Additionally Ageless please don't give me the oh dear its open source so it ought to be lesser then proprietary software cos our poor overworked staff can't deal with it stuff.

And where exactly did I say that? Or was it something you wanted to read into it where it wasn't needed to read that into it at all?

-- You implied it by the tone and content of your previous reply, you dont need to say something for your words to mean it, its stated as clearly as if you said it directly with your previous reply

And if by all accounts SETI project's own Dev's didn't actually make the CUDA client, then they're ought not to be as overworked as accounts have made out

Oh, so all the project developers do is make apps and then sit around on their tush all day reaping the fruits of their work, right? Ever heard of the whole back-end, servers, databases, Nitpicker? Does that need no attention? Have you ever read the technical news on what these guys are busy with? Nothing said about them doing that here on a low salary. Lower than they could earn in a commercial environment.

--I am well aware of such things so Obviously not, but it does mean that their work load was significantly reduced as apposed to them having to maintain that and develop the CUDA client, which mean should part of their duties be developing future clients (which it is to my understanding) it should noticable increase potential development time available for said project

I also think you misunderstood the use of the open source code here at Seti in the first place. It's primarily there so you can port it over to platforms and operating systems that not natively have a Seti application.

-- that may be its purpose, but hardly the limit of its potential


You seem to think that Seti is a big business. They aren't. Check the project personnel and count with how many they are.

--I was under the impression it has a grand total of one employee and the rest volunteer's, and no I didnt click the link I dont have time, however it is entirely and utterly the most irrelevant comment you could come up with as I pointed out, free volunteer dev's are available should sufficient work be put into collecting them, I walked into a few colleges and came out with a few volunteer dev's each and frankly more applicants for it then I need for a games design project happily each entirely working for free just for their name in the credits, I'm sure something of true scientific value that additionally holds such potential to captivate the human imagination as this must be capable of providing sufficient attraction to hoover up a fair number of programmer's currently out of work, or in low-end jobs looking for a challange.

Take advantage of the current economic upheal to gain a volunteer force that is capable of acheiving things far faster, even if many stay purely for the duration of the CL development with a relative handful remaining afterwards for maintenance and minor updates, there is great potential.

Windows 7 is in release candiate stage, moreover the final RC stage, as Technet Plus subscriber, MBCS and having beta'd windows 2000 and onwards I'm quite familar with the process, a release candiate's underlying architecture(short of a catastrophic issue discovered during the RC phase requiring some kind of re-design) is complete, anything designed to work with a final RC will work on the finished product, the main differrences between it and the released product are minor bug fixes and cosmetics.

Windows 7 RTM will be out in July, the RTM is to all intense and purposes the released OS, and what will be found on your CD, and soon available to companies and to professionals, aiding quick development.

Even were this not the case with Windows 7 however you can get away with designing something for vista, as at its heart Windows 7 is vista, with a few new bells and whistles some new graphical pizaze, a modified interface and the missing optimizations but otherwise comparitvly 7 is like the vista sp2 to vista in the manor of xp sp2's was vs xp, except frankly xp sp2 was much more of a change from original xp then windows 7 is to vista.

Neverthless supporting ATI card's via OpenCL should boinc work with vista already(which it does) requires no special consideration for either dx11 or windows 7... just work on cl for vista/xp and as a bonus it'll work for windows 7.

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and no I didnt click the link I dont have time

Then I'll rest my case. Have fun.

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Additionally Ageless please don't give me the oh dear its open source so it ought to be lesser then proprietary software cos our poor overworked staff can't deal with it stuff.

No, not that it should be "lesser", only that with so few people, and volunteers can only get so far with companies ("Hi, I'm calling on behalf of SETI@Home..." "Who?" "SETI@Home and we would like..." "I'm sorry, you've got the wrong number, this is VIA, not SEBIcomingHOME" clik). People should most certainly understand that things will take longer to get done because good code takes a while to write and troubleshoot.

That's exactly the kinda crud I heard when I made the post about supporting GPU processing in the first place, along with the prize tidbit of information from someone claiming comptency saying SETI would run SLOWER on gpu's then cpu's "as its the wrong kind of processing for it" and be like a old 1ghz p4 per.... I did at least have technical understanding of the functions of it to know that was bupkis, but it seems being given a fully written app by nvidia turned out to be what was necessary to dissuade that opinion.

I believe I'm the one who told you that it would be SLOWER - but you forget the context. First and foremost, the AGP bus, during testing at the time, was deemed to slow down the GPU overall. Notice that CUDA didn't come out until PCI-e, which is a bus that's much faster. Also notice how time can make a difference - just because something is said in the past, doesn't mean it can't change with new knowledge and information.

Secondly, what I told you long ago was that I wasn't sure how many bits of accuracy SETI@Home needed for its processing, and that if it needed any kind of high precision accuracy, that most GPUs out there would not be able to live up to the 80bit accuracy of most FPUs today, let alone SSE implementations that support 128bit operations. I believe during my time here I have discovered that SETI only needs 2bits of floating point accuracy, so the problem I mentioned is moot.

And if by all accounts SETI project's own Dev's didn't actually make the CUDA client, then they're ought not to be as overworked as accounts have made out

...and you'd be wrong here as well. Just because the Devs didn't make the CUDA client, doesn't mean they've been sitting on their collective asses doing nothing but waiting for other people to do their work. There is a whole slew of features and bug fixes that are being worked on at the same time - for both the BOINC client and the BOINC Server code, as well as the BOINC message board infrastructure that has been custom-built to go along side all their other custom code.

open-source software should be superior to close-source not the other way around

That depends on how many people are contributing to open source, and how talented their skills are. Your flat statement is false.

the whole point of everyone being able to contribute, if you haven't got enough people maybe ya just not advertising the requirement for volunteer's enough, do so

Not all types of open source are that simple. Just like Linux Torvalds holds the final say in the Linux kernel, the BOINC Devs reserve the final say in all things BOINC. Code needs to be reviewed, tested, debugged. Its not just a matter of more hands in the pot, but making sure each hand isn't creating more work for the other.

given a plethora of newly work students with degree level comptency(well ok yes that means beginner with many students, but at least some have to be half-way competent) with nothing better to do I'm sure there are plenty of available, in the UK its expected 20% of the graduating class this year will be out of work, i certainly have heard no mention of recruiting, other then when requesting new features or more accurately information about them, given that creating them should be a given due to the obvious benefits... to spell it out...

See above. I personally don't see why everyone wants to toss the work at the undergrads or the newly grads as if they're cheap labor, or as if they're so completely bored that they don't have anything better to do than to donate their free time to writing a program that they may or may not even care about.

Why its simple enough, the vast majority of consumer PC users of xp (and vista)(given xp's no longer mainstream support) will be upgrading to Windows 7 within 6-12 months of release many in the first 6, either with new machines or upgrades, out of these a large proportion will be tempted and a hefty number purchase the new dx11 ati card's along with it, due to the no doubt the many gloating we have dx11 you don't advertising campaigns one can expect to be released from ATI closer to release.

This means just like nvidia when it scooped ati on dx10 in early days, many will be buying ati this time around with ati nearing the next generation whilst nvidia finally produces a dx11 card in 6 months time, their dx10 and dx11 offerings will both be/are better value for money and generally superior in gaming that means ALLOT of dx11 ati card's can be expected to be in use.

Regardless of how many cards sell, the most important thing is that the code is stable and accurate. Stability, like any IT Manager will tell you, only comes with time. This doesn't mean that SETI, or BOINC, has to be on the bleeding edge as soon as things are announced or released. Its better to wait for the final spec, then get developer support, then write the code, test, troubleshoot, test some more.

As it is/was, the CUDA app was far from perfect on initial release. In fact, it still has its problems and nVidia doesn't seem to be too willing to help fix the problems (or maybe its not nVidia's responsibility, I don't know).

These things take time, no matter how many requests you get.

And any BOINC project that can capitalize on that will get a significant boost to the available processing power that can be brought to bear on it, which frankly the whole point of BOINC in the first place, to generate the maximum amount of processing power per project possible.

...while maintaining stability lest they lose volunteers whom become frustrated with poorly working software that can only get better/stable over time.

Waiting until a technology is aged is not the way to go at this time, dev's should be trying to recruit as many volunteer folks as possible figure it out for themselves and get the darn thing running asap to capitalize on it in time for Windows 7 release.

Unfortunately, you're looking at this all wrong, and this last paragraph shows exactly the problem with your aggressive progressive thinking. There's nothing wrong with wanting to get more processing power, and there's nothing wrong with many of your suggestions on the surface, but the only thing you have not taken into account throughout your entire tirade here in this thread is the opposite of what you just stated here: good code takes time, and time means you will not have it available immediately. Heck, BOINC didn't even have a "Vista compatible" client until nearly a year after Vista's release, because at any moment during the Beta release, Microsoft can make any change they wish, which means that any developer time spent on making it work will be down the drain and they'd have to start from scratch all over again. This is why many developers wait for official releases and don't usually test their code against Betas/unfinished/immature code - just like BOINC is doing with OpenCL support.

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Additionally Ageless please don't give me the oh dear its open source so it ought to be lesser then proprietary software cos our poor overworked staff can't deal with it stuff.

And where exactly did I say that? Or was it something you wanted to read into it where it wasn't needed to read that into it at all?

-- You implied it by the tone and content of your previous reply, you dont need to say something for your words to mean it, its stated as clearly as if you said it directly with your previous reply

Or maybe you're reading too much into what someone else says...

And if by all accounts SETI project's own Dev's didn't actually make the CUDA client, then they're ought not to be as overworked as accounts have made out

Oh, so all the project developers do is make apps and then sit around on their tush all day reaping the fruits of their work, right? Ever heard of the whole back-end, servers, databases, Nitpicker? Does that need no attention? Have you ever read the technical news on what these guys are busy with? Nothing said about them doing that here on a low salary. Lower than they could earn in a commercial environment.

--I am well aware of such things so Obviously not, but it does mean that their work load was significantly reduced as apposed to them having to maintain that and develop the CUDA client, which mean should part of their duties be developing future clients (which it is to my understanding) it should noticable increase potential development time available for said project

Having a lesser workload doesn't mean the workload itself is any more maintainable by so few resources.

I also think you misunderstood the use of the open source code here at Seti in the first place. It's primarily there so you can port it over to platforms and operating systems that not natively have a Seti application.

-- that may be its purpose, but hardly the limit of its potential

Most certainly it is not the limit of its potential. But likewise it is also hte point that the devs really have too much work to do, so work takes significantly longer to complete.

...and just like you don't want to hear it about the SETI team having so few, I don't want to hear about how they should toss the work to some college student who's just bored to death simply waiting for someone to give them something to do.

You seem to think that Seti is a big business. They aren't. Check the project personnel and count with how many they are.

--I was under the impression it has a grand total of one employee and the rest volunteer's, and no I didnt click the link I dont have time, however it is entirely and utterly the most irrelevant comment you could come up with as I pointed out, free volunteer dev's are available should sufficient work be put into collecting them, I walked into a few colleges and came out with a few volunteer dev's each and frankly more applicants for it then I need for a games design project happily each entirely working for free just for their name in the credits, I'm sure something of true scientific value that additionally holds such potential to captivate the human imagination as this must be capable of providing sufficient attraction to hoover up a fair number of programmer's currently out of work, or in low-end jobs looking for a challange.

Take advantage of the current economic upheal to gain a volunteer force that is capable of acheiving things far faster, even if many stay purely for the duration of the CL development with a relative handful remaining afterwards for maintenance and minor updates, there is great potential.

That all sounds nice in theory, and it would be wonderful if we could all just work together as one cohesive unit - just imagine the things we humans could accomplish with no fighting, no wars, no famine.

Reality doesn't quite mesh well with our demands and our dreams.

Windows 7 is in release candiate stage, moreover the final RC stage, as Technet Plus subscriber, MBCS and having beta'd windows 2000 and onwards I'm quite familar with the process, a release candiate's underlying architecture(short of a catastrophic issue discovered during the RC phase requiring some kind of re-design)

Like what happened with Vista, and they scrapped the project up to three times I hear?

is complete, anything designed to work with a final RC will work on the finished product, the main differrences between it and the released product are minor bug fixes and cosmetics.

Doesn't matter. There just isn't enough resources to go around.

This is why the open source comment is thrust upon you. Its easy to sit back and talk about how things should be done, and how things could be done, but its another thing entirely to actually get it done - so as long as their progress isn't satisfactory to those who think it could be better, well, there's always the choice of doing it yourself. If that's not feasible, then the least people can do is simply wait until its finished - and that may be months because of the few resources the "haves" are doing while the "have nots" are still being armchair quaterbacks.

Neverthless supporting ATI card's via OpenCL should boinc work with vista already(which it does) requires no special consideration for either dx11 or windows 7... just work on cl for vista/xp and as a bonus it'll work for windows 7.

...except without working code/example code, the time to troubleshoot it, the time to debug it, the time to test it...

Not everything works in reality the way we want it to be in theory.

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I'm going to lock this thread because its getting out of hand, and wandering toward a flame fest.

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