Hello all, I am a recent new member to this project.
I have been a part of a few boinc projects in the past but I noticed something unique about this projects memory usage. It is very low!
I love playing around with computers but really do not know much about the software side of things. Can anyone comment on why so little RAM is needed for these workunits? I am currently seeing somewhere between 0.5-1.5 megabytes of RAM usage per workunit.
Thanks in advance!

Size does not matter ;)

I think the amount of RAM is not directly linked to the efficiency of the calculation, a tiny algorithm can do miracles :)

It mainly depend on the type of calculation actually performed and how it is implemented in the algorithm, some will need to store big "table of result" in memory to process until the end (and maybe just keep a small fraction of it in the final outcome) and others will not rely on "what was calculated before" to reach the outcome.

There are other boinc projects that have a low RAM requirement.

Check there.

(I strongly recommend you install WUProp project on all your machines, the tasks consume hardly no resource and don't use one slot : they gather usage statists to feed the result page of the project and help the community + it also keeps track of time statistics on your own crunching and provides you wonderful stars you can add to your badge signature, based on the time spend regardless the power of your machine(s) :) )

I have been a part of a few boinc projects in the past but I noticed something unique about this projects memory usage. It is very low!

It is, compared to most projects. Nothing to worry about. Some of the ClimatePrediction Oifs work units take almost 8GBytes each.

Here is what my machine is doing for Boinc at the moment. the RES column is the working set size of each of the tasks. The %MEM colun is the precent fo my total RAM that is. At the moment, one of my 8 memory modules quit yesterday, so the numbers are a little different than usual..

    PID    PPID USER      PR  NI S    RES  %MEM  %CPU  P     TIME+ COMMAND                                                                   
 157939    2196 boinc     39  19 S 765680   0.7   0.0  8 161:02.35 ../../projects/einstein.phys.uwm.edu/hsgamma_FGRP5_1.08_x86_64-pc-linux-+ 
 143472    2196 boinc     39  19 S 214084   0.2   0.0 12 373:39.40 ../../projects/einstein.phys.uwm.edu/einsteinbinary_BRP4G_1.33_x86_64-pc+ 
 182447    2196 boinc     39  19 R  78736   0.1  99.7  7  65:23.95 ../../projects/www.worldcommunitygrid.org/wcgrid_mcm1_map_7.61_x86_64-pc+ 
 185461    2196 boinc     39  19 R  71812   0.1  99.2 10  28:37.51 ../../projects/www.worldcommunitygrid.org/wcgrid_mcm1_map_7.61_x86_64-pc+ 
 186259    2196 boinc     39  19 R  68820   0.1  99.6  0  13:12.30 ../../projects/www.worldcommunitygrid.org/wcgrid_mcm1_map_7.61_x86_64-pc+ 
 184957    2196 boinc     39  19 S  51736   0.0  99.6 12  38:26.95 ../../projects/www.worldcommunitygrid.org/wcgrid_scc1_vina_7.18_x86_64-p+ 
   2196       1 boinc     30  10 S  51476   0.0   0.2  2  33435:12 /usr/bin/boinc                                                            
 183436    2196 boinc     39  19 R   2816   0.0  99.3 11  51:29.00 ../../projects/denis.usj.es_denisathome/DENIS_Myocyte_Beta_0.21_x86_64-p+ 
 184785    2196 boinc     39  19 R   2816   0.0  99.4  3  41:04.49 ../../projects/denis.usj.es_denisathome/DENIS_Myocyte_Beta_0.21_x86_64-p+ 
 183485    2196 boinc     39  19 R   2528   0.0  99.5  4  49:55.06 ../../projects/denis.usj.es_denisathome/DENIS_Myocyte_Beta_0.21_x86_64-p+ 
 185677    2196 boinc     39  19 S   2528   0.0  88.6 14  24:29.14 ../../projects/denis.usj.es_denisathome/DENIS_Myocyte_Beta_0.21_x86_64-p+ 
 185878    2196 boinc     39  19 R   2528   0.0  99.6  5  19:55.76 ../../projects/denis.usj.es_denisathome/DENIS_Myocyte_Beta_0.21_x86_64-p+ 
 186012    2196 boinc     39  19 R   2528   0.0  99.6  1  17:41.43 ../../projects/denis.usj.es_denisathome/DENIS_Myocyte_Beta_0.21_x86_64-p+ 
 186542    2196 boinc     39  19 R   2512   0.0  99.5 13   7:23.22 ../../projects/denis.usj.es_denisathome/DENIS_Myocyte_Beta_0.21_x86_64-p+ 
 186290    2196 boinc     39  19 R   2508   0.0  99.6  6  12:22.50 ../../projects/denis.usj.es_denisathome/DENIS_Myocyte_Beta_0.21_x86_64-p+ 

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8 GB per task is extreme, very few projects use that much. Many projects (apps) have a "regular" use of RAM, if this ever means anything in computing :)

Check the link I give above, you'll have an idea for all existing projects and applications, depending on the OS used.

Check the link I give above, you'll have an idea for all existing projects and applications, depending on the OS used.

That table seems incomplete and out of date; at least for ClimatePrediction.

Here is a brief description of a CPDN program for a weather prodiction class of tasks. I have run quite a bunch of them on Linux with what I assume is testing data, and it used a trifle less RAM than they suggest here. These took less than a day of computer time, but I assume real data would take longer.

Technical information:

Please ensure 'Leave non-GPU tasks in memory while suspended' is set in Disk/Memory options of boincmgr

CPDN app-name: oifs_43r3_bl
Run time: ~6 hrs/task on a modern CPU
Max memory: ~7Gb
Total number of files: 354 files
Model output: 16Mb per output step (uncompressed)
Total size of uploaded files: 1.5GB
Checkpoint filesize: ~800Mb (these are periodically created & deleted in the slot dir and not uploaded)

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