How is minimum work buffer in days translated to work uits?

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Eric

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Message 68323 - Posted: 16 Mar 2016, 3:31:26 UTC

I'm running (only) seti@home on a laptop and two desktops. Each has its work buffer set to 10 days and additional days set to 1. But for all 3 systems I only see about a days worth of work each. This isn’t a recent thing, I've ignored it for a long time but now I'd like to investigate it more and understand how this is done.
For example, on my 6core/HT system I have 124 WU's (all seti MB) and my typical processing time is around 2 hours per/WU so each day I can complete about 12 WU's per CPU or 144 WU's total - e.g I have less than 1 days worth of work on my system, it should have 10+ days.
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Dr Who Fan
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Message 68324 - Posted: 16 Mar 2016, 5:17:04 UTC

SETI has a HARD LIMIT on the number of tasks you can have outstanding/downloaded on a device.

If I recall it is (100 * number of CPU cores) + (100 per GPU that BOINC is allowed to use) - (Invalid tasks per day).
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Eric

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Message 68327 - Posted: 16 Mar 2016, 11:26:22 UTC - in response to Message 68324.  

I'm well below that limit. Right now on m 6 core HT (12 threads) I've got 172 WU's total. I'm not running a GPU yet, my card is a NVIDIA and the V8 software isn’t available for it yet
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Richard Haselgrove
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Message 68328 - Posted: 16 Mar 2016, 11:53:34 UTC - in response to Message 68327.  

I'm well below that limit. Right now on m 6 core HT (12 threads) I've got 172 WU's total. I'm not running a GPU yet, my card is a NVIDIA and the V8 software isn’t available for it yet

It's been available for Windows for a long time, but maybe not for other operating systems. It's helpful to say what you're running when asking questions.

I think the hard limit might be 100 CPU tasks in total, rather than per core. The clue would be an Event Log message "This computer has reached a limit on tasks in progress" in response to work fetch requests.
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Eric

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Message 68330 - Posted: 16 Mar 2016, 14:15:28 UTC - in response to Message 68328.  

Yeh, sorry, I'm on linux. Can we confirm that limit of 100 tasks total? That seems kind of low, what about a server that's crunching with say, 32 cores or more, 100 wouldn't go very far.
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Eric

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Message 68331 - Posted: 16 Mar 2016, 17:25:04 UTC - in response to Message 68330.  
Last modified: 16 Mar 2016, 17:31:07 UTC

I let my tasks run out, then watched the downloads in the log. You are right, it stops at about 100 cpu tasks "This computer has reached a limit on tasks in progress"
I wish we could get developers to increase that limit. I can crunch 150 MB tasks a day on average on my i7-3960X, 10 days would be 1500 tasks
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Profile Jord
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Message 68332 - Posted: 16 Mar 2016, 17:46:04 UTC - in response to Message 68331.  

I wish we could get developers to increase that limit.

It's not something BOINC or its developers did, but it's something the Seti project did.

They set the limit, because of the database size. At present it's several terabytes big, they really don't want it to grow exponentially big at this time with the extra chance of it crashing, so they imposed the download limit of 100 tasks for the CPU -even if it's more than one CPU or one with more than one cores- and 100 tasks for the GPU (but is it here 100 per GPU, or 100 for all GPUs if more than one?)
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Message boards : BOINC client : How is minimum work buffer in days translated to work uits?

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