Hey guys I was wondering if somebody could explain or point me to a site/post that explains exactly what "optimized" apps and "lunatics" are.
i've seen them mentioned all over the boards and various areas, and i see a lot of information about installing them issues etc., but can't seem to find a description of what they actually are/do, or if there is any reason I should run them on any of my machines. thanks!

Hey guys I was wondering if somebody could explain or point me to a site/post that explains exactly what "optimized" apps and "lunatics" are.
i've seen them mentioned all over the boards and various areas, and i see a lot of information about installing them issues etc., but can't seem to find a description of what they actually are/do, or if there is any reason I should run them on any of my machines. thanks!

Read this thread, particularly the last few posts.

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man, at the risk of sounding stupid i really dont get it. i read every word on that thread and other related threads but don't really get what the point of these optimization apps are (the threads and even the lunatics site don't really define their purpose from what i could tell; just technical info about installing them and issues associated with them). is it safe to assume that if my machines are all running BOINC without any problems i don't need to worry about these optimization applications?

i am not having any trouble with the 5 machines i have running BOINC 24/7, and the other 5 machines i am planning to set up in the next week or two and dedicate to SETI@home are similar systems and i assume they will run the same. do the optimization apps make BOINC run faster or more efficiently as the name implies or are they more for advanced options or GUI improvements?

please excuse my unfamiliarity with this topic, while i do consider myself to be somewhat computer savvy, my experience has been more in the field of hardware, general networking and windows. (up until about 7 or 8 years ago i worked as a techie, assembling and providing tech support for high end gaming laptops for a company that basically made Alienware clones). in the 90's i was an IRC EFnet nerd and was into running FTP sites & involved some internet related mischief- most of my experience with Linux came through use of shell accounts and remotely accessed linux systems (i was by no means an expert)...

all in all i have been largely un-involved in the world of computers since 2005 when i went left the IT scene to instead go into the world of finance, and MUCH has changed since then and i have clearly fallen behind in my knowhow.

i apologize for rambling, but i have taken it upon myself to set up as large of a network as i possibly can for SETI@Home and I'm excited to be slowly picking up IT skills where I left off. i think most of the projects that utilize BOINC are wonderful causes and it is helping to get me back involved in IT related projects/interests.
after all, i was an astronomy major in college before i decided to sell my soul and switch to finance and spend the next 8 years working in the stock market, instead of a laboratory or observatory like i had originally planned.

i thank you guys for your PATIENCE and help with my questions, i assume many of you guys are somewhat like-minded to myself.

-Yaniv

OK, in a nutshell:

The default apps are designed to run on pretty much all systems, based on the OS. So, they will run equally well on a P4 as on an i7, albeit faster or slower as the processor dictates. Same with the GPU default, except that it will only run on NVidia GPU's. Same with the default Astropulse app for CPU's. In doing so, the project serves as many potential users as possible in the most convenient way possible.

Some of us, though, think vanilla is boring. We prefer to push our equipment to its maximum potential, and several years back, a group of volunteer coders started working on "optimized" applications. Yes, for certain, they run faster than the stock apps, because they have been "tweaked" specifically for Intel or AMD (there are versions for each), and for different instruction sets on processors (SSE, SSSE, etc). Same for GPU optimizations, with the added benefit of an app for ATI GPUs.

Lunatics is a group of very talented volunteer developers, who are constantly working to improve their optimizations for this project. Much of what they've done ultimately gets incorporated into the stock apps, but the affinity tweaks don't, so as to keep stock as "vanilla" as possible.

The Lunatics installer package makes getting started easy, just check off the right boxes for the apps you want, and it installs everything. What you gain is speed of processing. What you lose is automatic program updating; you have to watch for new releases and install them yourself. You also lose the screensaver.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with the stock apps; but if you want to be a "power cruncher", optimized is the way to go.

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Thank you so much for that explanation, it all makes sense now!

I have disabled the screen saver on all of my systems anyway, and having to update the BOINC program manually isnt a big deal (I had to do it manually anyway didnt I? I only noticed that BOINC 7.0.25 was out by chance when I downloaded BOINC from the seti@home website for a new system i set up today, and noticed the GUI looked a bit different- my computers that are still running BOINC 6.x.x havent notified me of an update to the BOINC version or anything..)

So I will give the optimized apps a shot tomorrow, starting on one of my systems first to test it out. From what I gather you just said, each different processor type will need a specific app... Would Windows 7 vs Windows XP systems also require a different version of the app?

If these apps help crunch more quickly and efficiently I definitely want to be running them, being as I am setting up most of these machines solely for crunching for S@H.

Thank you so much for that explanation, it all makes sense now!

I have disabled the screen saver on all of my systems anyway, and having to update the BOINC program manually isnt a big deal (I had to do it manually anyway didnt I? I only noticed that BOINC 7.0.25 was out by chance when I downloaded BOINC from the seti@home website for a new system i set up today, and noticed the GUI looked a bit different- my computers that are still running BOINC 6.x.x havent notified me of an update to the BOINC version or anything..)

So I will give the optimized apps a shot tomorrow, starting on one of my systems first to test it out. From what I gather you just said, each different processor type will need a specific app... Would Windows 7 vs Windows XP systems also require a different version of the app?

If these apps help crunch more quickly and efficiently I definitely want to be running them, being as I am setting up most of these machines solely for crunching for S@H.

Don't get confused between BOINC and the apps for the project. Lunatics is strictly the apps, not BOINC.

And, frankly, unless there's a compelling reason from another project to upgrade to a 7.xx.xx version of BOINC, don't do it for S@H. Not yet, anyway.

The right CPU app from Lunatics is dependent only on whether you have an Intel or AMD processor, and on the instruction sets supported by your processor. If you don't know, you can see them by checking the first 20 or so lines of messages in BOINC after a fresh restart.For instance, from one of my systems:

4/8/2012 3:03:34 PM Processor: 12 GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU X 980 @ 3.33GHz [Family 6 Model 44 Stepping 2]
4/8/2012 3:03:34 PM Processor: 256.00 KB cache
4/8/2012 3:03:34 PM Processor features: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss htt tm pni ssse3 cx16 sse4_1 sse4_2 syscall nx lm vmx tm2 popcnt aes pbe

I'd recommend the ssse3 version, if it's supported on your processor. 2nd choice would be sse4_1. If you want to add CUDA GPU processing, select either the NVidia or AMD app as needed. Finally, select the Astropulse V6 app for your CPU. This is a new program, for a new version of Astropulse work from the project. I believe the version of choice for Intel processors is 557.

EDIT: Your 4 Intel rigs will probably all use the same CPU app from Lunatics. The AMD will, of course, be different, as will the AP V6 app for the AMD, IIRC. Watch ther heat on your laptops after installing the opti apps. Better efficiency means more heat.

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You've been a great help gatekeeper.. Thanks for your time

So i just used the lunatics installer v0.40 32 bit on this one system i am using right now. it is a intel Core 2 CPU 6300 @ 1.86GHz, 32 bit system, and it is running the new version of BOINC 7.0.25(x86).

I selected the 2nd Astropulse version in the insaller (557 as you suggested) and the Intel SSSE3 version, as I see that is available in the BOINC event log on this system. Everything seemed to install fine and I closed and re-opened the BOINC client when it was finished. Right now this system is running 2 astropulse v6 tasks (the same ones that were already running when I started the install of the optimized apps).

I don't see any visual difference in anything, under the taks section of BOINC, the 2 astropulse v6 tasks that are running say "local: astropulse_v6 6.01" under the "application" column of the tasks tab. The tasks seem to be running as normal. Does this all sound right or is there another way to be sure that I selected the right options and the optimized app is working?

If everything is in fact working as planned, I will go ahead and install the optimized app on the rest of my systems.

Of the 5 systems i have online so far, 2 of them are identical Intel 2 CPU 6300 @ 1.86Ghz, (32 bit windows 7), another is an Intel dual core CPU E5300 @ 2.6Ghz (windows 7 64 bit) and my personal laptop is the system you see as Core 2
Extreme edition x9000 @ 2.8Ghz (windows 7 64 bit).
I suppose all four of these systems will use the SAME settings, given that they all support SSSE3? (besides my laptop which has an Nvidia GeForce 8800GTX GPU that can run the CUDA option)

I have one old single core AMD CPU system so that one will also be using the appropriate options for the AMD chip as you mentioned.

I don't see any visual difference in anything, under the taks section of BOINC, the 2 astropulse v6 tasks that are running say "local: astropulse_v6 6.01" under the "application" column of the tasks tab. The tasks seem to be running as normal. Does this all sound right or is there another way to be sure that I selected the right options and the optimized app is working?

Since you started in midstream with units already in progress, I'm guessing BOINC won't change the app descriptor until a new unit starts. You should, though, see something like:

4/8/2012 9:55:02 PM SETI@home Found app_info.xml; using anonymous platform

in your startup messages. You can also check Windows task manager and look for the names of the two running applications. I haven't switched to the new AP yet, so can't tell you the precise name of the app.

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Just an FYI; i ran CPU-Z for my Core 2 Extreme x9000 Penryn chips and they are 45nm and SSE4.1 is the fastest to use if you have a high performance machine like this, just in case any other crunchers out there are wondering what to use for a system like mine. I read up on it at intel.com as well.

So now that the BOINC is running with the optimized app, more tasks are trying to run at the same time- is this how it should be? Before i installed the optimized app there would always be 3 tasks running at a time (1 for each of the 2 CPUs, and one for the GPU). The rest of the downloaded tasks would be at the state of "Ready to start"

Now, there are 2 tasks that say "running" normally, and there are 6 saying "waiting to run (0.04 CPUs + 1 NVIDIA GPUs)(Waiting for GPU memory)", and another one at at a time that says "Running, high priority (0.04 CPUs + 1 NVIDIA GPUs)"

This "high priority" tasks keeps moving from task to task and doesnt seem to be progressing the percentage at all.

it seems pretty clear to me that the GPU is being spread to thin and is not concentrating on any one task but jumping from task to task, staying on it for 32, and not accomplishing anything- then it moves onto another high priority task and does it over again. My GPU temp has also climbed from a normal 55-57 to 64-66 degrees, and then came all the way back down to 55 again.. The odd thing is, according to GPU-Z, the GPU load is 0% or 1% and it is only using 63MB of memory (out of 512MB). The CPUs seem fine however, they are not overheating and only one task is running for each of them.

Can anyone tell me whats going on here? i am scratching my head lol

hmm, i'm not sure if this has anything to do with it- do i need to download and run both the "installer" , as well as the individual astropulse downloads underneath them?

(i only used the installer because i thought the astropulse app was included in the installer 0.40)

OK, in a nutshell:

The default apps are designed to run on pretty much all systems, based on the OS. So, they will run equally well on a P4 as on an i7, albeit faster or slower as the processor dictates. Same with the GPU default, except that it will only run on NVidia GPU's. Same with the default Astropulse app for CPU's. In doing so, the project serves as many potential users as possible in the most convenient way possible.

Some of us, though, think vanilla is boring. We prefer to push our equipment to its maximum potential, and several years back, a group of volunteer coders started working on "optimized" applications. Yes, for certain, they run faster than the stock apps, because they have been "tweaked" specifically for Intel or AMD (there are versions for each), and for different instruction sets on processors (SSE, SSSE, etc). Same for GPU optimizations, with the added benefit of an app for ATI GPUs.

Lunatics is a group of very talented volunteer developers, who are constantly working to improve their optimizations for this project. Much of what they've done ultimately gets incorporated into the stock apps, but the affinity tweaks don't, so as to keep stock as "vanilla" as possible.

The Lunatics installer package makes getting started easy, just check off the right boxes for the apps you want, and it installs everything. What you gain is speed of processing. What you lose is automatic program updating; you have to watch for new releases and install them yourself. You also lose the screensaver.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with the stock apps; but if you want to be a "power cruncher", optimized is the way to go.

You need to duck the minimum. I had it running on a 90MHz Pentium until the machine died of old age.

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BOINC WIKI

hmm, i'm not sure if this has anything to do with it- do i need to download and run both the "installer" , as well as the individual astropulse downloads underneath them?

(i only used the installer because i thought the astropulse app was included in the installer 0.40)

All the apps are in the installer.
Open the installer with 7-Zip and see for yourself.

BOINC will need a few days to learn the speed of apps.
Very probably now the estimated time is too big.
BOINC thinks it will not have time to finish tasks before the deadline so jumps from task to task.
Soon BOINC will calm down and not go to "high priority" (which means only "do that task before any other", nothing to do with the Process Priority)

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- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

thanks for that info bilbg