Info Thor Challenge 2020 (WCG)

[Ken g6]

We have been invited to the second round of the Thor Challenge, a World Community Grid race for runtime, instead of points. @Markfw got us through the first round. 25th place puts us in the top 50 teams. To get to the third round, we need to be in the top 25 again, so we could use some help. Better, if we can beat The Scottish Boinc Team the next two rounds, we can probably get into the Thor Challenge Pure, which is points-based.

The second round runs September 21 through the 27th, but you can start bunkering now. Since this round is runtime based, feel free to throw on any old, slow computers you may have laying around.

Good luck!

 

[Endgame124]

My raspberry pis love A runtime based event . I only regret that I have but 10 pis to contribute

 

[StefanR5R]

Here are links to the stats (updated only once a day, at some point after UTC-midnight when WCG's big internal stats run completed):

Week 1 — stats
Sep 7, 00:00 UTC ... Sep 13, 23:59 UTC
Sep 6, 20:00 EDT ... Sep 13, 19:59 EDT
Sep 6, 17:00 PDT ... Sep 13, 16:59 PDT
(CPU time based; open to all teams)

Week 2 — stats
Sep 21, 00:00 UTC ... Sep 27, 23:59 UTC
Sep 20, 20:00 EDT ... Sep 27, 19:59 EDT
Sep 20, 17:00 PDT ... Sep 27, 16:59 PDT
(CPU time based; only the top 50 teams of week 1 are invited)

Week 3 — stats
Oct 5, 00:00 UTC ... Oct 11, 23:59 UTC
Oct 4, 20:00 EDT ... Oct 11, 19:59 EDT
Oct 4, 17:00 PDT ... Oct 11, 16:59 PDT
(CPU time based; only the top 25 teams of week 2 are invited)

Week 4 — stats
Oct 19, 00:00 UTC ... Oct 25, 23:59 UTC
Oct 18, 20:00 EDT ... Oct 25, 19:59 EDT
Oct 18, 17:00 PDT ... Oct 25, 16:59 PDT
(CPU time based; only the top 10 teams of week 3 are invited)

Pure — stats
Nov 2, 00:00 UTC ... Nov 8, 23:59 UTC
Nov 1, 19:00 EST ... Nov 8, 18:59 EST
Nov 1, 16:00 PST ... Nov 8, 15:59 PST
(credits based; only the top 20 teams of weeks 1–3 combined are invited, but only non-commercial/ non-organizational teams)​

Tentative stats of the weeks 1–3 non-commercial/ non-organizational roster are regularly posted by the organizer in the WCG forum thread of the challenge.

AFAIK this is the first year that TeAm AnandTech registered for the Thor Challenge. Those who have a yearly power budget, remember that there is also the WCG Birthday Challenge in November. ;-)


__________________________
Edited on September 21: added local times at North American coasts
Edited on October 4: linked to 3rd week stats page
Edited on October 13: linked to 4th and 5th weeks stats pages

 

[cellarnoise]

What does "run time" really mean. How do we maximize participation?

 

[TennesseeTony]

Run time means communist take-over, where everyone is made equal. And they are happy. Whether you have 4000 Pentium 90's, or a supercomputer cluster with 4000 top tier threads, if the task runs for one hour, it gets counted as one hour of run time, and the P90's are treated as equals with the supercomputer. It is an interesting twist, along with the staggered weeks of competition and top 50/20 teams advance rules.

 

[Markfw]

Run time means communist take-over, where everyone is made equal. And they are happy. Whether you have 4000 Pentium 90's, or a supercomputer cluster with 4000 top tier threads, if the task runs for one hour, it gets counted as one hour of run time, and the P90's are treated as equals with the supercomputer. It is an interesting twist, along with the staggered weeks of competition and top 50/20 teams advance rules.

Well, the only good thing for me is, that I have a lot of cores due to EPYC

 

[StefanR5R]

Whether you have 4000 Pentium 90's, or a supercomputer cluster with 4000 top tier threads, if the task runs for one hour, it gets counted as one hour of run time, and the P90's are treated as equals with the supercomputer.

Or, for example, one given processor yields the same scores in this challenge regardless if you overclock it to the maximum, or downclock & downvolt it almost to a halt. While you obviously get more results per time out of the overclocked config, both configs give the same CPU time (BOINC terminology) or Run Time (WCG terminology) per day per core.

Of course, it's surely worthwhile to produce as many results as possible for the projects while churning out a lot of Run Time for the Thor Challenge scores. But still, tweaks like disabled turbo or capped TDP/PPT will bring you better power efficiency, same Run Time, and just a moderate decrease in results throughput.

 

[TennesseeTony]

I would add only that, if your Pentium 90 is taking 36 hours to return a task, then SOME of your run-time will not be counted by the end of a week long event. Still, it is an interesting twist for a race/challenge.

 

[cellarnoise]

What I should have known... Don't fire up old hardware and start boinking, without adequate time to update Windows and other software.....

Also write down hardware settings often and tape them to the side of the puters... who knows where they will get "set aside" to....

What a day of computer fun and trying to remember prior year optimizations. My brain seems to be emptying the bit bucket at a faster rate as I get older.

 

[StefanR5R]

I added EDT and PDT local times to post #3, for those among us who don't wear a second wrist watch which is set to UTC.

 

[Markfw]

No stats today ??

Yesterday I did 482,019 , not sure how much went to the challenge.

 

[StefanR5R]

Stats are generated by WCG in their daily stats run which begins at 00:00 UTC = 16:00 PST and may take a while (sometimes hours). When this process is complete, user stats, team stats, and challenge stats are updated at the WCG web site. User stats are additionally updated at/after 12:00 UTC = 04:00 PST.

 

[Markfw]

Stats are generated by WCG in their daily stats run which begins at 00:00 UTC = 16:00 PST and may take a while (sometimes hours). When this process is complete, user stats, team stats, and challenge stats are updated at the WCG web site. User stats are additionally updated at/after 12:00 UTC = 04:00 PST.

WCG appears to have 4 stats updates per day. Update 3 has already happened. I am at 343k after 3 updates, should be over 400k per day. But the race stats is what I meant.

The race stats that I see on that forum in the past were all posted between 4 an 8 am PST.

 

[Ken g6]

I guess I'll post a couple days of stats:

Thor Challenge, week 2:
Day 1:


Day 2:

 

[Markfw]

I guess I'll post a couple days of stats:

Thor Challenge, week 2:
Day 1:
View attachment 30401

Day 2:

View attachment 30402

Well, thanks for that ! 18th is way better than 24th.

 

[StefanR5R]

WCG appears to have 4 stats updates per day. Update 3 has already happened.

Do you mean updates at external stats sites (FreeDC and BoincStats), or the stats at www.worldcommunitygrid.org? About the latter, their own FAQ says:

When are points and statistics updated?

World Community Grid points and statistics are updated twice a day. This occurs at 00:00 and 12:00 UTC. This includes all statistics on World Community Grid except for Team Statistics.

Team Statistics are updated once a day at 00:00 UTC.

Though it is of course possible that this information is outdated. Though less than a year ago, this info was true. (And challenge statistics were handled like described for team statistics.)

 

[Markfw]

Well, I just counted. I have 653 cpu threads running WCG. That should help out team a lot.

 

[Endgame124]

I really need to get a few more pis running , not that they would help that much, but another 20 cpu is still 20 cpu

 

[Markfw]

My first PI will not get here till friday, and then I have to learn how to set it up before I order more.

Ultimately, I am thinking the 8 pi tower case. Well, thats 32 cores, or like a 1950x., but slower.....

 

[TennesseeTony]

Mark, the latest Formula BOINC Sprint has started. We feel confident you and others will keep us in the top 20 for the remainder of this week. I can't seem to get Sprint tasks on Windows machines, so I still have 36 threads to assist with WCG. The latest update has us at 17th, but we know many teams below us also will be switching to the Sprint.

 

[Markfw]

Mark, the latest Formula BOINC Sprint has started. We feel confident you and others will keep us in the top 20 for the remainder of this week. I can't seem to get Sprint tasks on Windows machines, so I still have 36 threads to assist with WCG. The latest update has us at 17th, but we know many teams below us also will be switching to the Sprint.

Well, I added 4 more cores (a raspberry PI) So I hope we start in the top 10 or 20 (what is it to stay invited ????)

I hate this no daily stats from a race perspective.

 

[StefanR5R]

what is it to stay invited ????

The top 25 of week 2 get invited to week 3.
The top 10 of week 3 get invited to week 4.
The non-commercial top 20 of weeks 1...3 get invited to week 5 alias 'pure'.

 

[Markfw]

The top 25 of week 2 get invited to week 3.
The top 10 of week 3 get invited to week 4.
The non-commercial top 20 of weeks 1...3 get invited to week 5 alias 'pure'.

I want top 10.....

 

[Icecold]

I had posted this in the raspberry pi thread too, but just to reiterate to anybody in this thread - if you're wanting to add a bit to this challenge I would recommend loading up any extra old Android cell phones you have lying around with BOINC. I'm not a 'phone guy'(I only replace my phone when I absolutely have to, and usually with something cheap) and I still had a couple lying around. Most phones(even cheap ones) made in the last several years are 4-8 cores, and it counts for this runtime challenge. Android tablets, etc. should work as well. There are some settings that need to be tweaked(by default on mine it seemed to only select half the cores, limit running it on low battery, when in use, etc. etc.) but you can quickly add several cores to this runtime challenge just by throwing it on some old cell phones, tablets, etc.

Edit - posting this made me remember my Nvidia Shield I use as an HTPC. It took me less than 5 minutes to load the BOINC apk on here and configure it just now. Picture attached of WCG running on my TV (well, the Nvidia shield attached to my TV..)

 

[Ken g6]

Stats for:
Wednesday night:



Thursday night:



and Friday night: