Hello,
BOINC picks up tasks that have farther deadline instead of ones that have closer deadline.

Shouldn't it be picking up the tasks that have deadline closer to now?
If it picks up tasks that have deadlines farther away from now, even if my host already has been allocated with tasks that have closer deadlines, if tasks with farther deadlines are not completed in time, tasks with closer deadlines will not be picked up at all before deadline.

Then, I think, those will need to be assigned to some other host with extended deadline.

Instead, if BOINC picks up tasks that have closest deadline first, isn't there a greater chance to finish it off and all others in that order without having to abort or re-allocate to another host or extend deadline?

Thanks.

Regards,
Ishan.

Hi Ishan,

BOINC processes work in a First-In, First Out (FIFO) order. That is to say, work downloaded first, regardless of deadline, is processed first. BOINC is designed this way because it needs to be able to process work from a variety of science projects, with varying resource constraints and deadlines, and varying degrees of processing power and different hardware.

BOINC will, however, automatically switch to Earliest Deadline First (EDF) mode if it detects that a workunit is in danger of missing a deadline. Once all workunits approaching their deadline have been processed, it will switch back to FIFO.

In most cases, FIFO works very well and deadlines almost never are in danger of being missed unless a project purposely gives shorter deadlines to monopolize a user's resources or if the machine has been offline for an extended period of time. In the case of the former, I'd say that project should be blacklisted or shamed, and in the case of the latter most users tend to finish processing all work if they know their computer is going to be offline for a while.