BOINC credit/points explained

For those of you who are new to WCG and use of the BOINC client, here's an explanation of how credit/points are awarded.

Quorum system

BOINC uses what is referred to as the quorum system. For WCG projects, all of members of the quorum have to complete the same work unit before that WU is validated and credit is awarded. This is to ensure that the WU has undergone enough processing to satisfy the scientists. The size of the quorum varies, depending on the project.

Below is an example of a validated WU. The "granted credit" is calculated by taking the average of the claimed credit results. This explains why your granted credit may be higher or lower than your claimed credit. Your result is the one that's highlighted (see below).

Update: Now that FAAH uses a quorum of 2, granted credit is awarded two ways. The standard BOINC practice is to award the lower of the two claimed credits. If the two claimed credits are similar, then the granted credit will be an average of the two, which was the way credit was awarded when the FAAH quorum was made up of 3 hosts.

Validation time

There are various reasons why your finished WU may be taking a long time (days) to be validated. Even if, for example, it took you only three hours to complete a work unit, it may take another member of the quorum 10 hours or more to finish the same WU. Also, if one of the other quorum members has an error in his/her WU or does not finish it, then another member is recruited to crunch that work unit.

Calculating points

The credit system is based on the power of your computer and the amount of time it takes to finish a WU. Your machine is measured against a so-called "reference computer" that scores 1,000 in both the Whetstone and Dhrystone CPU benchmarks. As most of you know, you can run those benchmarks using the BOINC manager. Just go to Advanced, and then Run CPU Benchmark. The results will appear under the Messages tab. The CPU benchmark is run automatically and periodically on your BOINC installation to determine your machine's processing power at a given time.

The formula used for calculating claimed credit is:

([whetstone]+ [dhrystone])/1000 * 100 / (2 X secs_per_day) * wu_cpu_time

Or:

([whetstone]+ [drystone]) * wu_cpu_time / 1728000

wu_cpu_time is the number of seconds taken to process a work unit.

If you want to learn more about how BOINC points are calculated, check out the BOINC Wiki.

http://boinc-wiki.ath.cx/index.php?t...NC_FAQ:_Credit

Nice thread:cool:

thanks Sierra. that explains a lot for those new people. ;)

Sticky it!!!

Now I get it thanks!

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Originally Posted by Reinvented

thanks Sierra. that explains a lot for those new people. ;)

Sticky it!!!

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Done and agreed, nice thread. Thanks Sierra_bound!:clap:

What I'm curious about/tend to feel about the benchmarking process is that it no longer seems to matter what our benches are. High or Low, or right in the middle. Of course if everyone had higher benches; if the quorum, for any given WU, was higher due, to all participants in the quorum scoring higher then it would matter.

So I just try to get the machine to run as fast as possible, stabile, so as to go through as many WUs as possible. And benchmark be damned. I barely even look at it anymore.

Am I wrong, or am I missing something here. In regards to the benchmark.

edit - If you'd like me to delete this, so as to unclutter a good and simple explanation/info post I will. Just let me know.

Thanks guys :)

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Originally Posted by [XC] serlv

What I'm curious about/tend to feel about the benchmarking process is that it no longer seems to matter what our benches are. High or Low, or right in the middle. Of course if everyone had higher benches; if the quorum, for any given WU, was higher due, to all participants in the quorum then it would matter.

So I just try to get the machine to run as fast as possible, stabile, so as to go through as many WUs as possible. And benchmark be damned. I barely even look at it anymore.

Am I wrong, or am I missing something here. In regards to the benchmark.

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I think you're right to a certain extent. You are somewhat at the mercy of the other participants in the quorum. But those other members can work in your favor too. I recently had claimed credit of around 70 on one WU, but ended up with 100 granted points.

That is nice when that does happen.

I'm just leary of ever having a WU points beng declared invalid, getting half credit, due to being an "outlier". I don't ever want to go back to that. So I just tend to not even look at the benches anymore, or try to rebench.

Thanks for the explanation, though. I was curious, too. Just never bothered to find out. Good info!

Did WCG ever define what qualifies as an outlier? I remember there was a lengthy discussion by members here about this.

For those not familiar with what serlv is referring to, toward the end of last year, WCG implemented a new scoring system aimed at cutting down on cheating and the use of optimized clients. Basically any scores that appeared to be statistical outliers would be thrown out. There were fears that those with really fast machines would be punished as well. To be honest, I have not seen any widespread evidence of this.

No. The admins of WCG have not officially disclosed what the rules of their system are. But as you may recall, have been looking into it last December. And AFAIK, they have not changed the rules. From my understanding, this is how it looks so far from examples of quorums in my AMD results:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...1&d=1166631819

Notes:

Underclaiming: (examples 1-2) Occurs when Boinc occasionally under-benches. My understanding is that this problem is limited to C2D at the moment. Happened to me multiple times. In this case, the system comes to your rescue. The WUs are excluded from quorum and awarded the average of the other two. So no harm done to you.

normal: (examples 3-7) All WUs are claiming within a tight range. All awarded average. After the initial settling phase in late November, this is currently typical of the vast majority of the WUs.

Overclaiming: (examples 8-13) May occur if both other quorum members are running under-benched systems. Specifically their average claim must be below 73% of normal for this rule to incorrectly trigger againest your claim. Although it is possible, the probability of this is very low indead. So far, in all the cases I saw, it was because one other machine was definitly claiming too high, as seen above. From what is seen so far, if your machine is claiming normal, it will always be included in quorum calculations.

Outlier: (examples 14-16) The WU is flagged as "Invalid". There are three reasons this may occur for Wus returned by a machine: (a) the machine is running a non standard Boinc client. Solution, install standard client. (b) the machine swaps a lot to the HD and thus clocks a lot of wall CPU time without actually doing work. Solution would be to to add more ram and to set preference to "keep in memory". (c) both other quorum members are running way under-benched systems. Specifically their average claim must be below 53% of normal for this rule to incorrectly trigger againest your claim. So far, haven't seen it and I imagine it would not happen.

Edit: These rules do not apply to HFP2 which uses another system all together.

I don't think there is much of a controversy, despite all the fears that were raised when the new system was first announced. The points system is not perfect. I don't think anyone denies that. But the way I look at it, everyone is stuck with it. Personally I worry more about their servers crashing, as was the case in late December.

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Originally Posted by sierra_bound

I don't think there is much of a controversy, despite all the fears that were raised when the new system was first announced. The points system is not perfect. I don't think anyone denies that. But the way I look at it, everyone is stuck with it. Personally I worry more about their servers crashing, as was the case in late December.

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Agree. Once the vast majority switched to running standard installations, all the claims fell within a tight margin very quickly. Also the fact that WCG separates the linux/Win/mac OS quorums solves a big problem.

So far, the system works surprisingly well.

I just hate how slower machines get more credit per WU just due to the fact that it takes them decades to get the job done. There will probably never be a fair system that'll cater to everyone. Excellent analysis/thread, provides a nice insight into the system.

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Originally Posted by [XC] gomeler

I just hate how slower machines get more credit per WU just due to the fact that it takes them decades to get the job done. There will probably never be a fair system that'll cater to everyone. Excellent analysis/thread, provides a nice insight into the system.

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Actually they don't. They may "claim" more, but every one gets the same. The system is fair.

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Originally Posted by [XC] gomeler

I just hate how slower machines get more credit per WU just due to the fact that it takes them decades to get the job done.

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They don't exactly get more credit - they get the same as everyone else crunching that particular unit - faster machines get more credit overall due to crunching more units during the same amount of time.

The system isn't perfect by any means, and it never will be, but the principle of everyone getting the same credit for the same work completed is a valid one.


Edit: Sorry meshmesh you beat me to it!

People with slower computers who are part of your quorum actually will help boost your granted credit. Below is an example. The downside is that it may take longer before that WU is finally validated.

And there's no reason to not tweak as well as you can for the benchmark as well....if you can manage an extra 5% in the benchmark, that will average out to an extra 1.66% in points....and every bit counts :)

I meant precisely that, say I do a WU along with a P3-600 and a P2-266. Both of them will claim much more than I would therefore boosting the value of the WU and giving them more credit than should be given. Always thought it was funny that turn-around time wasn't a factor, that's why I love number crunching projects, get points based on sheer performance, no evening out of the playing field.

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Originally Posted by [XC] gomeler

I meant precisely that, say I do a WU along with a P3-600 and a P2-266. Both of them will claim much more than I would therefore boosting the value of the WU and giving them more credit than should be given.

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Thats the thing they aren't getting more than they should be given - everyone crunching that unit gets the same credit as they've all done the same amount of work (1 WU) regardless of how long it took.

Edit: My mistake, I think I read what your trying to say now, that ALL the machines (including yours) are getting more, not just the two slow ones meaning the overall WU value is higher than say another similar WU crunched by 3 fast machines?

If thats the case then yes, but it evens out over time I suspect

first time to see this thread and glad i did

thanks for the nice explanation

http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/5354/72176517ci0.jpg

1 boinc pt = 6.999 wcg pts. :D

How many times a day do the stats update? From what I can tell only one time?

The WCG stats (from the WCG stats site) update 2 times.

Boinc stats - 1 time

Stats.free-dc.org - not sure...I think 1 time.

Yeah the WCG stats seem to update at around 6PM and 4AM as far as I can tell. This is CST.

So.. a higher clocked/higher benched system claims Less per wu than a slower system. Does this mean that to compensate.. we might bench at stock speeds, and then OC and run the wu's? to have slightly higher claims.. and increase the averages? Or is there an automatic rebench that occurs every now and then?
Really seems odd that a faster machine would claim less for an equal wu.

My Accumulated Points: 24,623, according to the WCG websie. Most of these points/credits have been granted/validated for days now.

My sig, which is updated everyday only shows around 3200. Why is this?



EDIT: Nevermind. Classic points system correct?

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Originally Posted by crazyea

My Accumulated Points: 24,623, according to the WCG websie. Most of these points/credits have been granted/validated for days now.

My sig, which is updated everyday only shows around 3200. Why is this?

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I think your sig is showing "BOINC" points while the site is showing WCG points.
WCG points are app 7 times BOINC points.
AS to why the 2 systems, it's due to WCG running at the start of the program on another app other than BOINC.
Don't worry, you get all thats coming to you!
I think maybe 20 people have asked this question over the last year.;)
When we talk points here it's generally WCG points IE a Q6600 does app 15,000-18,000 WCG points a day.
WCG updates at 7am and 7pm Eastern Daylight Savings time. It's 1PM now on the east coast if that helps.

lol. beat ya to it.

ok, but how do i set up my sig to show this? i see a lot of people have both. i can on another sig site, but not free-dc. always shows blank once i choose a team. lol

EDIT: free-dc shows all zero's on FIREFOX for some reason, but seems to work fine on IE.

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Originally Posted by crazyea

lol. beat ya to it.

ok, but how do i set up my sig to show this? i see a lot of people have both. i can on another sig site, but not free-dc. always shows blank once i choose a team. lol

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I can't help with that part, never got into the Free-DC sig but one of the guys here will know how.
You sig is flashing both now..and seti..:)

yeah, i found a different sig site by looking at others sigs on this forum. it doesn't show ranks though. oh well. it'll have to do. thanks!


now for a title!

WCG is in the process of switching over entirely to BOINC. So far, about 84% of machines now use BOINC. At some point in the future, you'll be able to run projects only on BOINC. It's still unclear how this will affect the current WCG scoring system. WCG could convert everything into BOINC points, or they could continue using the current scoring method.

OK, this topic came up recently and I certainly think this thread was great. So, on that note, BUMP!

Bob

To revive an ancient topic :). Now WCG is totally running BOINC and I have joined after their migration to BOINC. But there is one thing that irritates me - I have been crunching WCG 2+ years on multiple computers and I have ~7M points. the point is that when converted to BOINC credits it is only ~1M. When connected the GPUGRID for ~20 packages I am already 160K credits. I know the GPUs are much faster, etc but the question is why WCG is giving so little BOINC credits? Why the 7:1 ratio? With a GPU I can match 2+ year crunching in WCG in 1 month :confused:? I am crunching for different reasons but it can be annoying that I am getting so little BOINC credit :)

Really can't compare work done between projects, even though they both might use BOINC.

As far as the scoring, I think it might be a little bit arbitrary :shrug:

And for what it's worth my 7950 on WCG totally kills anything else prior. Heck I'm pretty sure that my single GPU is outproducing what one of our biggest contributors used to do with an entire room full of systems.

BOINC credit is based on what's called "cobblestones" and is a measure of the amount of computing effort expended by a given system. The approx 7:1 ratio of WCG to BOINC is due to the difference in credit systems between the original UD client and how BOINC awards credit. On top of this some projects artificially pump their awarded credit to attract crunchers from other projects.
GPU and CPU really shouldn't be compared. GPUs are massively parallel and can do far more calcs in a given time than a CPU, so asking why an hour on one isn't the same as an hour on the other isn't a fair question at all.

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Originally Posted by D_A

BOINC credit is based on what's called "cobblestones" and is a measure of the amount of computing effort expended by a given system. The approx 7:1 ratio of WCG to BOINC is due to the difference in credit systems between the original UD client and how BOINC awards credit. On top of this some projects artificially pump their awarded credit to attract crunchers from other projects.
GPU and CPU really shouldn't be compared. GPUs are massively parallel and can do far more calcs in a given time than a CPU, so asking why an hour on one isn't the same as an hour on the other isn't a fair question at all.

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Please don't get me wrong. I am not comparing CPU and GPU results.
My point is: in GPUGRID with GTX650TI I am making ~6000 BOINC credits. In WCG with all of the bellow:
- 1 dual core (HT) ~2.3 GHz (70% BOINC dedicate)
- 1 quad core (HT) ~2 GHz (60% BOINC dedicate)
- 1 quad core 4.7GHz (HT) (90% BOINC dedicate)
- the same GTX650TI (90% BOINC dedicate)

I am getting ~1000 BOINC credits!!!!!!

This basically doesn't seem fair. I was thinking that the BOINC scores are more unified but obviously aren't. At least WCG says how they calculate their points, and I haven't found the same for BOINC credits.

Anyway I will be crunching for WCG as I like their projects, but I think they are discouraging the people who are crunching for the points.

This Q6600, running 64bit Linux 100% load 24/7, is pulling over 3400 BOINC credits per day. No GPUs, no overclocking, no fiddling at all.

If that combination of yours is only pulling 1000 then we need to have a good hard look at your configuration because it's obviously not optimal and I'd be inclined to say that GPU isn't being used at all.

GPUGrid gives a 50% bonus for work units reported within 24 hours of being downloaded and 25% for 48 hours. So no good to compare.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by D_A

This Q6600, running 64bit Linux 100% load 24/7, is pulling over 3400 BOINC credits per day. No GPUs, no overclocking, no fiddling at all.

If that combination of yours is only pulling 1000 then we need to have a good hard look at your configuration because it's obviously not optimal and I'd be inclined to say that GPU isn't being used at all.

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Hi, thanks for pointing out the problem. Appears that I was checking the average scores and not the daily scores. So with all of the above at full throttle I can get more than 10000 BOINC credits per day :up:. I also checked one of the laptops and it looks like the fan was totally clogged and the CPU was working at only ~1GHz :eek:
So the situation is not that bad after all. Thanks for the help.