On Sunday 18 August 2002 17:59, Jeff Woods wrote: > 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.
If we're going to re-index at all then we should be jumping to the top of the range since this will be relevant for longer. How's about referencing to Pentium 4 2.67B which is about the top of the range at the moment (if it's even available yet). I think we should also publish conversion factors for "common" processors including obsolete ones at least as far back as 386. There _is_ historical interest in this, even if working examples of these processors are now only to be found in space hardware. (Incidentally the first successful microprocessor-controlled space probes - the Voyagers, controlled by Intel 8008 CPUs - are just coming up to the 25th anniversary of their launch!) > > ------------------------ > > 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. > This suggestion makes a lot of sense. The "hours per day" figure is pretty meaningless, for the reasons stated. Regards Brian Beesley _________________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
