What are "Computing Units"?

Colleges & Universities University of California - San Diego
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<p>I clicked account info into my ucsd e-mail page…</p>

<p>Today’s beginning balance for ______: 35.00 Computing Units
Total weekly allocation: 35.00 Computing Units </p>

<h2>[Accounting</a> on Instructional Unix systems - Students - ACMS - UC San Diego](<a href=“UCSD IT Service Portal - Information Technology”>UCSD IT Service Portal - Information Technology)</h2>

<p>Rate: 0.1 Computing Unit (CU)/hour </p>

<p>Processor Time (CPU)
Rate: 10 CU/hour</p>

<p>In some cases the CPU rate is lower than 10 CU/hour; the logcost command, if available, will report the actual rate. Typically, the CPU rate on workstations is only 1 CU/hour. </p>

<p>Line Printer Output</p>

<h2>1 CU / 100 pages </h2>

<p>Anyone familiar with what these are for? I’m not familiar with Unix so I have NO IDEA what that article is even about… </p>

<p>Also how do I find out how much space I have used and total in my e-mail account?
It just says 0% usage for like 0.5mb in the folder manager… I can only assume its 100mb minimum from those numbers…</p>

<p>Thanks</p>

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<p>Computing Units is how much you can access systems UCSD has to do work on. IE if you’re a CSE major, you do all your coding on the UCSD server. If you’re just connected to the UCSD server it uses 0.1 CU/hour. If you compile code or use the CPU in anyway, it’s going to use up CU as well. For most things, that will be 1 CU/hour. If you print 100 pages that takes about 1 CU so printing one page would take 0.1 CU. Pretty much just assume 1 CU = 1 real world hour. So if you have 35 CU, you can have 35 hours/week of usage.</p>

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<p>Thanks, I’ll be taking ECE 15 which I think is a programming course… Maybe I’ll get a better idea of the system after second week of classes or so.</p>