BOINC Pentathlon

[crille]

Dear members of AnandTech,

From the 5th to 19th May 2010 SETI.Germany is arranging a completely new competition: the BOINC Pentathlon. This new cross-project competition is inspired by the Pentathlon of the ancient world.

Like in the ancient Greece we'll also perform this BOINC Pentathlon by running 5 different disciplines. This means within 2 weeks the participants will need to crunch 5 different projects, each for 5 days.

Each team that wants to participate in the BOINC Pentathlon needs to sign up here (possible until 1st of May).

More information regarding the BOINC Pentathlon can be found here.

Your participation is very much appreciated.
crille

 

[Assimilator1]

Interesting idea, although somewhat complicated, which projects will be run?
I'm interested in joining in, anyone else?

Btw welcome to the AT forums

 

[Rudy Toody]

Check out this link: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2058584

TAS is voting on whether to join this crunch. Right now it is 6 yes/ 0 no.

 

[Assimilator1]

Ah thx

 

[petrusbroder]

I think that I will join when the time comes.
I am tireing of Seti having trouble and will move more comps to other projects - and racing is fun ...

 

[Ken g6]

It helps that there's no PrimeGrid race that month.

But it does look complicated. Apparently teams will vote on which project to run in each category; then the winning project from each category will be started some time within the two week period.

 

[dajeepster]

I want to vote for aqua, collatz, milkyway, gpugrid... and.. oh what the hell... seti .

aqua, collatz, and milkyway are the main programs that the top crunchers are doing

 

[Ken g6]

All with GPU apps, huh? Do the GPUs really give that much more boost on all those projects?

 

[dajeepster]

All with GPU apps, huh? Do the GPUs really give that much more boost on all those projects?

yeah.. they do.. they run much faster.. I know there's an app for seti that allows you to convert cuda wu to cpu wu units and vice versa... the cuda wu run much faster

I don't know about the aqua units though... i'm just doing straight cpu for those.. the aqua wu from the last week took a long time to do though.. somewhere around a day for my i7.. and I had one wu take 4 days on my q6600.. these wu paid out @47k..

 

[biodoc]

I'm in on this!

 

[crille]

Hi!

A little reminder : The BOINC Pentathlon will start on 05.05.. You'll have to sign up until 01.05.

I hope you'll join the fun like these teams

Best regards from Germany
crille

 

[rabrittain]

Cool!!!

 

[crille]

SETI.Germany continues it's new invented challenge and invites all BOINC-Teams to participate in the 2nd BOINC-Pentathlon, following the ideals of the ancient Pentathlon.

It will start May the 5th 2011 (00:00 UTC) and will end May the 18th 2011 (23:59 UTC).

Like in the ancient Greece, the Pentathlon will be held in 5 disciplines. That means within 14 days the participants will have to crunch 5 different projects, all of them for a period of 5 days. That said, you can easily see that some projects will have to be crunched at the same time.

Each team that would like to participate has to sign up until April the 27th. Like in the last year the favourites in the different disciplines can be chosen by every team on their own. The project that gaines the most voices will be crunched.

A list of the projects that can be chosen from can be found here, but you can also suggest other projects. (But before suggesting other projects, please check if the project and/or their servers would be able to withstand the combined BOINC forces. We do not want to bring any project server down.)

More information can be found here.
Teams can sign up here.

In the last year it was very exciting until the end.

crille
SETI.Germany

 

[biodoc]

I'm up for this!

Anyone else interested?

 

[somethingsketchy]

Just out of curiosity, does all five projects have to share equal time (i.e. one project per three day block of time) or just try and do five projects simultaneously within the 14 day time limit?

I would definitely be up to try something like this.

 

[biodoc]

We would crunch 5 projects over a 14 day time period. Each project has a 5 day crunch period so only points collected during that 5 day period count towards the race total. What makes it interesting and difficult strategy-wise, is that some of the project 5-day periods overlap. Also, some (most) project cpu WUs have quorum's of 2 or 3 so you may have start that project before the start of the 5-day period to get max points. Most GPU projects have a quorum of 1 so you really don't have to start that project until the beginning of the 5-day period.

Please correct me if have some of this wrong

 

[Ken g6]

I'm quite busy lately, but I might throw a few cycles this way. Or I might not.

Two things about this disappoint me. First, there is only one GPU category. I'm not sure which disappoints me more, that they only split GPU computing into a single category or that there are enough non-GPU apps out there that they could make it a single category.

The second thing that disappoints me is the inclusion of Mersenne@home. This project is duplicating the work of the far-more-advanced but non-BOINC GIMPS.

The funny thing about Mersenne@home, though, is that there exists a non-BOINC GPU client for LLR testing, and it's being used (manually) on GIMPS. If it could be adapted to BOINC (and it's doable, I'm sure) Mersenne@home could be a GPU project - even though it would still be doing useless duplicate work.

 

[petrusbroder]

I am in!

 

[bryanW1995]

I'll do it.

 

[crille]

We revised the available projects: Einstein@home is no longer classified as "Physics & Chemistry (CPU)" but as "GPU". Please consider this amendment, when you sign up the team.

crille
SETI.Germany

 

[biodoc]

Thanks for the update crille.

 

[Neurodog]

I'll join in