Hi Folks,

The other night I noticed a single astropulse_6.02_i686-apple-darwin WU come through for my MacBookPro to crunch but I have yet to see any astropulse WUs arrive for my iMac. (I noticed, also, that the MBP has the Unix executable for this in the projects>setiathome folder while the iMac does not.) Was this a fluke, or should I expect more of these for both machines in the not-too-distant-future? Both machines are running OSX 10.6.8 BOINC Manager 6.12.43. Thanks in advance!

:)

The Astropulse app is downloaded when an AP task is assigned to that machine.

Basically your Macbook has had one assigned but your iMac has not.

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Thanks, arkayn, I wasn't sure what to make of that lone WU...the posts about the Mac release of APv6 over on the SETI Beta forums were a bit ambiguous to me as to whether the Mac client had actually been officially released...cool stuff! :)

Thanks, arkayn, I wasn't sure what to make of that lone WU...the posts about the Mac release of APv6 over on the SETI Beta forums were a bit ambiguous to me as to whether the Mac client had actually been officially released...cool stuff! :)

Intel
http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/beta/forum_thread.php?id=1908&nowrap=true#42126

6.02 i686-darwin has been released to the main project. My G5 is still 2 days from getting a powerpc-darwin result done.

PPC
http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/beta/forum_thread.php?id=1908&nowrap=true#42166

I think I have enough results that I've moved the PPC version over to the main project. I'd appreciate it if you'd finish your current results if you can, just to make sure I haven't missed something.

Thanks!

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...yep, that clears that up!...that'll teach me to skim too fast!...thanks, and kudos to the programming team for making this a reality!... :)

Yes thanks to the team for getting AP 6.02 for OSX out to us. The only problem is like all the other AP crunchers their never seems to be enough AP tasks for everyone. I have done one AP followed by over 10 MB because the server says that it is out of AP all the other times.

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That is because my GTX560 is gobbling them up.

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That is because my GTX560 is gobbling them up.

...I'm not so BOINC/SETI savvy to know whether one can possibly do that...are you just pulling my leg, or just trying to hurt my feelings?...my computer has a shiny apple on it and no usable gpu in it, so I tend to be a bit over-sensitive about these sorts of things...

:)

That is because my GTX560 is gobbling them up.

...I'm not so BOINC/SETI savvy to know whether one can possibly do that...are you just pulling my leg, or just trying to hurt my feelings?...my computer has a shiny apple on it and no usable gpu in it, so I tend to be a bit over-sensitive about these sorts of things...

:)

It is possible, it just takes a OpenCL application running on Windows (for now)to run them.

I normally keep it at 1 Multibeam and 1 Astropulse WU running at the same time on the GTX560.

This is a typical time for doing it on a mid level GPU.
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/workunit.php?wuid=972065691

I still have my old iMac, but it cannot crunch anymore as it is crash happy.

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Now you're making me feel bad arkyn. :( This is what my little GTS 450 is doing... http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/workunit.php?wuid=971854297

Oh, and I'm gobbling up a bunch of them too. :)

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PROUD MEMBER OF Team Starfire World BOINC

It is possible, it just takes a OpenCL application running on Windows (for now)to run them.

I normally keep it at 1 Multibeam and 1 Astropulse WU running at the same time on the GTX560.

This is a typical time for doing it on a mid level GPU.
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/workunit.php?wuid=972065691

I still have my old iMac, but it cannot crunch anymore as it is crash happy.

...perhaps I should have asked my question with a little more precision..."Can one pick and choose AstroPulse WUs (or, any other specific type of WU) from SETI@Home's server queue?"...that's what I'm not savvy about...

...I'll have to forgive myself for going off-topic in my own thread, but a "crash happy" install of OSX seems odd for me to hear...I've been running it constantly since Puma (10.1) and every "cat" has been pretty much rock-solid stable for me...unlike various flavors from MacOS 7.5–9 (or should that now read VII.V to IX?)...but, then again, I've never run any of their pre-10.x.4 "beta" versions as a matter of principle, the 10.x.4's and later pretty much have had their odd little hiccups and compatibility issues worked out...

...impressive crunch-times on those GT GPU's, arkayn and perryjay...maybe one day, the folks in Cupertino will sell me a box that I can afford that can handle that sort of gear!...

:)

It is possible, it just takes a OpenCL application running on Windows (for now)to run them.

I normally keep it at 1 Multibeam and 1 Astropulse WU running at the same time on the GTX560.

This is a typical time for doing it on a mid level GPU.
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/workunit.php?wuid=972065691

I still have my old iMac, but it cannot crunch anymore as it is crash happy.

...perhaps I should have asked my question with a little more precision..."Can one pick and choose AstroPulse WUs (or, any other specific type of WU) from SETI@Home's server queue?"...that's what I'm not savvy about...

...I'll have to forgive myself for going off-topic in my own thread, but a "crash happy" install of OSX seems odd for me to hear...I've been running it constantly since Puma (10.1) and every "cat" has been pretty much rock-solid stable for me...unlike various flavors from MacOS 7.5–9 (or should that now read VII.V to IX?)...but, then again, I've never run any of their pre-10.x.4 "beta" versions as a matter of principle, the 10.x.4's and later pretty much have had their odd little hiccups and compatibility issues worked out...

...impressive crunch-times on those GT GPU's, arkayn and perryjay...maybe one day, the folks in Cupertino will sell me a box that I can afford that can handle that sort of gear!...

:)

You kind of can, but not really.
In Project Preferences, you can select which application you prefer to run.
Right now the 2 that are being sent out are SETI@Home Enhanced and Astropulse v6. SETI@Home v7 will be released in a while.

It is not the software but the hardware on that old iMac. It is a T7200 C2D iMac that I got in 2008. The video has colored lines running through it and it has lived a long life. Now I mostly crunch and game on my computers and use my 2 newest ones.

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...well, now, that makes my original post all the more curious...since I had APv6 unchecked in my prefs at the time of my sole AstroPulse WU, how did it come to be that the Unix Executable for APv6 got installed and ran that one (1) WU?...

...perhaps I should have asked my question with a little more precision..."Can one pick and choose AstroPulse WUs (or, any other specific type of WU) from SETI@Home's server queue?"...that's what I'm not savvy about...
...

The semi-joking comments about "gobbling them up" were more an indication that those doing AP with GPUs have a big appetite. As others have noted, it is possible to set preferences to get only AP tasks and that extends to indicating you'd prefer AP but will accept anything when AP isn't available.

Those hosts with big appetites can't really get all they want, for any one request there are no more than 100 available and typically many are the two tasks for one WU. Since the project won't deliver both tasks for a WU to the same account, the practical max for one request is usually no more than 50 tasks assigned. Then the host cannot ask again for 5 minutes, which gives perhaps thousands of other hosts an opportunity to get work.

Overall, half the active hosts on this project have a RAC of about 100 or less, and the average RAC is around 460 so the ~190000 hosts with RAC below that do half the work. GPU usage is concentrated in the ~45000 hosts with higher RAC, and particularly the top 8000 or so which do about 25% of the work.

The venerable CPUs are still doing a supermajority of the work, but it may not be so in a couple of years.

                                                                 Joe

...perhaps I should have asked my question with a little more precision..."Can one pick and choose AstroPulse WUs (or, any other specific type of WU) from SETI@Home's server queue?"...that's what I'm not savvy about...
...

The semi-joking comments about "gobbling them up" were more an indication that those doing AP with GPUs have a big appetite. As others have noted, it is possible to set preferences to get only AP tasks and that extends to indicating you'd prefer AP but will accept anything when AP isn't available.


Those hosts with big appetites can't really get all they want, for any one request there are no more than 100 available and typically many are the two tasks for one WU. Since the project won't deliver both tasks for a WU to the same account, the practical max for one request is usually no more than 50 tasks assigned. Then the host cannot ask again for 5 minutes, which gives perhaps thousands of other hosts an opportunity to get work.

...hi, Josef, and thanks for some clarification on this, I do appreciate it!...

...I understand the whole "appetite" thing as applies to CPU/GPU horsepower, but in reading some of the commentary across the various BOINC forums I've found it to be a bit challenging at times to truly grasp what some of the folks are posting about...Using my lone APv6 WU as an example, well, I've only seen one APv6 WU ever! ...so after reading arkayn's post I began to ask myself, "Are there specific AP Wus for Windows, OSX, Linux, etc?", "Are there separate CPU and GPU variants of AP WUs that add to this mix?", "Are these AP WUs created and distributed more heavily towards one platform/computer configuration vs. another based on BOINC/SETI's determination of how much work they have vs. who's actively doing it?"...

...And this all led me to wonder if there were some sort of special preferences, or user-edited BOINC Folder .xml-file commands (or such), or maybe even special customized client-builds available that made it possible for a user to "pick and choose" their work...(I've only been doing this in earnest since last September, what the heck do I know?!)... :)

Overall, half the active hosts on this project have a RAC of about 100 or less, and the average RAC is around 460 so the ~190000 hosts with RAC below that do half the work. GPU usage is concentrated in the ~45000 hosts with higher RAC, and particularly the top 8000 or so which do about 25% of the work.

The venerable CPUs are still doing a supermajority of the work, but it may not be so in a couple of years.

                                                                 Joe

...it's tough enough that I bought a computer with a shiny apple on it with no usable GPU, and now you're telling me I'm an "underachiever", too?...good thing I got tough skin...

:)

Jimmy,
If you have ...If no work for selected applications is available, accept work from other applications? checked as yes then you might get AP work if they don't have any MB to send. To make sure you don't get any APs you have to uncheck that too in your seti@home preferences.



PS: If you are running the Optimized package it is possible to omit the entry for whatever you don't want to run. This involves editing your app_info file though and can get a little scary if you are new to this.

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PROUD MEMBER OF Team Starfire World BOINC

PS: If you are running the Optimized package it is possible to omit the entry for whatever you don't want to run. This involves editing your app_info file though and can get a little scary if you are new to this.

Perryjay, he's running AP v6 on a Mac. I don't think an optimised package is available yet - certainly Arkayn is only offering AP v505 at the moment. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Hang on while I try to answer his simpler questions first.

Sorry Richard, that was an afterthought. I couldn't remember if he was running opti or not and was too lazy to go look. :)

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PROUD MEMBER OF Team Starfire World BOINC

...I understand the whole "appetite" thing as applies to CPU/GPU horsepower, but in reading some of the commentary across the various BOINC forums I've found it to be a bit challenging at times to truly grasp what some of the folks are posting about...Using my lone APv6 WU as an example, well, I've only seen one APv6 WU ever! ...so after reading arkayn's post I began to ask myself, "Are there specific AP Wus for Windows, OSX, Linux, etc?", "Are there separate CPU and GPU variants of AP WUs that add to this mix?", "Are these AP WUs created and distributed more heavily towards one platform/computer configuration vs. another based on BOINC/SETI's determination of how much work they have vs. who's actively doing it?"...

OK, first things first. You're probably aware that there are Astropulse WUs, and there are 'other' WUs? We variously, and rather ambiguously, refer to the other WUs as 'enhanced', 'multibeam', or plain 'seti' WUs. But the basic distinction is simply between 'AP' and 'not AP'.

Within those two basic groupings, it would be fair to say that "all WUs are created equal". No, there are no special WUs for Win/Mac/Linux, and no, there are no special WUs for CPU or GPU. There's just one special case where one class of WUs is withheld from one class of GPU, but as a Mac user without a GPU you won't come across that one.

You do have a certain amount of control over which types of WU you receive through the SETI@home preferences page on this website. But it's unlikely that you would have any settings in there which would restrict one computer but not the other. Worth checking, though.

BOINC and SETI do have some policies which affect the distribution of work: in particular, Astropulse work takes much longer than the traditional SETI work, and slower machines might not be able to complete it in time: AP work shouldn't be distributed to slower hosts. But since both your machines are i7s, they should both be plenty fast enough not to fall foul of that policy.

No, though simplest (and hence usually the best...) explanation is that there simply isn't enough AP work available to satisfy everyone - and it's very much a random chance whether you happen to be requesting work at the precise millisecond that AP work is available. For example, I don't think any new AP work has been created ('split') for at least the last six hours - so there's no point in hoping to be successful with an AP work request right now. It tends to come in batches, so if you really want to catch some, waiting for a fresh batch and ensuring you need new work when they're available is about the only way.

...And this all led me to wonder if there were some sort of special preferences, or user-edited BOINC Folder .xml-file commands (or such), or maybe even special customized client-builds available that made it possible for a user to "pick and choose" their work...(I've only been doing this in earnest since last September, what the heck do I know?!)... :)

No, there's no XML you can edit to let you 'pick and choose' - just the preference page which allows you to exclude some work, and hence request only the work you prefer.

And if I ever heard of somebody attempting to skew the allocation with a customised client build (I don't think it would be possible, BTW), I will personally ask for them to be banished from the project ;P

...

Overall, half the active hosts on this project have a RAC of about 100 or less, and the average RAC is around 460 so the ~190000 hosts with RAC below that do half the work. GPU usage is concentrated in the ~45000 hosts with higher RAC, and particularly the top 8000 or so which do about 25% of the work.

The venerable CPUs are still doing a supermajority of the work, but it may not be so in a couple of years.

                                                                 Joe

...it's tough enough that I bought a computer with a shiny apple on it with no usable GPU, and now you're telling me I'm an "underachiever", too?...good thing I got tough skin...

:)

LoL, my view is more along the lines that if all ~235000 active hosts were like yours, the project's servers would be much more overloaded than they are now.

                                                                  Joe