BOINC & Velocity Engine (AltiVec)

Questions and Answers : Macintosh : BOINC & Velocity Engine (AltiVec)
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falofolio

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Message 8304 - Posted: 15 Jul 2004, 14:27:03 UTC
Last modified: 15 Jul 2004, 14:31:02 UTC

Hi,

Does anybody know, if BOINC (version 3.20) takes advantage of the Velocity Engine (AltiVec technology) of the G4/G5 processor? If not, is it possible (or useful) to modify the source code of BOINC by incorporating the AltiVec-code, so that BOINC will run with the Velocity Engine?

Somehow, I assume, it's useless to do it (unfortunately), because when I run BOINC, I see that it downloads the usual seti@home-classic program (version 3.08) for calculating the data. In that case, is the source code of the seti@home-classic program available somewhere on this site? Or will it be available in the future?

Hopefully, there is someone out there who knows more about this topic!
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James Mackay

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Message 9066 - Posted: 17 Jul 2004, 17:41:00 UTC

As the OS X version of BOINC doesn't have a screensaver option, nor as far as I know does it do any graphic work at all (all the work being done in the CPU) I'd be surprise if it was optimised for Altivec, ahem, sorry Steve J, I mean Velocity Engine...

I also hope there's someone out there who knows more on this topic!
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Profile toffuuu
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Message 9328 - Posted: 18 Jul 2004, 10:13:05 UTC - in response to Message 9066.  

> As the OS X version of BOINC doesn't have a screensaver option, nor as far as
> I know does it do any graphic work at all (all the work being done in the CPU)
> I'd be surprise if it was optimised for Altivec, ahem, sorry Steve J, I mean
> Velocity Engine...
>
> I also hope there's someone out there who knows more on this topic!


Hi, I'm not sure either , but however at this link, http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/download.php ,
theres is a download from 3rd party site from Team MacNN http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/download_other.php , theres super Optimized and regular Optimized compiles there for 10.3 for G3-G5's CPU's....
Hope this is of interest to ya guys..
Matt
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falofolio

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Message 10253 - Posted: 20 Jul 2004, 10:06:22 UTC - in response to Message 9066.  

> As the OS X version of BOINC doesn't have a screensaver option, nor as far as
> I know does it do any graphic work at all (all the work being done in the CPU)

As far as I know the Velocity Engine can be used for all sorts of intensive advanced mathamatical calculation tasks. So, it does not need to be graphical processes only for which you can use the VE. Anyone should correct me, when I'm wrong here.

Anyway, thanks for your help.
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falofolio

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Message 10254 - Posted: 20 Jul 2004, 10:18:39 UTC - in response to Message 9328.  
Last modified: 20 Jul 2004, 11:16:16 UTC

> at this link,
> http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/download.php ,
> theres is a download from 3rd party site from Team MacNN
> http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/download_other.php , theres super Optimized
> and regular Optimized compiles there for 10.3 for G3-G5's CPU's....

Wow, thanks!!! I didn't take the effort to look there as I supposed to find there only non-mac software. However, it only partially answers my question(s). There is still one question that remains:

BOINC downloads the classic program SETI@home version 3.08 to do the intensive calculation tasks, as far as my knowledge goes. So, why is it useful to optimize BOINC for the Velocity Engine, while it is not THE program that will do the calculations???


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Profile Shaktai
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Message 11068 - Posted: 22 Jul 2004, 4:53:34 UTC - in response to Message 10254.  
Last modified: 22 Jul 2004, 5:06:55 UTC

> BOINC downloads the classic program SETI@home version 3.08 to do the intensive
> calculation tasks, as far as my knowledge goes. So, why is it useful to
> optimize BOINC for the Velocity Engine, while it is not THE program that will
> do the calculations???

BOINC is the framework or front-end, and optimizing it appears to improve floating point performance. On my iBook G3 I saw about an 8-10% increase on SETI units with the standard optimized. We are testing some other optimizations, but it will be a few days before we have results. mikkyo, the Mac guru doing this stuff is getting some pretty impressive results on his G5(s). And we are looking at optimizing the SETI app source code as well. Early rumors are that it is impressive. We need to be sure it is stable before we release it to our team or the public.

It should be noted that the "super optimized" clients like lots of RAM but boosts floating point significantly. Preferrably 384 mb or greater.

Feel free to stop by our forums and ask questions. Some of the members who have worked with the clients can probably provide better answers.
http://forums.macnn.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=72


Join the best Macintosh team ever assembled.
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Questions and Answers : Macintosh : BOINC & Velocity Engine (AltiVec)


 
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