>> Goal: The credit granted for all tasks for a single WU needs to be
>> identical, no mater what computation devices it runs on.
>
> Sorry, disagree... What happens for the case where the CPU application
> is highly optimised whereas the GPU application is brazenly wasteful of
> the GPU resource? The GPU does more physical work and gains less credit
> per unit of physical processing work done.
I'm one of the people to whom "expanding the knowledge of the world"
is important, rather than anyone's BOINC credit score. As such, I
believe that credit ought to be given for the __contribution__ to
the project made by the participant. Let's say one participant uses
inefficient hardware/software, and contributes two "sacks" of
answers per 24 hours. If another participant uses better performing
hardware/software, and contributes six "sacks" of answers per 24
hours, the 2nd participant should get three times the credit of the
1st participant - because he has __contributed__ three times as much
The 2nd participant applied more ingenuity, and/or more investment,
to the task of producing answers -- he deserves more credit. If a
3rd participant salvages an obsolete system, and manages to run it
less wastefully that it ever ran before - but comes up with only one
"sack" of answers per 48 hours - his __contribution__ is small, and
he should *not* get more than 1/4 of the credit given to the 1st
participant - even though that 3rd participant may have put in
herculean efforts in getting answers out of that obsolete system.
> I consider a fairer scheme is that credit is granted for the resource
> actually used.
I disagree. Let me suggest that credit be granted for results
(i.e., __contributions__ to the project), rather than for
"resources" being applied.
Suppose one person spends $1000 on a new system. Suppose another
person buys a broken computer for $100, and fixes it. If both
systems end up __contributing__ similar numbers of "sacks" of
answers per 24 hours, I consider the fair scheme to be to grant
credit for the results produced, even though one participant applied
10 times as much "cash resources actually used" than the other.
It should not matter if results are produced from CPUs or from GPUs;
nor if particular chips ("resources") get underutilized or not; nor
if the software running those chips is optimized or inefficient --
the credit ought to be based on the __contribution__ (meaning
"usable" answers) delivered by the participant, irrespective of the
tools the participant used to produce that contribution. If a
participant becomes dissatisfied with the amount of credit he is
getting, it is up to him to improve his tools so as to increase his
production: if he is hardware-limited, he might upgrade; if the
software he uses is inefficient, he might migrate to a different
project that offers a more suitable application for him to use.
mikus
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