Johan Kullstam wrote:
[...]

cases.  I think that calling it "trial" would mislead people into

[...]

This is where there is somewhat a difference of opinion.

From a shallow casual quick glance at the last few days, with no reading of the news, then it appears that the s@h2 project isn't working. Call that whatever you like as pre-alpha/alpha/beta/non-start or whatever.

The reality is that the Boinc server and client software has gone through what I understand as 'alpha' and 'beta' testing in the open context of this development. Indeed, Boinc is working well for one or two other projects.


For s@h, as part of the beta test ramp up and getting hammered by the masses, Berkeley quickly found that their *HARDWARE* utilisation didn't scale up as anticipated as users joined and quickly became *IO* bound for the database. In layman's terms, their servers had big fast brains but their filing system was too slow and cumbersome. The system then became overwhelmed with the 10000's of users all joining within hours.


Since then, they've fought through various server software fixes and workarounds to try to streamline the database loading. They've also had the hardware break on them a few times, likely because they've pushed up to limits not normally exercised. They have swapped around most of their server hardware more than once. All good computer science and part of the expected development 'gotchas'.

The recent string of problems from live testing have likely pushed development forwards at a few times the normal pace of trying to debug offline.


What has been amazing has been some of the 'users' whinging.

Berkeley are indeed notorious for their poor PR and human communication about the project. But then again, they are Scientists and not PR droids. And also, they are American after all (:-P)

Regardless, s@h is a very good project for the hunt for seti and consequential science. Berkeley have now added a further important distributed computing aspect with Boinc opening DC to other projects more easily.


Meanwhile, the faint hearted can stay with s@h classic. Or more intelligently, you can share your spare CPU cycles with other DC projects until s@h2 can oncemore usefully soak up the idleness.

Are you in for the Science, the stats, or just for a good whinge?


(And I would call this part of the Beta phase of system shakedown (:-P)

Happy crunchin',
Martin