Formula Boinc Sprints 2018

[Orange Kid]

Here is the list for the 2018 FB sprints. I will update and post some stats as we go.
As was last year...24 hours before the start of a sprint the projects identity will be revealed.
So...mark your calendars early.

FormulaBOINC (FB) is a competition for BOINC teams. It is based on the principle of the Formula 1 championship. Starting in 2017, the competition is composed of 2 groups of events:

• Marathons: each project is considered as a "Grand-Prix". The 10 best teams on each project get a fixed number of FB points.
• Sprints: 20 events of 3-days throughout the year, according to the schedule of the Formula 1 championship. Each sprint will involve only one project. The chosen project will only be known 24 hours before the start of the sprint. The top 10 teams on each sprint are given a fixed number of FB points.

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___Sprints___ ​

Season 2018​

• 03/22/2018 13:00 (UTC)(8:00 AM CDT) - 03/25/2018 12:59 (UTC)
  Seti@home..............................Stats
• 04/05/2018 21:00 (UTC)(4:00 PM CDT) - 04/08/2018 20:59 (UTC)
  VGTU@home...........................Stats
• 04/12/2018 16:00 (UTC)(11:00 AM CDT) - 04/15/2018 15:59 (UTC)
  World Community Grid...........Stats
• 04/26/2018 20:00 (UTC)(3:00 PM CDT) - 04/29/2018 19:59 (UTC)
  Amicable Numbers..................Stats
• 05/10/2018 22:00 (UTC)(5:00 PM CDT) - 05/13/2018 21:59 (UTC)
  Moo! Wrapper..........................Stats
• 05/24/2018 22:00 (UTC)(5:00 PM CDT) - 05/27/2018 21:59 (UTC)
  Enigma@home.........................Stats
• 06/08/2018 04:00 (UTC)(06/07/2018 11:00 PM CDT) - 06/11/2018 03:59 (UTC)
  ODLK1...………..………………...Stats
• 06/21/2018 22:00 (UTC)(5:00 PM CDT) - 06/24/2018 21:59 (UTC)
  Asteroids@home.......................Stats
• 06/28/2018 22:00 (UTC)(5:00 PM CDT) - 07/01/2018 21:59 (UTC)
  Rosetta@home..........................Stats
• 07/05/2018 23:00 (UTC)(6:00 PM CDT) - 07/08/2018 22:59 (UTC)
  NFS@home................................Stats
• 07/19/2018 22:00 (UTC)(5:00 PM CDT) - 07/22/2018 21:59 (UTC)
  Cosmology@home....................Stats
• 07/26/2018 22:00 (UTC)(5:00 PM CDT) - 07/29/2018 21:59 (UTC)
  RakeSearch………………………Stats
• 08/23/2018 22:00 (UTC)(5:00 PM CDT) - 08/26/2018 21:59 (UTC)
  Yoyo@home................................Stats
• 08/30/2018 22:00 (UTC)(5:00 PM CDT) - 09/02/2018 21:59 (UTC)
  Milkyway@home........................Stats
• 09/13/2018 16:00 (UTC)(11:00 AM CDT) - 09/16/2018 15:59 (UTC)
  TN-Grid...…………………….…...Stats
• 09/27/2018 21:00 (UTC)(4:00 PM CDT) - 09/30/2018 20:59 (UTC)
  ODLK...…………………………...Stats
• 10/04/2018 15:00 (UTC)(10:00 AM CDT)- 10/07/2018 14:59 (UTC)
  Einstein@home ………………...Stats
• 10/19/2018 05:00 (UTC)(12:00 AM CDT Midnight) - 10/22/2018 04:59 (UTC)
  Universe@Home ……………….Stats
• 10/26/2018 05:00 (UTC)(12:00 AM CDT Midnight) - 10/29/2018 05:59 (UTC)
  NumberFields@home................Stats
• 11/09/2018 02:00 (UTC)(11/08/2018 8:00 PM CST) - 11/12/2018 01:59 (UTC)
  PrimeGrid ……………………….Stats
• 11/22/2018 20:00 (UTC)(2:00 PM CST) - 11/25/2018 19:59 (UTC)
  LHC@home 1.0 ……………….Stats

 

[crashtech]

I know this thread is for Sprints, but I wanted to bump it anyway to say that we are catching up to OcUK in the 2018 Marathon!

http://formula-boinc.org/index.py?lang=en&year=2018

 

[Howdy]

Is there any specific project anyone is directing efforts towards in FB at the moment? Marathon wise..........

 

[Rudy Toody]

Is there any specific project anyone is directing efforts towards in FB at the moment? Marathon wise..........

I know this thread is for Sprints, but I wanted to bump it anyway to say that we are catching up to OcUK in the 2018 Marathon!

See crashtech's post above or the link below.
http://formula-boinc.org/index.py?lang=en&year=2018

 

[Howdy]

See crashtech's post above or the link below.
http://formula-boinc.org/index.py?lang=en&year=2018

Yes, I know about that page. I was curious if anyone was running a specific project.....like WCG or another because there would be a gain in position or points with all of us concentrating on the same said project. Kind of like a group attack/ effort on the single project.............project of the week/ month type deal that other teams have.

 

[TennesseeTony]

Not officially, no, but crashtech has some ideas on the matter, maybe PM him. I'm still finishing up some personal goals at WCG for at least a week, then I'll be free to participate in a group effort.

 

[StefanR5R]

On January 1, Tony wrote in the thread "Formula BOINC-2018 version":

The following is an attempt to transfer our 2017 marathon results over to league one. This will give a brief look into our ranking had we been in league one instead of two, and possibly show us where some strength/weaknesses are.
[...]
80 points just in the Marathon, not counting Sprint points. A lot of concentrated effort on many of the lessor known projects though. And a fairly poor showing on some of our favorites.

I'll have to admit, 80 points is far better than I expected.

Here is a comparison of our current ranking versus Tony's projection of our 2017 results into 2017's first league:

                           current standing    Tony's projection from 2017
                           points  rank        points  rank        
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amicable Numbers           1       10
Asteroids@home             -       24          -       18
BURP                       -       17
Citizen Science Grid       10       5          4        8
Climate Prediction         -       18          -       20
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Collatz Conjecture         -       16          -       14
Cosmology@home             -       14          -       17
DrugDiscovery@home         10       5
Einstein@home              -       14          -       16
Enigma@home                10       5          12       4
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gerasim@home               8        6          -       11
GPUGrid                    -       13          -       14
LHC@home 1.0               -       19          -       21
Milkyway@home              15       3          4        8
MindModeling@home          4        8          6        7
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Moo! Wrapper               1       10          -       12
NFS@home                   -       13          10       5
NumberFields@home          -       21          2        9
ODLK                       -       12
ODLK1                      2        9
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
PrimeGrid                  -       17          -       17
RakeSearch                 -       16
Rosetta@home               -       20          -       21
Seti@home                  -       16          -       15
SRBase                     -       21
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The dDM-Project            15       3          8        6
theSkyNet POGS             -       23          -       17
TN-Grid                    12       4          2        9
Universe@Home              -       12          -       12
VGTU@home                  6        7          10       5
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wanless Mersenne +2        4        8          -       13
World Community Grid       -       12          -       18
XANSONS for COD            12       4
Yafu                       -       15          10       5
Yoyo@home                  -       24          -       13

 

[Rudy Toody]

Yes, I know about that page. I was curious if anyone was running a specific project.....like WCG or another because there would be a gain in position or points with all of us concentrating on the same said project. Kind of like a group attack/ effort on the single project.............project of the week/ month type deal that other teams have.

Sorry, I was thinking that the page where a few of us have adopted ODLK and ODLK1 Latin Squares, was at that link. We are splitting our resources 50/50 for those.

 

[StefanR5R]

I am not planning on marathoning much. I will probably be here for most of the sprints. The little that I will be contributing to marathons outside of the sprints will go mostly into biology/ physics/ astronomy projects, and to a lesser part into mathematics projects. (There are so many of the latter...)

 

[biodoc]

I've settled in on GPUGrid now with all 4 of my GPUs since the work has been pretty steady lately. I set the resource share on Einstein to 0 so I only get work if my GPUs run out of work from GPUGrid. We moved up to 12th place last night (FB) on GPUGrid last night.

 

[StefanR5R]

I ran GPUGrid for a few days this month but then dropped it in favor of projects with better ratio of WU generation to contributors' capacity. Maybe I retry GPUGrid. Temperatures in Germany are just right for this now; wind is blowing from Siberia currently.

To all the marathon runners among us: Good job, we overtook team USA at the last update and are now at rank 9.

 

[ao_ika_red]

Kind of like a group attack/ effort on the single project.............project of the week/ month type deal that other teams have.

Based on my observation after few months with The TeAm, this long "vacation" time means everyone will be back focusing their own preferred project /goal. And as stefan stated, the sprint / challenge that will bring us up together again. That's why there will be a time (like now) when everything become a bit quiet down here. Do please correct me if I'm wrong, though.

Personally I had followed crash' guidance for project of the week. I remember at that time were CSG and moo!wrapper. But unfortunately, I got chickened out when running moo! due to its unique way of utilising Polaris card (it ran way hotter than other project). But, that way I could learn each project's behaviour and I do wish that Crash will resume his suggestion on project of the week / mini sprint.

 

[crashtech]

@ao_ika_red , it's kind of you to wait for my suggestions, but I started to think we are, as a group, rather too independent-minded to follow one user's suggestions. The FB Sprints have a great unifying effect and are coming right up, so it may be best for us to wait for those.

Basically I just look at the weekly stats to see how we are doing, then look at the FB Marathon stats and do a quick cross-correlation between them to see where the most gains might be made. It's very seat-of-the-pants, and I always look for advice from others.

I don't have my notes in front of me where I am, but it seemed that for GPU, a couple that come to mind are Milkyway and Moo!, and for CPU, ODLK1 (latinsquares), VGTU, and TN-Grid, though the former has limited amounts of work.

 

[Howdy]

Like ao_ika_red I was playing follow the leader with crash and GleeM........... although when it seemed like I was on to what they were doing they would switch out to something else LOL So I did the next best thing and ran whatever

Looking forward to some Sprints and some steps up in the FB ranks!

I tried TN-Grid to no avail and moved to WCG instead.

 

[StefanR5R]

I ran GPUGrid for a few days this month but then dropped it in favor of projects with better ratio of WU generation to contributors' capacity. Maybe I retry GPUGrid. Temperatures in Germany are just right for this now; wind is blowing from Siberia currently.

Well, GPUGrid is not good for heating the home. Its GPU utilization isn't very high (on big GPUs at least), which is why I always run 2 tasks per GPU in parallel. But at the same time, GPUGrid's quota of max. 2 tasks in progress per GPU, and the large size of the upload files, and GPUGrid's slow pace of giving new tasks mean that I get idle times quite often. E.g. during the long time that a result is being uploaded, I cannot fetch a new task because I am at the quota limit.

It more and more looks like a project to run in July instead...

 

[GLeeM]

I was playing follow the leader with crash and GleeM

Sorry about that Howdy2u2 (*see below for explanation on why I change projects)
So far this year there are some projects that haven't or rarely have WUs available so I would suggest all FBers set these projects to get WUs so IF or when they become available we will keep or gain points:

Xansons (WUs available about every two weeks, usually on Sunday sometimes Saturday)
Mindmodeling (there were a very few available about a week ago!)
DrugDiscovery
Acoustics
CAS
there might be others?
I run a second instance of boinc with these as the only projects active (except for GoofyNCI) so they get updated more often (I should figure out how to run those update scripts instead, but this sort of works)

*My choices of projects to run is sometimes on a whim but usually makes sense for me.
For the last five or so years, to keep interest in crunching going, I have been moving projects to the next "Main Mega Milestones" (from my Free-DC page). I also run new projects as they start up, usually to 100K milestone or higher if the pay is good. Like GoofyCPU now, the pay is over 25X creditNew, so I'll go to a higher milestone.
But I can only go so long before starting to worry about the projects I was running, that they might END before reaching my next milestone and so go back to them.
After reaching the next milestone, to pick the next project I will consider our FB standing, (but not always).

 

[biodoc]

On GPUGrid, keep in mind that if you complete a WU within 24 hours, you get 50% bonus points. Return the WU within 48 hours and the bonus points drop to 25%. After that, no bonus points.

 

[Howdy]

On GPUGrid, keep in mind that if you complete a WU within 24 hours, you get 50% bonus points. Return the WU within 48 hours and the bonus points drop to 25%. After that, no bonus points.

So have there been any GPU projects as of late for GPUGrid? I have one machine I would like to run GPUGrid on- Only GPU's though since the CPU is a little lacking in abilities. ($/time of return)

 

[biodoc]

So have there been any GPU projects as of late for GPUGrid? I have one machine I would like to run GPUGrid on- Only GPU's though since the CPU is a little lacking in abilities. ($/time of return)

GPU work is not consistent lately so I have Einstein GPU work set at a resource share of "0" so if I get work from GPUGrid, boinc finishes the Einstein WU and then exclusively runs GPUGrid WUs.

GPUGrid WUs also run faster on Linux.

 

[StefanR5R]

During the days when I ran GPUGrid, they did in fact produce GPU work constantly, but slowly. So slowly that you need to begin to request new work in periods of, say, a few minutes, as soon as your host falls below its quota of two tasks per GPU. And you need to keep asking until the host is up to its quota again.

But if you merely rely on the client to ask for new work on its own increasing intervals, then the work will likely be snagged by any of the other of the large number of contributors that GPUGrid currently has.

While this looks as if GPUGrid didn't generate GPU tasks at all, the actual reason is that they have an over-abundant amount of contributed computing power in the moment, in relation to their (slow but constant) rate of work generation.

 

[biodoc]

On GPUGrid I'm also running the CPU quantum chemistry app which is linux only and is a pain to get going initially. Each WU runs on 4 threads and an app_config is needed to control the total number of threads used. It doesn't pay very well but the advantage is each WU is about 1-2 hours long so when finished, boinc request new work for both GPU and CPU tasks. The bottom line is I'm automatically polling for new GPU tasks every 1-2 hours. Normally I would have my CPUs on other projects but the Principal Investigator for the project/lab ask the linux guys to help out on quantum chemistry work so I jumped in.

 

[StefanR5R]

Right; correcting myself: They have more than enough GPU contributors currently, but not enough CPU(&Linux) contributors... Incidentally I have the right kind of hosts, but have other plans for them for now.

 

[Orange Kid]

Just a reminder that the project is announced 24 hours ahead of the start of the sprint.
Bunker, bunker, bunker.

 

[ao_ika_red]

Less than 24 hours before first FB sprint project announcement.
I hope it will be GPU-accelerated project so I don't have to ditch PG altogether.

 

[TennesseeTony]

GPU would be nice, but I'm mostly hoping it just has tasks to run.