@ Raistmer

Your V7 mod thread is closed, so I ask here..

In the app_info.xml is this entry:

<avg_ncpus>0.040000</avg_ncpus>
<max_ncpus>0.040000</max_ncpus>

This is for the CPU-support for the GPU?
That the CPU [one Core] support max. 0.04 % the GPU?

AFAIK it's just hint to BOINC how much CPU this app will use that should allow correct scheduling, but apparently only in theory.

If I would like to crunch only on the GPU/s, I could insert there 1.000000 ?
Or I could delete the 6 [all] entries?

Sorry, I try to increase performance, if you wanna decrease it you should figure out how by himself ;)

Which BOINC Version you recommend for your mod?

No recommendations on BOINC part. I use 6.4.5 still.
In general - I recommend most stable version that support correct CUDA/CPU scheduling and project pairing... but not sure it exist ;)

And which version for stock CUDA?

All needed libs included. If you find that it will be faster with another CUDA DLL set, please, report here.

<ncpus>NUMBER_OF_CORES+2</ncpus> entry is needed for only GPU-crunching?
[Quad-CPU + 2 GPUs]

No, it needed to fully utilize both CPU and GPU, look head posts of both threads...

Ok, my little C2D is chugging along nicely except for one little annoyance. During our last little outage I ran out of MBs. When it didn't have anything to keep the cuda busy it picked up a third AP to crunch. I let it go for awhile and noticed it caused both APs to slow down. Now that I have more MBs, it seems to think it was ok to run three APs so it keeps picking up on the AP instead of starting an MB on the Cuda. I have to watch the little bugger to make sure it picks up an MB each time it finishes one.

LOL, BOINC is quite capable of doing that itself without Raistmer's help.

Since adding CUDA to a quad (BOINC v6.4.5, ncpus=5), I'm often seeing five CPU cores in use, plus a sixth task on the GPU. Doesn't matter if you're running fast tasks on the GPU (sorts itself out with the reschedule when the GPU task finishes), but when you pick up the occasional VLAR it can stay in 'n+1+1' mode for quite a while.

Raistmer:
Now that there are no more AP WUs (I'm only running S@H), I've noticed the following using V8a:

After some time I hear that my GPU fan is silent - confirmed in task manager - 5 CPU-tasks are running on Quad system, and Cuda-executable is 100% idle - no GPU-feeding. I can also confirm by looking at the CPU-time for each completed WU being "CPU-time" - much longer than for the GPU-crunched WUs.
I exit and restart boincmgr and the GPU is once again being fed and being fed for some time until this repeats itself.

Is this "working as designed"?

Morten Ross

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Morten Ross

Is this "working as designed"?

Morten Ross

No, it definitely works not as designed :)
Could you next time you noticed such thing do next:
1) try to open gpu_file_lock in some editor, notepad for example - could you open it?
2) try to wait till one of CPU tasks (one of 5 CPU tasks in that condition) finishes. Will next one be started on GPU or on CPU again ?

I will look closely on my host if this behavior repeats here (although I have some einstein tasks to do too)

Hi,

The gpu_file_lock is Zero bytes and timestamp is 01.02.2009 12:02 (?).... I cannot copy this file nor open it, so it's really locked :-)

I notice that the GPU WU is in the current scenario set to "Waiting to run"..... It's got a deadline of 13.02.200913.40:20, whilst the running ones have 13.02.2009 13:39:42 - they run on hight priority.

It seems the problem might lie in prioritization mechanism...?

When I restart boincmgr, the "Waiting to run" task is still waiting and now the GPU is fed one of the perviously CPU-fed WUs.

Morten

---

Morten Ross

@ Raistmer

Your V7 mod thread is closed, so I ask here..

In the app_info.xml is this entry:

<avg_ncpus>0.040000</avg_ncpus>
<max_ncpus>0.040000</max_ncpus>

This is for the CPU-support for the GPU?
That the CPU [one Core] support max. 0.04 % the GPU?

AFAIK it's just hint to BOINC how much CPU this app will use that should allow correct scheduling, but apparently only in theory.

If I would like to crunch only on the GPU/s, I could insert there 1.000000 ?
Or I could delete the 6 [all] entries?

Sorry, I try to increase performance, if you wanna decrease it you should figure out how by himself ;)

Thanks for reply!

Sorry for my ignorance.. I have no knowledge to mod the app_info.xml..

Only to 'increase' my knowledge.. ;-)
I could delete this entries or mod it to 1.000000, or it will crash something?

I would like to test, how much the performance of my two GPUs with highest possible CPU support is..

This app_info.xml would be well for only MB - CUDA crunching on GPUs?

<app_info>
<app>
<name>setiathome_enhanced</name>
</app>
<file_info>
<name>MB_6.08_mod_VLAR_kill_CUDA.exe</name>
<executable/>
</file_info>
<file_info>
<name>cudart.dll</name>
<executable/>
</file_info>
<file_info>
<name>cufft.dll</name>
<executable/>
</file_info>
<file_info>
<name>libfftw3f-3-1-1a_upx.dll</name>
<executable/>
</file_info>
<app_version>
<app_name>setiathome_enhanced</app_name>
<version_num>608</version_num>
<plan_class>cuda</plan_class>
<coproc>
<type>CUDA</type>
<count>1</count>
</coproc>
<file_ref>
<file_name>MB_6.08_mod_VLAR_kill_CUDA.exe</file_name>
<main_program/>
</file_ref>
<file_ref>
	<file_name>cudart.dll</file_name>
</file_ref>
<file_ref>
	<file_name>cufft.dll</file_name>
</file_ref>
<file_ref>
	<file_name>libfftw3f-3-1-1a_upx.dll</file_name>
</file_ref>
</app_version>
</app_info>

---

Hi,

The gpu_file_lock is Zero bytes and timestamp is 01.02.2009 12:02 (?).... I cannot copy this file nor open it, so it's really locked :-)

I notice that the GPU WU is in the current scenario set to "Waiting to run"..... It's got a deadline of 13.02.200913.40:20, whilst the running ones have 13.02.2009 13:39:42 - they run on hight priority.

It seems the problem might lie in prioritization mechanism...?

When I restart boincmgr, the "Waiting to run" task is still waiting and now the GPU is fed one of the perviously CPU-fed WUs.

Morten

Ah... Sorry, only BOINC restart, indeed, in this situation...
As I already said, maybe in another thread, BOINC goes crazy in High priority mode... It can start dozen apps even if "leave app in memory" enabled... They all will hang in memory and it will start another and another ones...
If someone knows how to forbid BOINC from switching from not completed task to another one, please, post here.
BOINC devs made BOINC too clever, it thinks it know better what app should work and sometimes it leads to undesired effects...

How do you set up the cc_config.xml file for a core i7 chip?
I have one coming next week.

Interesting question indeed. It depends of how good AK v8 and AP will utilize HT.
In HT P4 days pair of opt app could perform worse than single opt app with HT disabled.

If app is highly optimized it tends to use all available hardware resources of core - there is too low amount of idle core parts that can benefit from HyperThreading.

So I consider it as open field for experimentation on this stage.

So do I set it for 4 cores+1 or 8 cors+1

I got my i7 up and crunching with 8+1 seems to be crunching right along.

next one be started on GPU

---

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not Eureka! (I found it!) but rather, 'hmm... that's funny...'" -- Isaac Asimov

If someone knows how to forbid BOINC from switching from not completed task to another one, please, post here.

The only way I have found to ease this situation is to run with a long switch interval, which can give rise to some oddities and does not cure all the issues as there are still internal events that can cause BOINC to ignore everything you have told it ... at the moment I run with a 12 hour (720 min) interval and for the most part tasks are run to completion before another is started.

One more point, this works better and better the more cores you have running. So, it is so-so on duals, fair on 4 core and good on 8 ... can't wait for a system that has more than 8 CPUs ...

Version for SSE2 only CPUs added.

SSSE3 variant updated in attempt to reschedule CPU-assigned SETI MB task if GPU sits idle.
Should decrease GPU idle time and increase system performance.
http://lunatics.kwsn.net/gpu-crunching/ak-v8-cuda-mb-team-work-mod.msg13778.html#msg13778

After following this thread, I've now got 5 WU crunching at the same time. They all look the same on the task list. Any way to tell which one is running on the GPU? Tough to tell when one is running high priority and the other 4 are not. The one running on 6.08, rather than 5.28, perhaps?

Q6700 processor, 8800 GTS video card.

Even if the GPU goes the same speed at the Q6700, this is going to be a nice RAC bump for the machine.

---

I have my i7 920 and 9500gt up and running with 6.4.5 boinc app and the cpus set to 9 in the cc_config.xml file and I got errors and the Wus started to get less and less until it was only doing 1 WU at a time instead of 9 WUs. So I reloaded BOINC 6.4.5 app and removed the Raistmer app and set the cpus to 9 in the cc_config.xml file and I started to do 9 WUs again. Bonic says I have 1 processor and not 4 or 8. If I set it to 9 cpus n the cc_config.xml file will it slow down my WUs or do I set it for 5 cpus in the cc_config.xml file or to 2 cpus in the cc_config.xml file?

After following this thread, I've now got 5 WU crunching at the same time. They all look the same on the task list. Any way to tell which one is running on the GPU? Tough to tell when one is running high priority and the other 4 are not. The one running on 6.08, rather than 5.28, perhaps?

Q6700 processor, 8800 GTS video card.

Even if the GPU goes the same speed at the Q6700, this is going to be a nice RAC bump for the machine.

Look at Progress bar and CPU time in "Tasks" section of BOINC. You'll see that for 4 tasks CPU time increases each second, but for fifth one it grows very slowly despite good progress, and final CPU time is several times smaller than for other WUs. It means that this fifth WU is being crunched by GPU.

For example my PC needs about 50 minutes of CPU time to crunch standard 60-credit MB WU at CPU and only 4 minutes of CPU time to crunch it using GPU (but actually GPU-crunching consumes about 15 minutes).

Also when GPU-crunching starts you'll see that CPU time increases but progress bar is idle. It happens because GPU initiation requires about 30 seconds when CPU is active but WU crunching wasn't started yet (so no moves in progress bar).

After following this thread, I've now got 5 WU crunching at the same time. They all look the same on the task list. Any way to tell which one is running on the GPU? Tough to tell when one is running high priority and the other 4 are not. The one running on 6.08, rather than 5.28, perhaps?

Q6700 processor, 8800 GTS video card.

Even if the GPU goes the same speed at the Q6700, this is going to be a nice RAC bump for the machine.

Look at Progress bar and CPU time in "Tasks" section of BOINC. You'll see that for 4 tasks CPU time increases each second, but for fifth one it grows very slowly despite good progress, and final CPU time is several times smaller than for other WUs. It means that this fifth WU is being crunched by GPU.

For example my PC needs about 50 minutes of CPU time to crunch standard 60-credit MB WU at CPU and only 4 minutes of CPU time to crunch it using GPU (but actually GPU-crunching consumes about 15 minutes).

Also when GPU-crunching starts you'll see that CPU time increases but progress bar is idle. It happens because GPU initiation requires about 30 seconds when CPU is active but WU crunching wasn't started yet (so no moves in progress bar).

Thanks
I found out that to enable hyper threading on W2kAS I have to install the OS while the i7 chip is installed. I installed the OS when I had a celeron installed. So I have to re-install Window 2000 Advance Server in order for it to enable hyper threading with the i7 chip installed.

Is there still no way to enable multi GPU processing?

Is there still no way to enable multi GPU processing?

Well, I finally got both halves of my GTX295 going, if that counts, so don't look over your shoulder in a couple of weeks :)

F.
Vista x64
Boinc 6.6.3
NVidia 185.20 (Beta)

---

Is there still no way to enable multi GPU processing?

All is possible (in virtual world ;) ) but will require some amount of work.
If my hopes on BOINC itself will fail again maybe I will try to do multi-GPU support too (it's weird indeed - it's all BOINC functions, science app should not care about it at all. As soon as BOINC will support separate CPU and GPU apps for the same task set this "team" mod will be unneeded completely).

For now - either stock 6.08 or V7 of my mod.

There is some situation when VLAR autokill will waste resources:

If VLAR task is already near completion on CPU but re-scheduling to GPU occurs, almost complete task will be killed by CUDA app autokill mod.

To avoid such situation VLAR task will be not killed but processed on GPU if it was started before (if it has non-zero progress already). If it's fresh VLAR task it will be aborted as before.
That way CPU "investments" in task will be saved.

Update to CUDA app attached: http://lunatics.kwsn.net/gpu-crunching/ak-v8-cuda-mb-team-work-mod.msg13789.html#msg13789
This update appropriate to any SSE level of CPU.


ADDON: you can see if it works by this line in stderr:
"VLAR WU (AR: xxxxx )detected, but task partially done already, continuing computations"

Is there still no way to enable multi GPU processing?

Well, I finally got both halves of my GTX295 going, if that counts, so don't look over your shoulder in a couple of weeks :)

F.
Vista x64
Boinc 6.6.3
NVidia 185.20 (Beta)

OT

Just got the first GTX295 (out of two) installed...my neck should be just fine
*evil grin*

Please PM How-to if you feel like it...
/Anton