Hello Community,

I have done a search of the forums but I cannot find threads that directly answer my questions. Most are beyond my current knowledge level. And to be completely honest, I want to be part of this project, but I must limit how much time I set aside to research and educate myself. I apologize if that angers any of you. And I hope some of you will still be open to assisting me either via inserting links to basic discussions or...

1) After reading material in Seti and Boinc's forums, I still do not truly understand the difference between cuda and nvidia tasks. Is there a thread that covers questions? Such as... Why cuda tasks take between 3 to 5 times as long as Nvidia tasks (at least on my computer) even though the file size is the same? What is the difference between the formats? Is it purely related to my computer's processing abilities? How can I force one or the other to make the best use of my computer's spare processing (and related power draw to do those calculations)?

2) I have 53 items In Progress listed on the website. Eight of them are listed in the application. I believe the others are from project resets. Will these 40+ tasks timeout at some point?

3) Stuck Tasks... Is there a way to fix a stuck task without aborting it?

Thank you in advance for you time and assistance.

1. Nvidia and CUDA are essentially the same thing. CUDA tasks can only run on the CUDA cores in Nvidia GPUs.
I think you're wanting to know the difference between CUDA and OpenCL, as that's the other option for tasks done on GPUs.

2. When tasks have met their deadlines and they haven't been returned, they will be sent out to other computers. Once those computers return their results, tasks are validated, credit is doled out and the tasks disappear from your list. That can take two, three months, so be patient.

3. Depends on what you mean by stuck task. Have you tried the Retry Now button in the Transfers tab in Advanced view?

2) I have 53 items In Progress listed on the website. Eight of them are listed in the application. I believe the others are from project resets. Will these 40+ tasks timeout at some point?

If you would like to try to recover those lost tasks (which is considered a Good Thing as it reduces the database overhead) you can find directions of how to do so here.

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1) I can understand your confusion! There are two types of task distributed by SETI@Home "AstroPulse" and "MultiBeam". Each of these has separate applications, some for CPUs, and some for GPUs. CUDA is programming tool developed by nVdia, and the two words are used by some as interchangeable for the same applications. Then there is OpenCL, this is a programming tool that is usable across AMD/ATI, Intel and nVidia GPUs.

2) Well thy may be - or they could be hidden. If you are using the "advanced" view and there is a button to the left of the tasks table showing "Show all tasks", then you are only seeing the currently active tasks, if it says "Show active tasks", then you are seeing all the tasks - the button tells you what will happen when you press it, not the actual state of the display. If you are actually looking at the view that allows you to see all the tasks, and there are only 8 of them, then you only have 8 on that computer. There is a recovery method, but it doesn't always work and does require some very accurate timing on your behalf.

3) Stuck tasks - it all depends on what you mean by stuck tasks as different people mean different things. If a task is stuck during processing sometimes shutting BOINC down completely (not just closing the window) and restarting will clear them, otherwise one just has to wait. If stuck while downloading or uploading then using the reset button as Jord says normally works (but you might have to try a few times).

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?