CPDN News and Announcements

This forum provides an FAQ for users as well as allowing you to ask questions about MundayWeb's very popular BOINC stats services.
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mo.v
Member
Posts: 99
Joined: Mon Feb 19, 2007 7:31 pm
Location: Portsmouth UK

Re: CPDN News and Announcements

Post by mo.v »

CPDN credits

Carl rewrote the CPDN credit scripts as part of the recent big database and server upgrade. His new scripts run much faster than the old ones. There are now, however, some credit anomalies.

* There is an inexplicable loss of a small % of our total credits. Different percentages for different members but in no case very large. This is the credit loss showing today on the stats sites. There are several possible causes. For example, Carl has archived a lot of our old data because the database had become gigantic; this archiving may have resulted in the loss of some credits. Carl has been working on the server upgrade since Sunday and does not intend to spend more time looking for these lost credits!

* The Boinc cross-project comparison table shows that CPDN has been awarding credits at a lower rate than most other projects including Seti. CPDN also has a 'reference computer' used to compare credit given by Seti and CPDN. Our programmers can calculate credit comparisons per processing hour on the same computer.

Why compare with Seti? Because 1) it's the original Boinc project 2) when CPDN migrated to Boinc our credits were set at levels similar to Seti 3) the Seti programmers have taken many steps to avoid inflation or deflation of the value of their credits.

So Carl has decided to increase the credits awarded for all models by 5%. This increase has already been implemented retrospectively, which should compensate for the inexplicable loss. (So today's negative figures on the stats sites should be reversed tomorrow or on Saturday.) And in future we'll earn 5% more than before.

* Credits for each completed model type have been increased as follows:
  • HadAM3 was 5,184.00, now 5,443.20, +5%
  • HadAM3P was 1,982.64, now 2,081.77, +5%
  • HadCM3 (80 year) was 24,883.20, now 49,766.40, +5%
  • HadCM3 (160 year) was 49,766.40, now 52,254.72, +5%
  • HadSM3 was 6,805.26, now 7,145.52, +5%
  • HadSM3MH was 9,073.68, now 9,527.36, +5%


Credits per trickle will of course also increase by 5%.
mo.v
Member
Posts: 99
Joined: Mon Feb 19, 2007 7:31 pm
Location: Portsmouth UK

Re: CPDN News and Announcements

Post by mo.v »

CPDN main project

Milo posted today in the CPDN website news:
For some time the Recent Average Credit calculations for one particular model type (HadAM3P) have been too high. We've been working on this problem and have deployed an adjustment to the credit calculation scripts that should correct it. Actual credits will be unaffected by this fix. We expect the corrected RAC values to start showing up on the various BOINC stats sites within 24 hours.
However, the stats site lists for total CPDN credit are chaotic this evening. Some members have lost millions of credits. Others have, I think, lost nothing. I don't know why this has happened but Milo has been informed and he will look at the problem tomorrow (Wednesday).
mo.v
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Posts: 99
Joined: Mon Feb 19, 2007 7:31 pm
Location: Portsmouth UK

Re: CPDN News and Announcements

Post by mo.v »

Today's CPDN credit export to the stats sites has restored the credits accidentally deducted yesterday.
mo.v
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Posts: 99
Joined: Mon Feb 19, 2007 7:31 pm
Location: Portsmouth UK

Re: CPDN News and Announcements

Post by mo.v »

Millennium Project

CPDN has launched new models called FAMOUS which will contribute to the European multidisciplinary experiment involving 16 countries and many universities. The Millennium website explains how the climate of the last millennium will be analysed using climate models and proxy data. The CPDN modelling contribution is described here and its lead researcher is Dr Hiro Yamazaki at Oxford University.

The very long FAMOUS models are distributed in 200-year segments each of which at the end generates a restart dump from which the next 200-year period can begin. They are available on all platforms. At the moment the models run very fast, taking less than 130 hours on a C2D 6600. A slower version is, however, being beta-tested in order to improve model stability.

A small proportion of these models do crash and should not be restored from backup. Members will as usual receive credit for the trickles they upload at the end of each model year.

FAMOUS can only run on computers with SSE2 capability. SSE is not sufficient. You can check whether your processor has SSE2 by looking at your Boinc manager messages about 8 lines from the top. This also applies to HadAM3P models. Computers without SSE2 should select HadSM models.

As well as the globe graphics, Tolu is developing sophisticated graphs which will later become available on models' web pages.

If you wish to try FAMOUS you can select it in the ClimatePrediction section of your CPDN account.

Members who run these models should follow the News thread of either the CPDN independent forum (where separate registration is required) or the CPDN-Boinc forum in the Number Crunching section. That is where further detailed announcements will be posted.
mo.v
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Posts: 99
Joined: Mon Feb 19, 2007 7:31 pm
Location: Portsmouth UK

Re: CPDN News and Announcements

Post by mo.v »

FAMOUS v.6.10 MILLENNIUM models
  • Available on all platforms.
  • You may need to select it in the climateprediction.net preferences of your account.
  • FAMOUS takes about 9 days crunching 24/7 on a fairly fast computer.
  • 200 model years.
  • These 200-year segments form part of models lasting 1600 years. After completion the segments are stitched together.
  • The first 200 years, 599 - 799, are a spinup or settling-down period which allows climatic conditions to stabilise.
  • The deadline for these models is three months which is much shorter than for other model types. This is because CPDN needs the results back as quickly as possible to stitch the segments together.
  • Files are uploaded every five model years ie 20 files in total.
  • Trickles are uploaded every model year ie 200 trickles.
  • As v.6.10 processes more slowly than the previous CPDN version, credits have been increased to maintain parity with other CPDN models. (If you crunched the earlier version models you will also receive the increased credits for them.)
  • At the moment CPDN FAMOUS displays the traditional graphics as for other model types. New graphics are being developed in conjunction with Sony Labs in Paris but are still being beta-tested. They will be released on CPDN in a future FAMOUS version.
  • Each FAMOUS task web page, reached from our computer's task list in our account, displays new interactive graphs. They include clickable red dots for volcanic eruptions. Here is a historical list of Large Volcanic Eruptions.
    The graphs display in most browsers but not in Internet Explorer 7 (Windows). You can upgrade to IE 8 at no cost. If you have XP please upgrade to IE 8 in case you are not able to when Windows support for XP stops soon.
  • Some FAMOUS models crash, typically with exit code 22 and messages including 'INVALID THETA' or 'NEGATIVE PRESSURE', because of instabilities that develop with some combinations of parameter values. Please do not restore backups of models and rerun them after model instability crashes. On the same platform with the same operating system the models would crash again at the same point. (Reminder: if your models crash with other exit codes eg -186 or -226 you should post on the forum for advice.)
  • If your multicore computer is also running other model types you may still wish to make backups to help ensure completion of the other models.
  • FAMOUS does not use enormous amounts of memory. Most multicore computers should be able to load all cores with FAMOUS and run them simultaneously. (Reminder: on a multicore computer with 4 or more cores don't fully load with HadAM3P as they will slow each other down, in a few cases disastrously.)
  • A future FAMOUS version is expected to be hyperthreaded.
  • You can read about the Millennium Experiment led by Dr Hiro Yamazaki at Oxford University here. Here is the website of The Millennium Project which is pan-European and multidisciplinary.
Thank you to all members who are helping to advance this large research project.
mo.v
Member
Posts: 99
Joined: Mon Feb 19, 2007 7:31 pm
Location: Portsmouth UK

Re: CPDN News and Announcements

Post by mo.v »

As Iain Inglis has said in the CPDN forum news:
There are two CPDN news announcements, which subscribers to the RSS feed may already have seen:

Myles Allen wins the Appleton Medal

Retirement of HadSM3 and HadAM3P models
Regional HadAM3P models are in beta testing. When they are launched on the main CPDN project members will again have a model choice.

Please complete all the models you have already downloaded.
mo.v
Member
Posts: 99
Joined: Mon Feb 19, 2007 7:31 pm
Location: Portsmouth UK

Re: CPDN News and Announcements

Post by mo.v »

CPDN logo mugs

You may have seen from the news on the climateprediction.net index page that climateprediction.net logo + globe mugs are now available from the CafePress shop. I have one and like it. The cost of shipping is the same whether one orders one mug or more. Each purchase will provide US$2 profit towards CPDN's operating costs.

Image
mo.v
Member
Posts: 99
Joined: Mon Feb 19, 2007 7:31 pm
Location: Portsmouth UK

Re: CPDN News and Announcements

Post by mo.v »

Geoengineering experiment

Many members ran HadCM models for the CPDN Geoengineering experiment.

Nature has published a letter (short article) about the experiment's results. The abstract is here: Regional climate response to solar-radiation management by Katharine Ricke and M. Granger Morgan of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and Myles Allen of CPDN at the University of Oxford. The potential political implications of their findings are significant.

There is a CPDN forum thread about this publication with further links here.
mo.v
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Posts: 99
Joined: Mon Feb 19, 2007 7:31 pm
Location: Portsmouth UK

Re: CPDN News and Announcements

Post by mo.v »

There has been an accident during the archiving of server data and some members have temporarily lost some CPDN credit. Milo is working on the problem. Read about it here.
Neil
Site Admin
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Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 8:35 pm
Location: UK
Contact:

Re: CPDN News and Announcements

Post by Neil »

Hi,

Looks like some teams may be missing too. My update last night failed the team sanity check as there were over 100 less teams in the XML file.

Cheers,

Neil.
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