In article <yTJ_a.12237$yl6.8051@newsfep4-winn.server.ntli.net>,
Martin <ml_news@ddnospamddml1dd.co.uk.dd> (bogus) wrote:

The returned results are compared for an EXACT match. The results must 
be IDENTICAL, otherwise there must have been a computational error.

The match is within a tolerance for rounding errors.  Different compilers
may load and save registers at different places.  Registers normally carry
more significant digits than the official number required for the type of
number.

Also, the chirping factors are calculated incrementally, with occasional 
recalibrations, but if you stop and start the client, the restart values are
calculated directly, not by computing the last recalibration point value
and iterating forwards.

Both these factors introduce some indeterminacy in the numerical values, but
these indeterminacies are much smaller than those due to system noise (although
that is common to all clients) and therefore do not compromise the science.

The only room for variation is for exactly where in the analysis a WU is 
abandoned due to RFI. The whole result is discarded then in any case, 

WU's are not abandoned for RFI, they are cut short when they exceed a
certain result file length, for whatever reason.  Rounding error, may
cause borderline cases to be included in one set of results, but not 
another, so the cut off may vary because of that, but the same build,
run without interruption, should stop at the same point.

Such a work unit could be the victim of a strong ETI signal, as well as
local RFI.  It's speculation that they are ignored entirely.  Correlating
an overload at the same place but different times, might itself be 
significant, although signals strong enough to overload the client may
well already have been detected by SERENDIP (whose data is used for S@H).
other than for marking that WU as unusable.

Reconfirming a result beyond 3 exact matches has ever diminishing value 
for any further results returned.

The most that you can do after sufficient matches have been obtained is
to invalidate the whole work unit, as working data has started to be
deleted and is expensive to re-extract.