New milestone

[henryzz]

Personally i think it would be possibble to maintain having a small footprint on a system if the default memory was set to 64Mb*(the number of gigabytes total on the system). This would work for low memory systems and high memory systems alike. Who would notice 256Mb of memory on a 4Gb system?

[NBtarheel_33]

Originally Posted by chalsall

OK -- as one of those doing lots of LMHing (currently 110,000 a day)...

LOL, you and Linde are lumberjacks and the unfactored ranges are forests. I couldn't even keep up with you guys to finish the 930M range.

I do this partially because I want to have a regular and predictable amount of internet traffic from each machine (75 dual core at at least 2GHz) for monitoring purposes. Thus I will want to continue doing low-level TFing.

Just out of curiosity, are all of those systems yours, or are folks allowing you to run Prime95 on them? 75 dual-cores is an impressive farm!

However, what I can and will do is allocate one core on each machine to DCing, leaving the other core to TFing / traffic generation.

75 cores devoted to DCs - just as a back of the envelope calculation, that would increase annual DC throughput by (at least) 5% or so! This would be a *huge* contribution!

And, George, I agree with the others above -- don't mess with the stats giving DC work a GHz Days "bonus". Not appropriate; and I don't think needed.

Yeah, I think we've pretty much settled this one. Lots of votes against, none for, and several thousand abstentions, LOL.

[NBtarheel_33]

Originally Posted by henryzz

Personally i think it would be possibble to maintain having a small footprint on a system if the default memory was set to 64Mb*(the number of gigabytes total on the system). This would work for low memory systems and high memory systems alike. Who would notice 256Mb of memory on a 4Gb system?

Yes, this is sort of what I was trying to get at - the fact that despite the average system now having gigabytes of RAM, Prime95 is still timidly only taking 8MB, whenever it is likely that the program could take 200MB or so, get better P-1 results (and hence kill off more unneeded LLs), and still not affect system performance in any way.

Case in point: on all of my borged systems, I have P-1 set up to take 40-50% of the total available memory during Stage 2. This ranges on some machines from 200MB all the way up to 1536MB. I have not heard any complaints about memory hogging due to Prime95.

Even if Prime95 were to take 64MB of RAM, rather than just 8, we'd likely get more P-1 successes and definitely would not impact performance on a modern computer. IMO it's worth looking at, especially since bigger tests mean we need all the help we can get avoiding needless LLs.

[NBtarheel_33]

I just finished M28002781 (assignment dated back to late 2008), so now everything under 29,000,000 has been checked once, and only one exponent remains under 30,402,451 (M43).

I've gone ahead and grabbed up this last exponent (it's assigned, but the assignment goes back to early 2009), and it should be done in about 10 days or so. Then everything under 30 million will have been checked once, as will everything under M43.

Please note that I am not advocating wide-scale, smash and grab poaching here, but I do believe that an exponent under 30 million that is (1) holding up a milestone, and (2) has been assigned for *well over* a year, ought to be considered fair game.

[Primeinator]

Originally Posted by NBtarheel_33

I just finished M28002781 (assignment dated back to late 2008), so now everything under 29,000,000 has been checked once, and only one exponent remains under 30,402,451 (M43).

I've gone ahead and grabbed up this last exponent (it's assigned, but the assignment goes back to early 2009), and it should be done in about 10 days or so. Then everything under 30 million will have been checked once, as will everything under M43.

Please note that I am not advocating wide-scale, smash and grab poaching here, but I do believe that an exponent under 30 million that is (1) holding up a milestone, and (2) has been assigned for *well over* a year, ought to be considered fair game.

I sense a storm coming your way. Perhaps one way we can better dintinguish what to do with old assignments is to have a history (like when they checked in with the server and what point in the LL they are at). For it to be that old implies that the computer is working very minimally on it but is turning in reports just often enough to keep it.

[ATH]

I also immediately thought of another 101mph post coming your way. Anyway we really need a date when report was last sent to the server. When we have those 1.5+ year old exponents, there is no way to know if there is any progress at all, or if it has been abandoned.

Many of us, me included, get very impatient when they are holding up milestones, and I don't care about 101 mph vs 100 mph, and I don't care about credit either, so I wish I could "poach" them and give the credit to the person it was assigned to.

I have "poached" some exponents assigned to "Anonymous" which was over 1 year old. If people can't register properly, I consider it fair enough, and they don't get credit anyway, so I'm not stealing their credit.

When you add the line manually to your worktodo.txt, I sometimes get the error message "ra: already assigned, exponent: <exponent>, A:1, b:2, c:-1" and I don't get the assignment, while other times I get the assignment registered to me "officially" including the very long "residue". I assume this could be a hidden date for when activity was last reported, so I leave the "already assigned" alone, and assume the ones transfered to me was abandoned. Can George confirm or deny this?

Btw, there is an error, unless its intended, when I get an Anonymous assignment from for example 2008 "officially" assisgned to me, it doesn't correct the date, and it looks like I had it since 2008, until I finish it.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by NBtarheel_33

Just out of curiosity, are all of those systems yours, or are folks allowing you to run Prime95 on them?

The latter. They are clients who know Prime95 is being run, and the reasons for it.

This has saved our collective butts many times in the past -- detecting virus infections the "antivirus" software didn't, debugging network routing issues, and detecting bad hardware.

[henryzz]

Originally Posted by chalsall

and detecting bad hardware.

what about creating bad hardware?

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by henryzz

what about creating bad hardware?

LOL... I'm of the school of thought that if a machine can't handle 100% CPU load, then it's faulty; and I want to know about it ASAP.

There's nothing worse than trying to debug the "once a month" fault....

[henryzz]

Originally Posted by chalsall

LOL... I'm of the school of thought that if a machine can't handle 100% CPU load, then it's faulty; and I want to know about it ASAP.

There's nothing worse than trying to debug the "once a month" fault....

I realize but AFAIK running at 100% causes more wear and tear than 0%
not that i take any notice

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by henryzz

I realize but AFAIK running at 100% causes more wear and tear than 0% not that i take any notice

Let me please say again... If the machine can't handle it (over the long term), I don't want it on my (or my client's) network...

As Far As I Have Experienced (AFAIHE), CPUs don't go bad because of load (unless they're overclocked, which I never do).

Usually machines fail because of bad fans, then bad harddrives (non solid-state... hmmm...); both of which Prime95 helps me find....