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MilkyWay gearing up
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zombie67
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Nov 7, 2007, 11:07 PM
 
http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/

They are starting to issue WUs, and have OSX apps, both PPC and Intel.
     
reader50
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Nov 8, 2007, 12:18 AM
 
The project is best described in this forum post. The shortest version is they are studying stellar patterns left over from prior galactic collisions with the Milky Way. We're currently absorbing a dwarf galaxy, and have most likely done so with other dwarf galaxies in the past. Spotting collision remnants is perhaps the only way we currently know of to recognize a past collision.
     
beadman
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Nov 8, 2007, 11:09 AM
 
Originally Posted by zombie67 View Post
http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/

They are starting to issue WUs, and have OSX apps, both PPC and Intel.
Your stats appear to be very low in credits - are you just running part-time on your various computers, or does the project really offer very low credit for work?
beadman
     
zombie67  (op)
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Nov 8, 2007, 01:55 PM
 
Originally Posted by beadman View Post
Your stats appear to be very low in credits - are you just running part-time on your various computers, or does the project really offer very low credit for work?
beadman
I doesn't look like the stats pages have been updated since the latest batch of work was released. I currently have over 4200 credits since work started flowing last night. Lots of small WUs, that take 1-2 minutes each.
     
aliciajames
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Nov 19, 2007, 03:20 AM
 
They are saying their servers is working but they need to update binaries. Soon they will be able to start new search topics and issues.
     
CharlesS
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Nov 20, 2007, 01:53 AM
 
Actually, the Milky Way does look kind of like a gear.




Ticking sound coming from a .pkg package? Don't let the .bom go off! Inspect it first with Pacifist. Macworld - five mice!
     
MacosNerd
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Nov 20, 2007, 01:27 PM
 
Originally Posted by CharlesS View Post
Actually, the Milky Way does look kind of like a gear.

My question how do they know this. I mean, we're in the galaxy and so a top down view of our galaxy is impossible - at least until interstellar travel is invented.
     
peeb
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Nov 20, 2007, 01:28 PM
 
You can infer the shape by what the view looks like from here.
     
reader50
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Nov 20, 2007, 02:09 PM
 
We have hundreds of millions of stars cataloged by position in the sky. Determining distances is a lot harder, we're somewhere in the 'thousands' rather than 'millions' range on that. Armed with both location & distance, it's possible to plot them from an outside viewpoint, and see what the Milky Way looks like.
     
beadman
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Nov 28, 2007, 10:01 PM
 
Zombie67:
Glad to see you're up to #3 finally - the change from 1 credit per WU to 2 credit per WU is helping us all, but it would really be nice if I could get more work. I notice the latest app is 1.11, and I've got 1.10, and nothing happens when I update or even reset. Most of the time, my computer just says it asks for more work but no new work is downloaded ( this is all subsequent to the server problem of the last couple of days...

I also noticed that my old G5 at work actually gets WUs finished in about 2/3 the time my MacBookPro does...must be something to do with integers, or a non-optimized Intel build of the app...

beadman
     
zombie67  (op)
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Nov 28, 2007, 11:46 PM
 
MW is having problems getting the new apps to distribute. It's not you. They're working on it.

*sniff* I used to be #1 there.

On well, working 100% on WCG until xmas!
     
beadman
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Nov 29, 2007, 05:56 PM
 
Milky Way seems to have resolved their server problem, and work units are now flowing, along with app 1.12.

beadman
     
beadman
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Dec 6, 2007, 12:09 PM
 
Do you have some older Macs that don't contribute much to your RAC? Here's some info that might help.

My old 333MHz iMac G3 can get around 25 to 30 credits per day from SETI standard app (there is no optimized app for G3's), around 60 credits per day from the Einstein standard app, but I can theoretically get about 96 credits per day running the Milkyway@Home app.

Here's another couple bits:
My MBP 2.16GHz Core Duo takes 285 secs to run a 2 credit WU - roughly 1200 credits per day total, which is about what I can get with SETI@Home.
My G5 2.0GHz Power Mac takes 235 secs to run a 2 credit WU - roughly 1460 credits per day total, but this same machine can only achieve around 1000 credits per day from SETI@Home, even though it's running Alex's latest optimized app
My iBook G4 1.67GHz takes 540 secs to run a 2 credit WU - roughly 320 credits per dat total, while it can only get around 240 credits per day running Alex's latest optimized app on SETI@home.

This is not meant to disparage Alex in the slightest; his optimizations allow us all to achieve better than twice as much credit per day when compared to the SETI@home standard apps. The bottom line is that if you have some older G3 or G4 or G5 Macs sitting around, Milkyway@home is a good way of boosting your RAC, as well as helping Astrophysicists better understand the formation of galaxies.

Here's the Milkyway@home web site: MilkyWay@home
Team MacNN is currently in 10th place with a team RAC of 1014 and first place is currently only 3664.

beadman
     
QSilver
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Dec 6, 2007, 03:32 PM
 
@beadman
Your G5 is 17.5% faster on MilkyWay's 2 credit WUs that your MBP? Why?

QS
     
beadman
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Dec 6, 2007, 04:31 PM
 
Originally Posted by QSilver View Post
@beadman
Your G5 is 17.5% faster on MilkyWay's 2 credit WUs that your MBP? Why?

QS
I've been wondering that myself. I'm not a programmer, but I'd suspect that there are a couple of switches in the wrong positions on the compiler for the Intel machine... The Milkyway app is apparently doing Monte Carlo analysis, so maybe that stuff just runs faster on a PPC, even though that doesn't seem logical.

beadman
     
zombie67  (op)
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Jan 29, 2009, 03:57 AM
 
Their latest app is fast and credits are sweet! Jump on it!
     
Elphidieus
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Jan 29, 2009, 06:35 AM
 
Unfortunately MilkyWay WU datelines are far too short for one of my offline towers to sustain a week-cache worth of work.
     
Billy
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Feb 13, 2009, 09:36 AM
 
Originally Posted by zombie67 View Post
Their latest app is fast and credits are sweet! Jump on it!
Does one use the standard app on Mac or are there optimized applications available?
     
beadman
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Feb 13, 2009, 10:09 AM
 
Originally Posted by Billy View Post
Does one use the standard app on Mac or are there optimized applications available?
If you have a PPC, by all means put it on MW. Their standard Mac app is optimized, but only the PPC one seems to do any good. The Intel Mac apps are significantly slower than the Linux ones - the admin guy has tried to optimize, but I don't think he knows what flags to set to get the max performance from a C2D. My MBP C2D is slightly less productive on MW than it is on SETI, but my old iBook G4 is about 3 times as productive on MW.

Apparently MW was getting some flack from David A. over at SETI about awarding too many credits, so a couple of weeks or so ago, they MW credits got chopped by 1/3. Since it's still in Alpha stage, expect frequent mods to the apps, outages, WUs that error out, etc. My iBook and my old tray loader iMac just keep chugging along, though, without apparent problems.

beadman
     
arkayn
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Mar 22, 2009, 01:00 AM
 
I have been giving a 10% share of my 3 computers to MW recently and have a RAC of 1400 at the moment. It makes a good backup project for when SETI is having problems.
     
beadman
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Mar 22, 2009, 11:40 AM
 
I'm not sure that MW plays nice with other apps. I set MW to a usage of 1 and SETI to 100, so in theory MW would only run about 15 minutes per day. Since each WU took about an hour, I expected it to download and run one WU about every 4 days. Instead, MW would download 4 WU, run them quickly, download 4 more, etc. MW was actually running more than 25 percent of the time. I don't know if it's BOINC or MW that doesn't seem to pay attention to long term debt, but one or the other is definitely messed up. Because of the poor performance of MW on my Intel Macs, I've had to place MW on No New Work...

beadman
     
arkayn
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Mar 22, 2009, 06:19 PM
 
I have SETI set to 900 and MW set to 100, it seems to work for me.
     
Penguirl
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Jun 8, 2009, 12:10 PM
 
Originally Posted by arkayn View Post
I have SETI set to 900 and MW set to 100, it seems to work for me.
What is the difference between speedimic's MW app and the stock one? System requirements for the optimized app? Is there any way to identify the optimized app vs the stock app in the project folder?

Thank you!
     
arkayn
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Jun 8, 2009, 07:17 PM
 
There was not all that much speedup between stock and the optimized app. System requirements are the same as stock.

My quad does better using it's 4830 video card anyway.
     
Penguirl
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Jun 11, 2009, 12:07 PM
 
Originally Posted by arkayn View Post
My quad does better using it's 4830 video card anyway.
Sadly I lost my PC so that is not an option for me. I have a 6800 Ultra in my PM but even if the card is supported the OS is not.

I'm hoping to get a refurb Mini later this year so I can play with the Intel Mac projects, and especially Snow Leopard. Thank goodness for VNC, there's no way I could afford a kb, mouse, and monitor too.
     
   
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