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Linux
Points Calculation |
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- I have completed a result, but I have not yet
received credit for it. What is going on?
- What is validation?
- How are points calculated for the Linux agent?
- Why does my Linux agent show different points
then the web site?
I have completed a
result, but I have not yet received credit for it. What is going
on?
BOINC does not award credit to users
until the work they have performed has been successfully
validated. This means that users may experience a delay in being
granted credit while BOINC waits for enough results to be returned
in order to perform validation.
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What is validation?
World Community Grid is a public
distributed computing project. This means that work is being sent
to computers that are outside the control of World Community Grid.
Most computers that perform this work are reliable. However, there
are a few computers that are not reliable due to things such as
users over-clocking their machines, memory errors, disk errors,
CPU errors or viruses being present on the machine. This means
that the results returned need to be validated to make sure that
they represent the correct answer. We have configured BOINC so
that the results from at least four computers calculate the same
result before it is accepted as the correct result. This ensures
the integrity of the data returned to the scientists.
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How are points
calculated for the Linux agent?
The Linux agent is using BOINC. BOINC
points are calculated in a two-step process. First, the points
(also called credit) claimed by a host are determined. BOINC
points are calculated based on a benchmark that is run
periodically by the BOINC client. This benchmark is then run
through a calculation that determines how much credit per second
of run time that device should earn. More information about that
formula is available at the following sites: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/credit.php
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOINC_Credit_System#Cobblestones
Second, once validation has been completed, BOINC gives the same
credit for a result to every device that worked on the same work
unit. BOINC calculates how much credit this should be by taking
the claimed credit for each result that was determined to be
valid, eliminating the low and high values and then averaging the
rest.
This process eliminates the ability for malicious users to
artificially claim higher points for their work.
Why does my Linux agent
show different points then the web site?
The Linux agent, which is using BOINC,
and the Windows agent, which is using the UD software, compute
points differently. In particular, BOINC points are much lower
then UD points. As a result, World Community Grid multiplies the
points granted to a user for a result by 7 when the statistics are
imported into World Community Grid’s web site. The BOINC client
is not aware of this multiplication, and it thus reports the
points that were granted by BOINC.
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