David Anderson wrote:
> That's an excellent example;
> it shows that no credit system can satisfy all goals simultaneously.
> Any given system will violate some goals -
> the challenge is to balance the levels of violation
> based on the importance of the goals.
> 
> Currently this is mostly fuzzy and subjective;
> there's no official list of goals,
> and in most cases no tools for measuring the level of violation.

Yes and no...

Yes:

With fuzzy goals then all is indeed fuzzy and open to all manner of 
arguments over that fuzziness and various fuzzy unfairness.

No:

With concrete measurement of what resource is /used/, the awarded credit 
is then awarded according to concrete measurement. No arguments, no 
unfairness.


As to how valuable or useful that resource use has been put to is a 
question for the respective project. That nicely becomes an aspect 
outside of the Boinc framework.


> But the potential exists to make it more clear and objective.

Use clear measurements of what is actually used. "Runtime" is fine for a 
single type of hardware, but that I think has now proved unworkable for 
the wide range of hardware that Boinc now supports.

> This would make a good CS master's thesis topic.

Sooner rather than later?

Note that the divide between GPUs and CPUs will become yet wider and 
more noticeable as more projects support "GPU acceleration".


> Nicolás Alvarez wrote:
>> f...@home's GPU app is 3 times faster than its CPU app.
>> b...@home's GPU app is 4 times faster than its CPU app.

That is no problem if you are measuring what resource units have been 
used. Note that "optimisation" will then become a problem for the 
project for how fast they want their /science/ to be done. The users 
provide the same resource for the project's utilisation regardless. (And 
get the same credits regardless of the application optimisation.)

In other words: We move away from trying to arbitrarily put a "value" on 
a WU and instead reward for the cost of the WU as measured by the 
resources that were used to complete it.

>> How can you satisfy all of these?
>> 1. credits per day in CPU app same for both projects
>> 2. credits per day in GPU app same for both projects
>> 3. within each project, same WU should give same credits no matter the 
>> processor used
>>
>> (Currently, we are completely ignoring #2)

"Credits per day" does not make sense across different hardware with 
very different capabilities and across different projects.


Regards,
Martin

-- 
--------------------
Martin Lomas
m_boincdev ml1 co uk.ddSPAM.dd
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