects would make Boinc more user friendly and give the user
> more
> > control of how their computer is used.
>
> Well, the broader point I was trying to make is that this feature already
> exists through the use of Resource Share, and though I used the example of
> CPDN, if you are concerned about the length of CPDN work, you can always go to
> LHC@Home and Predictor@Home, projects which, when operating, have Work Unit
> processing times comparable to SETI@Home. With a 90/10 split, which I
> have used (when Predictor@Home first came online) it does work
> reasonably well.
>
> I guess we just are not going to agree ... :)
>
Actually, it doesn't really exist as it stands. Now if the CPU scheduler took into account deadlines, and overrode the resource share to get a WU done on time, I would agree that you could set up a system where a project would only get work (other than the first WU) when the primary was offline. As it stands, the secondary project will crunch, taking CPU time (some anyway) for no purpose at all. However, that said, I do not use BOINC this way, I have the projects set to a more equal basis.

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BOINC WIKI

John,

> Actually, it doesn't really exist as it stands. Now if the CPU scheduler took
> into account deadlines, and overrode the resource share to get a WU done on
> time, I would agree that you could set up a system where a project would only
> get work (other than the first WU) when the primary was offline. As it
> stands, the secondary project will crunch, taking CPU time (some anyway) for
> no purpose at all. However, that said, I do not use BOINC this way, I have
> the projects set to a more equal basis.

Drat!

Ok, what John said ...

BTW, is that your family tartan?

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I was also thinking, with regard to people only wanting to do one project. That someone who has lost a loved one to a medical condition and there being a Boinc project for that condition might want to give as much of their computers time as possible to that project. I agree that someone that has a pure science project like Seti as their main project would be more likely to be willing to have multiple projects of various sorts running. As I said in my first post I feel backup projects would give people greater control of how their computer is used.

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Anthony

> John,
>
> BTW, is that your family tartan?
>
Yes. I asked CA to do an Angus Bull Face for me. Even more obscure McLeod reference.

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BOINC WIKI