= Automated estimation of job and app version characteristics =

== Goals ==

 * eliminate the need for projects to supply FLOPs estimate for jobs
 * eliminate the need for projects to supply FLOPS estimates for app versions (in app_plan())
 * simplify credit-granting policy

== Outline ==

=== Server ===
For each app, maintain
 * flops_avg: the estimated average number of FLOPs used by the app's jobs
 * flops_stdev: the standard deviation of the above

Note: if a project has different types of jobs for a given app,
with widely differing durations,
they should create separate apps for them.
That will reduce the variance of the estimate.

Initially this is set to a high value (e.g. 1 GFLOP-day).

Update: whenever a complete job is reported,
let x = duration * (host's flops_est).
Update flops_avg in a way that favors decrease over increase.
That way, hosts that execute the app efficiently (close to peak hardware speed)
have a larger weight in the estimate.

Job completion time estimate:
app.flops_avg / (host's flops_est for this app version)


=== client ===
for each app version, maintain

 * flops_est: dynamic estimate of the real FLOPS of the app version on this host.

Initially this is based on the peak hardware speed, i.e. ngpus*(GPU peak FLOPs) + avg_ncus * (whetstone).
Update: when a job finishes, let x = (job.flops / duration).
Update accordingly (but cap at peak hardware speed).

Note: this replaces "duration correction factor".

=== protocol ===

Request message: add flops_est for each app version

== Credit ==

Grant each validated job credit proportional to app.flops_avg

Note: a user doesn't get more credit for a longer-than-average job.
But it averages out in the end.