I've noticed (using BoincView) that some of my hosts have a very high CPU eficiency - in one case more than 600%! I have a strong suspicion that it's the Superlink project causing these problems but in any case it means the scheduler is downloading more work than it should with a consequent danger of missing deadlines.

It would probably be a good idea to code a limit of 100% CPU efficiency as a safeguard.

By the way, I'm using 5.10.13.

Regards

Richard

Here's the details from the client_state file if it helps

<host_info>
<timezone>0</timezone>
<domain_name>X</domain_name>
<ip_addr>X</ip_addr>
<host_cpid>X</host_cpid>
<p_ncpus>1</p_ncpus>
<p_vendor>GenuineIntel</p_vendor>
<p_model>Intel(R) Pentium(R) III Mobile CPU 1133MHz [x86 Family 6 Model 11 Stepping 1]</p_model>
<p_features>fpu tsc sse mmx</p_features>
<p_fpops>1058647467.417692</p_fpops>
<p_iops>1777039715.141722</p_iops>
<p_membw>1000000000.000000</p_membw>
<p_calculated>1184836322.601278</p_calculated>
<m_nbytes>1072599040.000000</m_nbytes>
<m_cache>1000000.000000</m_cache>
<m_swap>3129888768.000000</m_swap>
<d_total>39998980096.000000</d_total>
<d_free>13110345728.000000</d_free>
<os_name>Microsoft Windows Server 2003</os_name>
<os_version>Standard Server Edition, Service Pack 2, (05.02.3790.00)</os_version>
<accelerators></accelerators>
</host_info>
<time_stats>
<on_frac>0.999212</on_frac>
<connected_frac>-1.000000</connected_frac>
<active_frac>0.999835</active_frac>
<cpu_efficiency>6.398837</cpu_efficiency>
<last_update>1185008502.684078</last_update>
</time_stats>
<net_stats>
<bwup>5244.78</bwup>
<bwdown>24625</bwdown>
</net_stats>

The DCF for most projects is around 1 although it is 0.1 for Superlink. The benchmark is correct and pretty much what I would expect for that host so I don't think that's the problem.

Either there's a bug in the core client associated with very low DCFs or the project is reporting incorrect data. I think it's the latter as when running Superlink WUs, BoincView shows the the CPU efficiency as 0% some of the time whereas Task Manager show the Superlink application taking up nearly all the CPU. If I'm correct, Superlink needs to fix this problem but it would still be sensible to put a safeguard into the core client.

Superlink's problem is, that their WU's run times vary from seconds to (nearly) days and the devs are not able to predict it.

Peter

I've noticed that the CPU time being reported by Superlink is also very erratic. If CPU efficiency is calculated by dividing CPU time over wall time, then this could explain why efficiency is calculated as greater than 100%.

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