| 1 | = Estimating job resource requirements = |
| 2 | |
| 3 | == Computation == |
| 4 | |
| 5 | The computational size parameters ('''rsc_fpops_est''', '''rsc_fpops_bound''') |
| 6 | are expressed in terms of number of floating-point operations. |
| 7 | For example, suppose a job takes 1 hour to complete on a machine with a |
| 8 | Whetstone benchmark of 1 GFLOPS; |
| 9 | then the "size" of J is 3.6e11 FLOPs. |
| 10 | |
| 11 | To get an initial estimate of job size, |
| 12 | run several typical jobs on your own computer, see how long they take, |
| 13 | and multiply by the Whetstone score of the computer |
| 14 | (to find this, run BOINC on the computer and look at the event log). |
| 15 | |
| 16 | It's possible that job size may change over time, |
| 17 | or that job sizes on volunteered computers are different |
| 18 | from those you measure on your own computers. |
| 19 | To get estimates of job sizes averaged over recent jobs, |
| 20 | use the script html/ops/job_times.php (the '''FLOP count statistics''' link on your project's [HtmlOps administrative web interface]). |
| 21 | |
| 22 | '''NOTE''': BOINC maintains various statistics, used for runtime estimation and credit, |
| 23 | that are normalized by '''rsc_fpops_est'''. |
| 24 | If you change this by a lot (more than a factor of 10) |
| 25 | you should reset these statistics. |
| 26 | To do so, click '''Manage Applications''' in the administrative web interface; |
| 27 | click on the application name, then on '''reset credit statistics for this application'''. |
| 28 | |
| 29 | If job sizes vary in a predictable way, |
| 30 | you can supply per-job values for '''rsc_fpops_est''' and '''rsc_fpops_bound'''. |
| 31 | Doing so will give more accurate runtime estimates |
| 32 | and more consistent credit. |
| 33 | |
| 34 | == Memory == |
| 35 | |
| 36 | To get an initial estimate, run a typical job on your own computer |
| 37 | and monitor the working set size |
| 38 | (using the Windows Task Manager or the Unix "top" command). |
| 39 | Note: memory size parameters are not per-platform; |
| 40 | you should do this all supported platforms and take the maximum. |
| 41 | |
| 42 | == Disk == |
| 43 | |
| 44 | To get an initial estimate, run a typical job on your own computer |
| 45 | and observe the disk usage (including the input files, temp files, and output files, |
| 46 | but not including the application files). |