I have read messages about the same work unit being sent to mulitple clients, and using a quorum of 3 in order to validate the result.
Here is one of the threads that I read:
http://aqua.dwavesys.com/forum_thread.php?id=72

The message is several years old, but, i imagine even in these modern times, you probably have x initial replications and need a x for a validated results.

Is it the same for each project? How can we find out how much of our work is duplicated on other accounts just to come to the same conclusion?

Or is boinc smarter now so that we don't waste time working the same work unit that x other computers had already completed and was accepted.

Hi Darwin

It's different for each project; each chooses its own settings for how many tasks must be completed from each workunit.

You can see the situation for the tasks you're processing by going to your account for the project in question, then going through the link to your computer and then to its tasks. Each task belongs to a workunit and you can click on that link. You'll see what the settings are and can look at who else is processing the tasks in the workunit.

I believe there are Boinc plans to allow projects to identify particularly reliable computers whose results are almost always successful and almost always validated. The projects would if they want be able to send to these computers tasks which wouldn't be duplicated. Occasionally these computers would process a duplicated task as a check. I don't know how far this plan has been developed but it seems to me a good idea in that it would reduce the amount of task duplication.

Inevitably, though, as projects use unknown computers belonging to unknown people they must check whether the results are good before researchers use the data.

I like double entry. I like ECC memory too.

However, an excess duplication of work also means that the code is as 'unknown' as the computers that they run on. right?

Hopefully, there are some really smart math/process guys optimizing these schedules, and its not micromanaged by researchers. grin

I did not have much luck on following the links to see what the settings the various projects use. Well, ok, found the roseta stats. Dang... lots of stats.

Oh I did see a compute error had occurred, but, also saw that another computer had the same client error on the wu. cool