Difference between revisions of "Why does the "to completion time" go up?"

Revision as of 20:11, 2 June 2016

People who have only just installed BOINC will often notice that the "to completion time" on tasks will go up, rather than down. This happens because your computer hasn't done anything for the affected project yet, BOINC hasn't had time yet to learn how long tasks take.

The "to completion time" is an estimate. Depending on the speed of your computer's hardware, the actual task will take less or more time than this estimate. No project can give out exact time frames for tasks, as there's no hardware configuration out there that's exactly the same as any other.

BOINC has code included with which it will learn how long tasks take in general, called the (Task) Duration Correction Factor. During the course of a couple of tasks, BOINC will learn how long they really take and more correctly show the estimated run-time by increasing or decreasing this DCF.

What can throw off BOINC's corrected estimate? 1. Far different run-time length of tasks on the same project and same science application. 2. A lot of different science applications with different tasks. 3. Using the GPU mixed with CPUs. 4. A change in the project's estimate on task run-time. 5. A change in hardware on your computer (CPU or GPU or both).