Distributed Hardware Evolution Project (DHEP)
Project Links
Project Site: https://www.dhep.ga/
Project FAQ: https://www.dhep.ga/faq.php
Related Publications: https://users.sussex.ac.uk/~mmg20/index.html#pubs
Discussion Links
Poll Summary
[Whitelist] Should the project Distributed Hardware Evolution Project (DHEP) be whitelisted?
- Yes
- No
- Abstain
Introduction
DHEP is a project run by Dr. Michael Garvie out of the University of Sussex. An excerpt from its website is provided below. More detailed information can be found at the project site and FAQ linked above.
Self-Diagnosing Hardware is capable of detecting deviations from its normal behaviour due to faults. Self-Diagnosis is important especially in mission critical systems such as medical equipment, transport controllers and those in hazardous environments such as space missions and nuclear power stations. Built-In Self-Test (BIST) is widely used yet commonly requires more than 100% area overhead or off-line testing. However in mission critical systems off-line testing is unsuitable because we must diagnose failure immediately. The standard on-line solution is a voting system with two copies of the module being diagnosed which is capable of detecting faults immediately by comparing the outputs of the copies. However, this solution requires 100% redundancy for the extra module plus more logic for the voter. In the last 40 years of CED research, spawned by the NASA aerospace program, conventional design has not come up with a significant improvement to the voting system as such an on-line CED solution. You can help us to arrive at the next generation of self-diagnosing circuits.
Eligibility
DHEP passes all requirements defined at:
https://gridcoin.ddns.net/pages/project-list-process.php
and as shown at:
https://gridcoin.ddns.net/pages/project-list.php
Process and Credit Information
DHEP runs a Genetic Algorithm on your computer. These run for a non-defined time until a good solution is found. Hence "progress" within a workunit is meaningless and in fact workunits are dummies and do not represent actual work done.
The DHEP BOINC app will connect to our servers every 15 minutes and upload their progress. You can check how much you have made today (and yesterday) at: http://dhep.ga/statsdailyrankings.php. You can check how many of your cores are actively crunching by checking how many times your username (with spaces as _) appears at: http://dhep.ga/statstopology.php.
Credit is awarded by a Validated Trickle system and is not awarded on workunit completion, because as mentioned above workunits are dummies. Hence you will receive credit by how much work is done within a workunit.
Credit is awarded proportional to how much is contributed scientifically. This is roughly proportional to Ghz core/hours. So a core twice as fast will receive roughly twice the credit. Credit is awarded hourly.
Restarting your BOINC client will show workunits resuming at 0%. This is normal and no work has been lost because you have already been awarded credit for all previous work done within the workunit. Remember the DHE BOINC app connects to our servers every 15 minutes to upload its progress. There is little value in having a percentage completion figure for a task with a non-defined processing time.
All that said, workunits will occasionally end. This is when the goal at http://dhep.ga/statsgoal.php is changed which is roughly every two to four weeks.
Computation Error will occasionally be the outcome of workunits. In most cases this is normal: when the server restarts with different class files the client will detect this through a NoClassDefFoundException. This will trigger the client to shutdown and restart as another WU to pick up the new class files.
Workunits can be aborted at any time without any loss of progress or credit. However a Genetic Algorithm is more efficient when islands are connected continuously.
Badges will be awarded and there are a variety of stats on which they will be based such as the number of times the Best of all Islands was arrived at on your island (aka 'Who's got the Knack'): all stats visible here: http://dhep.ga/statsrankings.php.
You can also view live progress of the current run at http://dhep.ga/statsgoal.php and live genetic strains analysis at http://dhep.ga/statsstrains.php, and a list of GPL licenced results at http://dhep.ga/statstschof.php including an online circuit simulator to try them out.
Credit is awarded hourly for processing done within workunits.
Additional Information
There is also a standalone (non-BOINC) client available at: http://www.dhep.ga/download.php
The definitive DHE stats are at: http://dhep.ga/statsrankings.php
Workunits are placeholder dummies of non-defined duration with no required validation
Percentage progress can be ignored as is meaningless for tasks of non-defined duration
Gridcoin is already in contact with DHEP administrators and they are ready for the surge in computation
Poll
The poll will be a 2 week poll weighted by both magnitude and balance.
Start Date: September 14, 2018
End Date: September 28, 2018
If accepted, the process defined at:
https://gridcoin.ddns.net/pages/project-list-process.php
will be followed. As defined in that process, validation requires 7.5% of Total Vote Weight. We will be observing AVW scores during the poll to inform future development of an AVW system.
[Whitelist] Should the project Distributed Hardware Evolution Project (DHEP) be whitelisted?
- Yes
- No
- Abstain