BOINC Pentathlon 2022

[Orange Kid]

1. Obstacle Run (14 days) Universe@Home 1st Place and the GOLD MEDAL
2. Sprint (3 days) SRBase 1st Place and the GOLD MEDAL
3. City Run (5 days) Einstein 1st Place and the GOLD MEDAL
4. Cross Country (5 days) PrimeGrid 1st Place and the GOLD MEDAL
5. Javelin Throw (5 x 1 day, third best daily score counts) NumberFields@home 1st and the GOLD MEDAL

Project

May 5

May 6

May 7

May 8

May 9

May 10

May 11

May 12

May 13

May 14

May 15

May 16

May 17

May 18

Final

Obstacle Run

200%

150%

100%

Sprint

City Run

Cross Country

Javelin Throw

Looks to be some changes for this year.

1. New discipline: Obstacle Run. Three obstacles of one day each have to be crossed on this year's Marathon track. At each obstacle, each team gets a bonus of 100%, 150%, or 200% of the credits it scored on the day in this discipline's stats. The obstacles and the bonus are announced at the beginning of the respective day. The project for the Obstacle Run is announced three days prior to the start.
2. The days of Javelin Throw can now also be announced at 06:00 UTC, 12:00 UTC, or 18:00 UTC on the third day prior to the start.

The BOINC Pentathlon starts on 05 May 2022, 00:00 UTC, and ends on 19 May 2022, 00:00 UTC. So, it will run for exactly 14 days.

No team will know the complete Pentathlon schedule right from the beginning! The exact time and the project for each discipline are announced on the main page and via Blog (Feed ). This announcement happens on the fifth day prior to the start for the City Run or the Cross Country, and on the third day prior to the start for all other disciplines. Each day of Javelin Throw is announced on the third day prior to the start. While all disciplines start and end at 00:00 UTC, the projects may be announced at different times (00:00 UTC, 06:00 UTC, 12:00 UTC, 18:00 UTC) to avoid that some teams are always surprised in their sleep. The obstacles at the Obstacle Run are announced at the beginning of the respective day.

The disciplines differ in runtime and possible projects. For example, the Obstacle Run takes place during the whole Pentathlon, while the Sprint lasts only three days. Hence, at any time at least one discipline will run, but often different disciplines will run simultaneously.


The BOINC Pentathlon consists of 5 disciplines:

1. Obstacle Run (14 days, with bonus credits on 3 one-day obstacles)
2. Sprint (3 days)
3. City Run (5 days)
4. Cross Country (5 days)
5. Javelin Throw (5 x 1 day, only each team's third best daily score counts)

To make the Pentathlon as exciting and trouble-free as possible while at the same time maintaining a maximum of flexibility, all five projects are chosen by a small group of the organizers this year.



Projects are not eligible if they

• cannot provide a sufficient supply of work units*
• do not support at least Windows and Linux
• provide non-CPU-intensive (NCI) applications
• are test-only projects
• do not allow the creation of new accounts
• do not support WebRPC

*: Because of the way a BOINC server works, even a project with a generally stable supply of work units can sporadically be out of work if too many computers request work units at the same time.

 

[Skillz]

The team has a Discord server now as well: https://discord.gg/E5z65jR5Ka

Feel free to join. Let me know when you do, so I can give you special TAAT permissions.

 

[Endgame124]

The team has a Discord server now as well: https://discord.gg/E5z65jR5Ka

Feel free to join. Let me know when you do, so I can give you special TAAT permissions.

I joined

 

[biodoc]

The obstacle run makes the pentathlon more interesting and frustrating at the same time. Good idea though.

 

[burninatortech4]

The team has a Discord server now as well: https://discord.gg/E5z65jR5Ka

Feel free to join. Let me know when you do, so I can give you special TAAT permissions.

Looking forward to talking shop in real time!

 

[Orange Kid]

Someone from TAC needs to sign us up please. 🙂

 

[voodoo5_6k]

Oh well, this might be pulling me out of hibernation for the duration of the event... The last time was really exciting

Just hoping for a medical project...

 

[cellarnoise]

Who is on the TAC anyway? I read a year or two back about the TAC, but are there still multiple members?

Voodoo!, all hands on deck or the puters in this case!

 

[cellarnoise]

Found this latest thread on this sub-forum. All the good stuff likely was handled behind the scenes for competitive reasons?

I don't really have a reason to know (Need to Know), as long as the TAC position(s) are filled

Carry on!!!! TAC member escpecially! (SP)....

 

[Ken g6]

Someone from TAC needs to sign us up please. 🙂

I did. I'm pretty busy buying a house right now, though. It would be nice to get @StefanR5R onboard with TAC. If you'll PM me your email, Stefan, I can send you the keys.

 

[Orange Kid]

Thanks Ken

 

[Skillz]

The 2 week long Obstacle Run (Previously known as the Marathon) has been announced.

Universe@home was chosen.

 

[Orange Kid]

Universe@Home has been chosen for the Obstacle Run

beaten by Skillz

 

[voodoo5_6k]

Alrighty then, you've pulled me back in My rig's back online now, crunching Universe@home plus F@H to keep the GPU warm

 

[StefanR5R]

Universe@home's active application, BHspin v2, has got 14 days deadline for reporting the results.

Obstacle Run. Three obstacles of one day each have to be crossed on this year's Marathon track. At each obstacle, each team gets a bonus of 100%, 150%, or 200% of the credits it scored on the day in this discipline's stats. The obstacles and the bonus are announced at the beginning of the respective day.

Hence we should retain results for when these three days happen, especially the +200% day.

Not too many people have performed weeks-long bunkering before. (I routinely do it in the WCG Birthday challenge. And e.g. TSBT routinely build bunkers, which are possibly as deep as the reporting deadline, before each Formula Boinc sprint.) By the replacement of Marathon by Obstacle Run, are the Pentathlon organizers trying to popularize this sport?

 

[Orange Kid]

"By the replacement of Marathon by Obstacle Run, are the Pentathlon organizers trying to popularize this sport?"

Possibly, but we do not know what the Obstacle will consist of.
Should probably hold our water should this be the case though. 🤔 🙂

 

[Skillz]

The obstacle will just be three days of 2x, 2.5x or 3x points. The announcement of such days called bonus days will happen at the beginning of said bonus day.

What isn't clear is if it'll be one 100%, 150% and 200% or could there be two or even three of any one of them.

 

[pututu]

The obstacle will just be three days of 2x, 2.5x or 3x points. The announcement of such days called bonus days will happen at the beginning of said bonus day.

What isn't clear is if it'll be one 100%, 150% and 200% or could there be two or even three of any one of them.

According to pschoefer, the same bonus percentage can be used more than once. https://www.seti-germany.de/forum/threads/9747-BOINC-Pentathlon-2022?p=340243&viewfull=1#post340243.

Here is one example of such scenario. Maybe they will announced the bonus on the last three days and those who bunker early (outside the 14-day task deadline) will likely not get the bonus.

 

[StefanR5R]

Best chances for a good bonus will be for those who operate many ~1 day deep bunkers in succession, not few but big bunkers which take several days to compute.

I at least feel a little unprepared for what's ahead.

This very scenario was the main thing which I wanted to prepare for. I already have well working automation from the most recent WCG B'day, but I wanted to make it all even easier for me (and perhaps others).

 

[Skillz]

According to pschoefer, the same bonus percentage can be used more than once. https://www.seti-germany.de/forum/threads/9747-BOINC-Pentathlon-2022?p=340243&viewfull=1#post340243.

Here is one example of such scenario. Maybe they will announced the bonus on the last three days and those who bunker early (outside the 14-day task deadline) will likely not get the bonus.
View attachment 60959

If that's the case then their is a chance that the 3x or 2.5x days never happen and it's only 2x days.

I suspect they will pick dates that will interfere with other discipline bunkering days. Forcing people to focus on the Obstacle (Marathon) instead of bunkering for those events.

Such as having two javelin throws back-to-back and a bonus day on one of them.

 

[StefanR5R]

As an afterthought to #19: The requirement that the wingmen are dutifully reporting their results on the same day or earlier adds some complexity to the question of the optimum tactics, which I haven't thought quite through yet. But it looks like many small buffers, each one fetched as early as possible but with no more work than for one day of computation per buffer still looks best in this light, doesn't it?

 

[StefanR5R]

Possibly, but we do not know what the Obstacle will consist of.

Since this is Universe@home: The obstacle will be the server struggling with file uploads on the obstacle days.

(Therefore, download and upload early, but report late.)

 

[Rattledagger]

Best chances for a good bonus will be for those who operate many ~1 day deep bunkers in succession, not few but big bunkers which take several days to compute.

Hmm, I can't see any linked guides for creating a second bunker, let alone creating 14 different bunkers...
Besides, if creating separate bunkers somehow includes running multiple BOINC-instances, would guess trying to keep track of 14 different instances would very quickly get really messy, with huge chances of making mistakes, especially for everyone that has more than a single computer to baby-sit.

Since I've zero idea about Universe@home, some information about memory-requirements, run-times etc. would be much more interesting than how to create 14 separate bunkers.
Also, since Linux computers based on status-page have the highest production, does this mean using Windows is hopelessly inefficient and basically a waste of time?

 

[Skillz]

Hmm, I can't see any linked guides for creating a second bunker, let alone creating 14 different bunkers...
Besides, if creating separate bunkers somehow includes running multiple BOINC-instances, would guess trying to keep track of 14 different instances would very quickly get really messy, with huge chances of making mistakes, especially for everyone that has more than a single computer to baby-sit.

Since I've zero idea about Universe@home, some information about memory-requirements, run-times etc. would be much more interesting than how to create 14 separate bunkers.
Also, since Linux computers based on status-page have the highest production, does this mean using Windows is hopelessly inefficient and basically a waste of time?

Bunkering isn't a requirement. This starts May 4th at 8PM EDT. You can just run wide open if you do not wish to bunker, that's perfectly fine.

Universe@home has very low memory requirements. I'm running 32 tasks on a 5950x and total system memory usage is hoovering around 9GB.
Run-times vary a good bit; most fast CPUs can complete the tasks in under an hour, some slower computer might take 2 or 3 hours to finish a task.
Linux does complete the Universe@home work faster, but it's not necessarily a waste of time to run on Windows. I've got a bunch of Windows hosts running the tasks. Some members here have Linux running in WSL to get the Linux speed benefit.


Just running what ya have is enough to help the team.

 

[Ken g6]

Maybe they will announced the bonus on the last three days and those who bunker early (outside the 14-day task deadline) will likely not get the bonus.

Maybe they'll do the first obstacle at 150%, the second and third at 100%, and never do a 200%! That would certainly throw a wrench in the plans of almost everybody bunkering.

Edit: As I now see @Skillz said.