It has been noted that the BOINC client experiences high CPU usage when transferring files for SciLINC.

Augustine found a partial workaround to this. It is discussed on BOINCstats.

The reason for this is the number of files that are seperately downloaded/uploaded for each WU it is a massive waste of bandwidth resourses for both the project servers and the end users.

Wouldn't it be possible to put them into all into one file that can be transfered in 1 go (you could even consider compressing the file)

Actually the main reason for the hogging of the CPU is the size of the client_state xml file. BOINC updates this file on a regular basis and after every contact with a project, including file transfers and requests for work.

With about 150 workunits, the file size is approx 8MB and greater. On a slowish computer it takes about 20 seconds to update the file with the BOINC process running at 100% utilisation. As BPOINC runs at normal priority this makes the whole computer unresponsive as many people found out over the weekend.

I noticed this behaviour even when all the workunits had been downloaded and waiting to run becuase I'm attached to many projects that have no work. BOINC was barely able to keep up with polling for work round the projects!

Therefore the priority has to be to keep the size of the client_state xml file to a minimum which probably requires both zipping up the files and having longer workunits (so less are cached).

Wouldn't it be possible to put them into all into one file that can be transfered in 1 go (you could even consider compressing the file)

Actually the main reason for the hogging of the CPU is the size of the client_state xml file. BOINC updates this file on a regular basis and after every contact with a project, including file transfers and requests for work.

With about 150 workunits, the file size is approx 8MB and greater. On a slowish computer it takes about 20 seconds to update the file with the BOINC process running at 100% utilisation.

I'm not sure if this was already mentioned, but the big number of upload files is also a result of the very short calculation times of the WUs. As far as I recall each WU lasted only 1 second on my PC. I don't think data transfer makes sense at all with such short calculation times.