How do you know if the GPU is being used?

Questions and Answers : GPU applications : How do you know if the GPU is being used?
Message board moderation

To post messages, you must log in.

AuthorMessage
Dean Jones

Send message
Joined: 9 Sep 00
Posts: 6
Credit: 2,006,041
RAC: 0
Canada
Message 990786 - Posted: 21 Apr 2010, 2:34:19 UTC

MacBook Pro, OS X 10.6.3, 4 GB, nVidia 9600M GT with 512 MB

A week or so ago, I installed BOINC 6.10.44 and the requisite nVidia drivers. BOINC seems to recognize the GPU as it provides the following message on startup: Wed Apr 14 21:29:00 2010 NVIDIA GPU 0: GeForce 9600M GT (driver version unknown, CUDA version 3000, compute capability 1.1, 512MB, 80 GFLOPS peak)

I have instructed BOINC to keep a five day work buffer since I am sometimes away from wireless for days at a time. Presently, I have 94 work units ready to start.

I only do SETI. The computation times do not seem to have changed. How can I tell that the GPU is actually being used?


ID: 990786 · Report as offensive
Fred W
Volunteer tester

Send message
Joined: 13 Jun 99
Posts: 2524
Credit: 11,954,210
RAC: 0
United Kingdom
Message 990810 - Posted: 21 Apr 2010, 7:21:22 UTC - in response to Message 990786.  

All of the tasks in your task list are v6.03 so CUDA is not being used (those tasks would be v6.08 or v6.09). I don't know if there is a CUDA app for your setup - someone will be along with that info, no doubt, but "driver version not recognised" in your computer description seems rather significant.

F.
ID: 990810 · Report as offensive
Profile Gundolf Jahn

Send message
Joined: 19 Sep 00
Posts: 3184
Credit: 446,358
RAC: 0
Germany
Message 990812 - Posted: 21 Apr 2010, 7:36:35 UTC - in response to Message 990786.  

According to the Applications page, there's no stock CUDA application for the Mac. So, if you want to use your GPU for SETI, you'll have to look in the Number crunching subforum for keywords like "optimized application" or "anonymous platform" or "lunatics".

Gruß,
Gundolf
PS: The Applications link can be found from the PARTICIPATE link on each SETI page.
Computer sind nicht alles im Leben. (Kleiner Scherz)

SETI@home classic workunits 3,758
SETI@home classic CPU time 66,520 hours
ID: 990812 · Report as offensive
Dean Jones

Send message
Joined: 9 Sep 00
Posts: 6
Credit: 2,006,041
RAC: 0
Canada
Message 992043 - Posted: 26 Apr 2010, 13:18:01 UTC - in response to Message 990812.  

Thanks for the pointers.

I went to Lunatics and downloaded and installed the Astropulse application. It didn't go exactly as it was supposed to--I had to re-install BOINC twice to correct permissions--but it worked in the end. I now see SETI and Astropulse work units in my queue.

I have actually finished one of the Astropulse work units; I watched it as it executed. However, my questions remains "How do I know whether the GPU was/is being used?"
ID: 992043 · Report as offensive
Profile perryjay
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 20 Aug 02
Posts: 3377
Credit: 20,676,751
RAC: 0
United States
Message 992060 - Posted: 26 Apr 2010, 14:19:09 UTC - in response to Message 992043.  

Can you post the first 20 or so start-up messages from your BOINC Manager? That way we can see what you are looking at.


PROUD MEMBER OF Team Starfire World BOINC
ID: 992060 · Report as offensive
Profile skildude
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 4 Oct 00
Posts: 9541
Credit: 50,759,529
RAC: 60
Yemen
Message 992067 - Posted: 26 Apr 2010, 15:13:23 UTC - in response to Message 992043.  

dean you have a dual core cpu. So logic would tell you that if you see 3 WU's being processed that you are running a WU on the GPU


In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope
ID: 992067 · Report as offensive
Profile Gundolf Jahn

Send message
Joined: 19 Sep 00
Posts: 3184
Credit: 446,358
RAC: 0
Germany
Message 992122 - Posted: 26 Apr 2010, 19:51:39 UTC - in response to Message 992067.  

And there's always the application name of the running task.

Gruß,
Gundolf
Computer sind nicht alles im Leben. (Kleiner Scherz)

SETI@home classic workunits 3,758
SETI@home classic CPU time 66,520 hours
ID: 992122 · Report as offensive
Dean Jones

Send message
Joined: 9 Sep 00
Posts: 6
Credit: 2,006,041
RAC: 0
Canada
Message 992164 - Posted: 26 Apr 2010, 22:29:01 UTC - in response to Message 992122.  

Here are the startup messages:

Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 Starting BOINC client version 6.10.44 for x86_64-apple-darwin
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 log flags: file_xfer, sched_ops, task
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 Libraries: libcurl/7.19.7 OpenSSL/0.9.7l zlib/1.2.3 c-ares/1.6.0
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 Data directory: /Library/Application Support/BOINC Data
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 Processor: 2 GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9600 @ 2.80GHz [x86 Family 6 Model 23 Stepping 10]
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 Processor features: FPU VME DE PSE TSC MSR PAE MCE CX8 APIC SEP MTRR PGE MCA CMOV PAT PSE36 CLFSH DS ACPI MMX FXSR SSE SSE2 SS HTT TM SSE3 MON DSCPL VMX SMX EST TM2 SSSE3 CX16 TPR PDCM SSE4.1
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 OS: Darwin: 10.3.0
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 Memory: 4.00 GB physical, 161.55 GB virtual
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 Disk: 465.44 GB total, 161.30 GB free
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 Local time is UTC -6 hours
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 NVIDIA GPU 0: GeForce 9600M GT (driver version unknown, CUDA version 3000, compute capability 1.1, 512MB, 80 GFLOPS peak)
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 NVIDIA GPU 1 (not used): GeForce 9400M (driver version unknown, CUDA version 3000, compute capability 1.1, 254MB, 35 GFLOPS peak)
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 SETI@home Found app_info.xml; using anonymous platform
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 SETI@home URL http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/; Computer ID 5075208; resource share 50
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 SETI@home General prefs: from SETI@home (last modified 08-Aug-2005 10:06:13)
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 SETI@home Computer location: home
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 SETI@home General prefs: no separate prefs for home; using your defaults
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 Reading preferences override file
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 Preferences:
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 max memory usage when active: 2048.00MB
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 max memory usage when idle: 3686.40MB
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 max disk usage: 15.00GB
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 suspend work if non-BOINC CPU load exceeds 75 %
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 max download rate: 512000 bytes/sec
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 max upload rate: 512000 bytes/sec
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 (to change, visit the web site of an attached project,
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 or click on Preferences)
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 Not using a proxy
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 SETI@home Starting 29dc06af.21170.2117.4.10.218_0
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 SETI@home Starting task 29dc06af.21170.2117.4.10.218_0 using setiathome_enhanced version 603
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 SETI@home Starting 29dc06af.21170.2117.4.10.215_0
Thu Apr 22 15:21:52 2010 SETI@home Starting task 29dc06af.21170.2117.4.10.215_0 using setiathome_enhanced version 603

I have only ever seen two tasks running at one time. At the moment I have two Astropulse work units being executed, but I have seen two SETI and one SETI and one Astropulse executing at the same time. I thought that any GPU task required a bit of CPU to manage so that the number of tasks able to be concurrently executed was determined by the number of CPUS, not the number of GPUs.
ID: 992164 · Report as offensive
Profile Jord
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 9 Jun 99
Posts: 15184
Credit: 4,362,181
RAC: 3
Netherlands
Message 992169 - Posted: 26 Apr 2010, 22:49:22 UTC - in response to Message 992164.  

The Astropulse (AP) optimized Lunatics application runs on the CPU only. There is a hybrid CPU/GPU AP application, but it runs only on ATI GPUs, not on Nvidia GPUs and only on Windows at that.

There are no stock (supplied by Seti) CUDA apps for Mac OS X here at Seti. They aren't available from Lunatics either. There aren't any CUDA applications available from other third party sites either, as far as I can find.

You can run stock applications for CUDA on OS X on Milkyway, Collatz, Einstein (also CPU/GPU hybrid) and GPUGrid.

Please see my CUDA & CAL FAQ for links to those projects and more information about all of this.
ID: 992169 · Report as offensive
Profile BilBg
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 27 May 07
Posts: 3720
Credit: 9,385,827
RAC: 0
Bulgaria
Message 992304 - Posted: 27 Apr 2010, 13:28:45 UTC - in response to Message 992164.  


As Ageless noted it looks like no SETI CUDA (for NVIDIA GPU) app exist for Mac OS X

The Mac OS X apps by arkayn:

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=53611&nowrap=true#970091


 


- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 
ID: 992304 · Report as offensive
Dean Jones

Send message
Joined: 9 Sep 00
Posts: 6
Credit: 2,006,041
RAC: 0
Canada
Message 992309 - Posted: 27 Apr 2010, 14:15:55 UTC - in response to Message 992304.  

Thanks for clarifying all this. I guess I'll let my GPU relax until a CUDA implementation of SETI is available for Macs.
ID: 992309 · Report as offensive

Questions and Answers : GPU applications : How do you know if the GPU is being used?


 
©2024 University of California
 
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.