Can someone game the BOINC software and/ or misrepresent the cpu reporting?

Message boards : Number crunching : Can someone game the BOINC software and/ or misrepresent the cpu reporting?

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muddocktor

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Message 71206 - Posted: 7 Sep 2011, 1:23:51 UTC

I noticed a very strange anomaly with one of the top producers of this project that prompted this thread. This person has 30+ computers now active and quite a few of them are showing 5000+ RAC. But according to the cpu type being reported to the project, they are T7700 Intel procs and that kind of RAC from that dual core proc is simply impossible. To make that kind of RAC, you are going to need some kind of quad core i5 or i7 Intel processor, and overclocked at that. As far as what is being reported as an OS, it is listed as "Linux 2.6.35-22-virtual". My question is this: Is this virtual Linux OS misreporting the cpu? Or some other weird anomaly due to the virtual Linux OS?

BTW, I have a pretty good idea of what a T7700 proc should be producing, since I crunch on a Mac Mini that I upgraded to a T7600, which is a 2.33 GHz proc and I also crunch on my laptop, which has a T9600 proc at 2.8 GHz. The T9600 on a good day might get around 1100 RAC and the T7600 hovers between 800-900 RAC.

Also, could it possibly be someone found a way to game the credit system?
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Mod.Sense
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Message 71207 - Posted: 7 Sep 2011, 2:47:24 UTC

The way credit works on Rosetta, any attempts to trick the system into granting you lots of credit just results in you getting the same credit that others working on other models for the same type of work were getting, and the false claim results in a tiny distortion to the average that rolls forward and benefits those that follow the falsely inflated claim. So, in a word, no, on Rosetta (specifically because of the way credit is handled here) you can presume with high confidence that the machine you describe is actually producing massive amounts of meaningful results.

So I conclude that the virtualization isn't reporting all of the facts the way a standard machine would. Put another way, between CPU type and RAC, I would say the value shown for CPU is the part that is not what it appears to be.
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HiFiTubeGuy
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Message 71208 - Posted: 7 Sep 2011, 4:30:55 UTC

Possibly he's set up PVM's (Parallel Virtual Machines)?; connecting say, 4 T7700 machines together to act as one 8-core 'supercomputer'? I notice that his Computer Summary shows 8 cores for his 'dual core' machines.
Check this article about PVM: Building A Linux Supercomputer
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Profile dcdc

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Message 71209 - Posted: 7 Sep 2011, 9:45:25 UTC - in response to Message 71206.  
Last modified: 7 Sep 2011, 9:47:10 UTC

I just had a quick look and it reports dual core but also states 8 cores for each, so it looks like it's just misreporting the CPU type to BOINC. Also, it belongs to http://www.alcf.anl.gov/ so they've probably got a fair bit of CPU power available! Good to see them putting it to good use when in-between other projects :)

EDIT: I'd changed the sort-order on the threads by accident so i read this thread backwards and now see it's already been answered! Makes more sense when I read it first to last...
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muddocktor

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Message 71231 - Posted: 9 Sep 2011, 6:47:39 UTC

Thanks for the answers you all. That makes much more sense now, even though that is beyond my capabilities. I bet you could get some people scratching their heads if you did this with a cluster of around 4 2600k machines though. That would show up as a 2600k processor making around 24-25k RAC. ;)
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HiFiTubeGuy
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Message 71281 - Posted: 16 Sep 2011, 22:43:45 UTC - in response to Message 71231.  

Thanks for the answers you all. That makes much more sense now, even though that is beyond my capabilities. I bet you could get some people scratching their heads if you did this with a cluster of around 4 2600k machines though. That would show up as a 2600k processor making around 24-25k RAC. ;)


Yeah, heh heh, a '32 core' i7 2600k would be SWEET! I wish I had the money to set up such a thing!

With winter coming on, it would sure help to take a load off of the furnace too! :D

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Message boards : Number crunching : Can someone game the BOINC software and/ or misrepresent the cpu reporting?



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