mirror of https://github.com/BOINC/boinc.git
104 lines
3.2 KiB
PHP
104 lines
3.2 KiB
PHP
<?
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require_once("docutil.php");
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page_head("Computation credit");
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echo "
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<p>
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Each project gives you <b>credit</b> for the computations your
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computers performs for the project.
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These credits are used to generate web-site 'leaderboards' showing
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individuals, teams, and categories (countries, CPU types, etc.)
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ranked by credit.
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<p>
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BOINC's credit system is based on a 'reference computer' that can do
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<ul>
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<li>1 billion floating-point multiplies per second
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<li>1 billion integer multiplies per second
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<li>4 billion bytes per second of traffic to and from main memory
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(sequential, half reads and half writes)
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</ul>
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BOINC's unit of credit, the <b>Cobblestone</b> <sup>1</sup>,
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is 1/300 day of CPU time on the reference computer.
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<p>
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Each project maintains two types of credit:
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<ul>
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<li> <b>Total credit</b>:
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The total number of Cobblestones performed.
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<li> <b>Recent average credit</b>:
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The average number of Cobblestones per day performed recently.
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This average decreases by a factor of two every week,
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according to algorithms given below.
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</ul>
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<p>
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Both types of credit (total and recent average)
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are maintained for each user and host.
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<h3>Leader boards</h3>
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The PHP pages supplied by BOINC include basic leaderboards:
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top users and hosts, by total and average.
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BOINC lets projects export the credit-related
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parts of their database as XML files.
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These XML files can be used to generate
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other breakdowns of users, hosts and teams,
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or to generate leaderboards based on the sum of
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credit from different projects.
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<h3>Possible future improvements</h3>
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<ul>
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<li>
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Ideally, credit should reflect network transfer and disk storage as well
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as computation.
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But it's hard to verify these activities,
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so for now they aren't included.
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<li>
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Eventually projects will develop applications that use
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graphics coprocessors or other non-CPU hardware.
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Credit should reflect the usage of such hardware.
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To accomplish this, we will need to let
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projects supply their own benchmarking functions.
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This will also handle the situation where a project's
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application does e.g. all integer arithmetic.
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</ul>
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<h3>How 'Recent Average Credit' is computed</h3>
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Each time new credit granted,
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the following function is used to update the
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recent average credit of the host, user and team:
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<pre>
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// decay an exponential average of credit per day,
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// and possibly add an increment for new credit
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//
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void update_average(
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double credit_assigned_time, // when work was started for new credit
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// (or zero if no new credit)
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double credit, // amount of new credit
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double& avg, // average credit per day (in and out)
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double& avg_time // when average was last computed
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) {
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double now = dtime();
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if (avg_time) {
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double diff = now - avg_time;
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double diff_days = diff/SECONDS_IN_DAY;
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double weight = exp(-diff*LOG2/AVG_HALF_LIFE);
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avg *= weight;
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avg += (1-weight)*(credit/diff_days);
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} else {
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double dd = (now - credit_assigned_time)/SECONDS_IN_DAY;
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avg = credit/dd;
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}
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avg_time = now;
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}
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</pre>
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<hr noshade size=1>
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<sup>1</sup> Named after Jeff Cobb of SETI@home
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";
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page_tail();
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?>
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