Exponent expiration
 

I have a few questions about the expiration of exponents. I know that manual assignments expire after 6 months, but does that happen automatically? Is this also true of PrimeNet assignments?

In the range that I'm working on at the moment, I've found over 30 exponents that were assigned over 6 months ago, and couple that will be 12 months in a few days. In the next month, this number will double to over 60 exponents.

90% of these are assigned to Anon, the rest to actual users, or at least previous users.

Can someone verify that exponents get released after 6 months? I'd like to get these cleaned up, yes, I'm a little OCD about it and I'm being patient. I could just go ahead and test them, but I sure don't want to be thought of as a Poacher.

Thanks,
Doug

Others will correct me if I'm wrong, but no I don't think exponents generally expire after 6 months if their progress is regularly updated (and I think this update is supposed to happen at least every 60 days).

You don't mention which work type and which range it is, but note that LL-testing of 100M digit numbers will always take well over 6 months, generally a few years in fact. And some slower systems like mine will take a good 6 months or more even for testing an exponent in the current general first-time LL testing range. I'm not currently doing first time LL testing, but I certainly wouldn't be happy if I was and someone pinched my work just because I took over 6 months to finish. :smile:

[QUOTE=drh;269509]I have a few questions about the expiration of exponents. I know that manual assignments expire after 6 months, but does that happen automatically? Is this also true of PrimeNet assignments?[/QUOTE]You're looking at the wrong elapsed time.

Let me emphasize something Brian wrote parenthetically that may not stand out:

[I]The most important factor in whether an exponent expires is [U]not[/U] how long it's been assigned! It's [U]how long it has been since the most recent progress report.[/U][/I]

The idea is that as long as an assignee is regularly reporting progress, PrimeNet doesn't expire the assignment. The contributions of what some folks consider "slow" systems are still valued as long as they report regular progress. As I've sometimes put it: 1001 MPH is faster than 1000 MPH. (There are some exceptions made where there is [I]especially[/I] slow progress on an exponent that has become conspicuous for being the last one under some "milestone", but this is, or should be, at the discretion of GIMPS administrators rather than a matter that impatient vigilantes poach on their own initiative.)

[quote]Can someone verify that exponents get released after 6 months?[/quote][U]Not[/U] 6 months after assignment, but [I]60 days after most recent progress report.[/I]

(Maybe there's a 6-month guaranteed minimum -- i.e., expiration is at 60 days after last progress report, or 6 months after assignment, whichever is later.)

[quote]I'd like to get these cleaned up, yes, I'm a little OCD about it and I'm being patient. I could just go ahead and test them, but I sure don't want to be thought of as a Poacher.[/quote]Thanks for asking us. Now, just remember that it's not how long an exponent's been assigned -- it's how long it's been since the last progress report.

Good, now I have a much better understanding ... and you are right, I wasn't all that clear. I'm doing TF's in the 76M range, bringing everything up to 73 bits.

So, is there a way to tell when the last update was on an exponent being TF'd?

Thanks,
Doug

Take for example 76106197, assigned for TF on 8/29/10

[QUOTE=drh;269573]Good, now I have a much better understanding ... and you are right, I wasn't all that clear. I'm doing TF's in the 76M range, bringing everything up to 73 bits.

So, is there a way to tell when the last update was on an exponent being TF'd?

Thanks,
Doug

Take for example 76106197, assigned for TF on 8/29/10[/QUOTE]
[url]http://mersenne.org/assignments/?exp_lo=76106197&exp_hi=&B1=Get+Assignments[/url]

To me, that looks like someone has the assignment on a V4 client, because it is not updating a percentage. The user's machine is claiming to the server that the test will be done in two days' time. Whether you believe it, and how long it has been claiming this, well, that's up to you...

A side note, please be careful when using that assignments site near the top of the hour; it is very CPU-intensive for the server. And try to restrict your queries to specific exponents, instead of large ranges. The server does a lot of work in the first minutes of every hour, so I try to avoid using the assignments page in the last 5 minutes and first 10 minutes of each hour.

Enjoy! :smile:

[QUOTE=KingKurly;269578][URL]http://mersenne.org/assignments/?exp_lo=76106197&exp_hi=&B1=Get+Assignments[/URL]

To me, that looks like someone has the assignment on a V4 client, because it is not updating a percentage. The user's machine is claiming to the server that the test will be done in two days' time. Whether you believe it, and how long it has been claiming this, well, that's up to you...

A side note, please be careful when using that assignments site near the top of the hour; it is very CPU-intensive for the server. And try to restrict your queries to specific exponents, instead of large ranges. The server does a lot of work in the first minutes of every hour, so I try to avoid using the assignments page in the last 5 minutes and first 10 minutes of each hour.

Enjoy! :smile:[/QUOTE]

Thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for.

King Kurly,
Are you stating that some time in the last 60 days, a V4 client has made a report to the server stating it is still working on the exponent involved, and it said it would be done in two days?

E
I'd let these guys finish, and move up and on...small irregularities like this are the norm on large distributed projects like this. Try the clean-up just monthly or so.

I see now on the Manual Assignments page (Manual Testing -> Assignments) ([url]http://mersenne.org/manual_assignment/[/url]) that "Manual assignments are [B]good for only six months[/B]." So, there may be six-month expirations that are enforced only if the assignment was made manually through this page rather than through the automated PrimeNet process. This page doesn't mention progress reports.

[QUOTE=cheesehead;269611]I see now on the Manual Assignments page (Manual Testing -> Assignments) ([URL]http://mersenne.org/manual_assignment/[/URL]) that "Manual assignments are [B]good for only six months[/B]." So, there may be six-month expirations that are enforced only if the assignment was made manually through this page rather than through the automated PrimeNet process. This page doesn't mention progress reports.[/QUOTE]
It mentions them in a negative way if you bring up the page without logging into PrimeNet first:
[QUOTE][Failure to log in before filling out the form] also means you will not be able to manage the reservations such as extending the six month expiration date.[/QUOTE]

Poaching
 

Ever since I got this information, I've been patiently watching all the exponents in the 76M range that I'm working on, catching ones that expire, get assignments, completing them, and turning them in. Yesterday, there were only 23 left in the 65 - 67 bit range, all assigned, a few by me, the rest by many others, some in the process of actively being worked on, and this morning I see that the user with the ID of "rduerr" poached them all. I'm not sure if this is SOP for this person or not, but it sure creates a lot of extra work in that I now have to do to find them all and eliminate them from my worktodo file. Guess there isn't anything that can be done to prevent it, but maybe after some number of complaints about an ID doing this, they could be penalized in some way ... very fustrating.

Doug

75M range is fairly high... you might want to join Mr P-1, me, and some others in getting a little better TF job done on exponents that are about to be assigned to LL tests.

A month is a very long time for one of my GPU TF tests to be out at 67 bits, since it takes perhaps an hour to do one on a bad day and my mid-range GT440 GPU.

Do send Prime95 a message about having your TF assignments from the server poached...that is very annoying, and there's sufficient work of all kinds not to need to squabble about it or duplicate it needlessly. Prime95 has some special talent in that area, and you don't need the run-in you might get if you messaged that user directly.

[QUOTE=Christenson;275231]75M range is fairly high... you might want to join Mr P-1, me, and some others in getting a little better TF job done on exponents that are about to be assigned to LL tests.[/QUOTE]

Clarification: We're TFing exponents which are assigned to LL testing, but which we are catching when they expire. See the discussion in [URL=http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=16104]this thread[/URL] from post #22 onward.

Semantically speaking, what Christenson said was true, he just didn't mention where they're coming from. But it doesn't really matter.

[QUOTE=Mr. P-1;275254]Clarification: We're TFing exponents which are assigned to LL testing, but which we are catching when they expire. See the discussion in [URL="http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=16104"]this thread[/URL] from post #22 onward.[/QUOTE]

It is proving to be an instructive/entertaining exercise!

We are going nowhere near poaching. OTOH if you were LL testing
a number which could have been TFed further, at what % stage would
someone finding a factor make you thank/curse him/her?

David

PS Could someone make this a poll?

[QUOTE=davieddy;275345]We are going nowhere near poaching. OTOH if you were LL testing a number which could have been TFed further, at what % stage would someone finding a factor make you thank/curse him/her?[/QUOTE]

That's an interesting question. I'd probably thank them any time up to 50% and curse them from about 80% onward. But then I'd thank them if My LL was complete, and the exponent was coming up for a doublecheck.

But that's an emotional response and extremely irrational. Factorising an exponent assigned for first-time testing will save between 1 and 2 LLs on average, and closer to 2 than 1 because many exponents are assigned but not yet started. Taking that analysis to its logical conclusion we should prioritise factoring first-time-tests assigned to other people to 69 bits over the same exponent unassigned (or assigned to us) to 70 bits.

I don't propose we do this. Sometimes irrational emotions prevail over logic.

How do you think Rosalind Franklin felt about Watson and Crick beating her to the structure of DNA having "poached" her data?

[QUOTE=Mr. P-1;275346]
How do you think Rosalind Franklin felt about Watson and Crick beating her to the structure of DNA having "poached" her data?[/QUOTE]

That's another interesting question.
At least her name is now well-known, and one would hope that
her deepest satifaction derives from her contribution to the greatest
biological discovery since Darwin or Adam.

Newton said something about standing on the shoulders of giants.
Relativity wasn't "Out of the blue".

OTOH "How can 60 carbon atoms be neatly arranged into a molecule?"
would not be a problem for anyone who had watched football since the
world cup in 1970, made a truncated icosahedron out of cardboard
or approximated a sphere for a 3D engine.

David

But Mr P-1...
#1: At least one poster on this forum has complained that his first time check completed, but someone had TF'ed his exponent. Finding out about a TF in the middle of working on an exponent could only happen to Davieddy, who asks me to TF his LL assignments at the same time he LL's them, and therefore has a result (so far, all negative) show up in a way he knows about during the middle of his LL check.

#2: Now, Ckdo and crew have been doing TF in the LL-D range, and periodically finding factors AFTER (a year or three after) the first LL check. We don't seem to get complaints.

#3: The eventual result of grabbing all the 68-bit factored LL assignments and giving them a TF to 69 bits, is that we will run out of 68-bit TF'ed LL assignments, either because the ones that come back incomplete will all get touched, or because we will get the server to give us assignments just in front of the wavefront, or the wavefront will catch up with the 53-60M TF'ers that Mr Davie is so upset about.

I need to follow xyzzy to Newegg for a UPS so the home machine doesn't need rebooting quite so often...

Ref!
 

[QUOTE=Christenson;275353]Finding out about a TF in the middle of working on an exponent could only happen to Davieddy, who asks me to TF his LL assignments at the same time he LL's them, and therefore has a result (so far, all negative) show up in a way he knows about during the middle of his LL check.[/QUOTE]
You know perfectly well that my request preceded the start of my LL.
My typo delayed you, but had you found a 74 bit factor in a couple
of days I would have been extremely grateful to hear about it.
Mystic Meg told me you wouldn't!

David

35% through ATM

[QUOTE=Christenson;275353]#3: The eventual result of grabbing all the 68-bit factored LL assignments and giving them a TF to 69 bits, is that we will run out of 68-bit TF'ed LL assignments, either because the ones that come back incomplete will all get touched, or because we will get the server to give us assignments just in front of the wavefront, or the wavefront will catch up with the 53-60M TF'ers that Mr Davie is so upset about.[/QUOTE]

I had a look at what the server is handing out toward the end of the day (21:30 - 21:45 UTC) by anonymously requesting manual assignments.

Test= assignments are in the low 55Ms. All appear to have been P-1ed. Most are TFed to 71 bits, but a few are only at 69.

Pfactor= assignments are in the low 58Ms. All appear to have been TFed to 71 bits.

Factor= assignments are strange. When I asked for a single one, I got one in the low 55Ms, 69-70 bits. When I asked for a batch, the first one in the batch was like this, and all the others were in the high 59Ms 70-71 bits. The next batch was the same. I tried two more batchs, but these were all 59Ms 70-71 bits, no 55Ms.

I then unreserved these assignments.

Over the past 25 minutes (from 22:15 - 22:40 UTC), I tried repeating the experiment with Factor= assignments, alternating between requesting a single one, and a batch. The first one - a single - was a 57M 69-70 bits. All others, both singles and batches have been 59Ms 70-71 bits.

Hypothesis: Even when logged out, the server tracks what an individual is doing, perhaps by IP. If the user only asks for a small number of Factor assignments, the server assumes that these are destined for a CPU and so hands out an exponent in the Test-range 69-70. If the user starts requesting heaps and heaps of them, then the server assumes that they're destined for a GPU, and hands out a 59M 70-71 exponent.

It seems that assuming it's a GPU would fast-track it for lagging assignments, like low 50's that are only at 69 bits, or 40's at 68.

Edit: That's what the GPU should be assigned, rather than 59M.

[QUOTE=Mr. P-1;275346]I'd thank them if My LL was complete, and the exponent was coming up for a doublecheck.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Christenson;275353]Ckdo and crew have been doing TF in the LL-D range, and periodically finding factors AFTER (a year or three after) the first LL check. We don't seem to get complaints.[/QUOTE]
I would like to have seen my residue confirmed.
This is one of several incentives to do DCs.

David

[QUOTE=davieddy;275352]That's another interesting question.
At least her name is now well-known,...[/QUOTE]

Not as well known as Watson and Crick. And she missed out of the Nobel Prize.

[QUOTE]and one would hope that her deepest satifaction derives from her contribution to the greatest biological discovery since Darwin or Adam.[/QUOTE]

One would hope so. But she's still human.

[QUOTE]Newton said something about standing on the shoulders of giants.[/QUOTE]

That was a oblique swipe at Robert Hooke, who was a short man.

[QUOTE]Relativity wasn't "Out of the blue".[/QUOTE]

No, but Einstein didn't swipe anyone's unpublished data. And to the extent that Einstein's work was [url=http://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/18/science/findings-back-einstein-in-a-plagiarism-dispute.html]allegedly[/url] plagiarised, that is viewed as counting against Einstein.

[QUOTE]OTOH "How can 60 carbon atoms be neatly arranged into a molecule?"
would not be a problem for anyone who had watched football since the
world cup in 1970,[/QUOTE]

You think? An awful lot of people have watch football, but none of them solved the problem.

[QUOTE]made a truncated icosahedron out of cardboard
or approximated a sphere for a 3D engine.[/QUOTE]

Perhaps, but there are fewer such people than there are fans of football. (That's soccer, for those in the forum who think football is a game in which the ball is carried by the players' hands.). The geometers would have the best chance, I would think, of connecting their work to the C60 problem: "What shape has 60 vertexes, each with four adjoining edges?". The computer modelers are thinking about the problem from the wrong end, i.e., their starting point is the sphere, and their end point is the net that approximates it. The C60 problem starts with the number and connectivity of the vertexes.

The football fans have probably never given a moment's thought to the geometry of the pattern on the ball.

[QUOTE=Mr. P-1;275414]The C60 problem starts with the number and connectivity of the vertexes.
[/QUOTE]
I love Euler.
I worked with a dyslexic on a 3D engine, and he spelt vertexes "vertissees":smile:

David

[QUOTE=davieddy;275439]I love Euler.
I worked with a dyslexic on a 3D engine, and he spelt vertexes "vertissees":smile:

David[/QUOTE]

That is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put! :smile:

Alternate plural of vertex: vertices.

[QUOTE=Christenson;275460]That is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put! :smile:

Alternate plural of vertex: vertices.[/QUOTE]

The [B]only [/B]plural in my book, and of course he was
merely spelling my pronunciation phonetically.
Great bloke Pete Gartside. Completely self-taught.
He was amazed by what I did with "matrissees",
and got the hang of them immediately!
Heapsort impressed him as well.

David

Just heard on the radio a superb name for a girl band:
"Noisettes" (anglicized pronunciation of course).

[QUOTE=Mr. P-1;275414]
Perhaps, but there are fewer such people than there are fans of football. (That's soccer, for those in the forum who think football is a game in which the ball is carried by the players' hands.).[/QUOTE]

... forward passes are considered admirable, and a "touchdown" is anything but.

David