21000 of the 31000 participating machines are P-III or better.
Less than 2,000 true Pentium-class machines remain in the mix.
George et. al.: Could it be time to change the baseline reference machine
away from the Pentium-90, and wipe the P-90 off of all pages, from rankings
to status to years of computing time left to complete the task?
A couple years back, George changed the Status page reference to be a
P-II/400, equivalent to 5.5 P90's. Now even that PII/400 is far less than
the 'average participating machine", which given the above numbers, I'd
guess is now about one gigahertz, perhaps slightly better.
I believe that a one-time re-indexing of ranks, stats, and "time left to
compute" that re-indexes on either a P-III/1000 or an Athlon-1000, would
make the "CPU years left" numbers on the status page a bit more realistic,
as well as the number of "CPU years" I complete each day.
------------------------
Side note: Also of interest in both the benchmarks table and on the
individual / top producers tables, would be a RECENT CPU hours/day
comparison, as well as a machine reference back to the baseline machine,
whatever it may be.
i.e. I've been with this thing from the beginning, in 1996. Obviously, my
average machine has gotten better and better. My top listing says I'm
doing about 1090 CPU hours a day.... but that's averaged over ALL of my
submissions, dating back to when I was using 486's in 1996!
I did some arithmetic to try to figure out what I'm cranking out NOW....
(anyone want to check my logic here)?
i.e. how many CPU-hours a day is, say, an Athlon 1600+ worth?
According to the benchmarks page, the P-II/400 does a 15-17MM exponent
iteration in 0.536 seconds. And we know that this machine is 5.5
P-90's. Thus, a P-90 would be expected to take 5.5 x 0.536, or 2.948 seconds.
My Athlon 1600+ takes .130 seconds per iteration.
2.948 / 0.130 = 22.677 times as fast at the P-90, so 22.677 x 24 hours
means that this machine ought to be doing ABOUT 544.24 P-90 CPU hours per day.
If I add up what all my machines are doing NOW, I get 3503 P-90 CPU Hours a
day, not the 1090 shown on my account and report.
------------------
What I'd like to see is:
1) On the individual account report, the above calculation (i.e. the 544.24)
shown next to the exponent/machine. This should not be ESTIMATED, but
reverse engineered from actual reported iterations per second for the
exponent, compared to 2.948 seconds for the P90 (or whatever a new
baseline might be).
2) A SUM of all of the above, to let one know how much they TRULY are
cranking out, as opposed to that slow creeping average that, after so
many years means nothing.
3) A "rolling average" for the last 6 months, for the Top XXX pages, so
that I can compare RECENT work to other recent work. i.e. I see that
I am surrounded by many others in the 1100 CPU Hours/day range....but
if my historical data is skewed so much by those old slow machines from
six years ago, how much are others skewed? Who do I have a chance to
pass? Who's gaining on me? I can't tell! A rolling average, or
perhaps the calculations from #2 above in a column instead of a rolling
average, would make comparisons in the Top XXX listings easier, and
much more meaningful.
-----------
Comments, suggestions, criticisms and flames welcome. ;-)
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