Optimized client advice for BOINC 7 / Ubuntu 10.04

Message boards : Number crunching : Optimized client advice for BOINC 7 / Ubuntu 10.04
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Profile ralphw
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Message 1267029 - Posted: 3 Aug 2012, 13:09:40 UTC

I'm experimenting with BOINC 7, and looking for advice on these topics:


  • Finding accurate documentation on using BOINC 7 with optimized SETI clients (NVidia GPU, hoping to use an optimized OpenCL or nVidia client for x86_64)

  • Which optimized clients are compatible with Ubuntu 10.04.

  • Configuring application settings so that a missing client doesn't automatically cause workunits to be deleted.

    (I'd rather BOINC suspend work on them than delete them, to give me time to respond to a misconfiguration)



I tried the Lunatics x41g build, but it doesn't help as much as I thought it would. I get the impression that performance on SSE3-capable processors is also helped by using an OpenCL client. My GPU is an nVidia GTS 250

Here's what lspcishows:

02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G92 [GeForce GTS 250] (rev a2)

www.streamcomputing.eu/blog/2011-12-29/opencl-hardware-support/ suggests that since I don't have the nVidia 260, I won't have the compute capability 1.3 support needed for OpenCL.


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LadyL
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Message 1267044 - Posted: 3 Aug 2012, 13:56:52 UTC

You want the advice of the Linux guys, I just have a couple of more general remarks.

a) You are talking about applications not clients. the client is BOINC and you are using version 6.12.33 atm not 7 - NB you can't easily downgrade from 7 to 6, a main file (client_state.xml is not downwards compatible, resulting in complete chache loss).

b) using optimised apps under 7 isn't much different from using them under 6. main changes from 6 to 7 are the scheduler and the intrinsic OpenCl capability.

c) Currently Lunatics do not publicly offer OpenCL apps for Linux, only the CUDA x41g you already found.

d) x41g offers a lot of improvements over stock besides being faster. If you are already going anonymous it's certainly better than 6.09. Seeing you are on linux it actually is the ONLY GPU app and you have to use anonymous platform if you want to run on the GPU

e) have a really small cache or backup the data folder and set no net while tweaking app_info.xml then you can restore the tasks.
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Wedge009
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Message 1267053 - Posted: 3 Aug 2012, 14:10:34 UTC

In addition to LadyL's remarks, I'll note that there's nothing distribution-specific in the optimised Linux applications (as far as I know). As long as the minimum kernel and library requirements are satisfied (any of the popular distributions should cover this easily), you should be set to go.

I'll admit, though, that I've only had experience with the CPU optimised applications on Linux - the 32-bit MB CUDA build was buggy, apparently, and I didn't have a 64-bit CPU for the hosts I wanted to use Linux on. There are no Linux OpenCL applications available at the moment, so unfortunately, we have to make do with Windows builds for the time being.
Soli Deo Gloria
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Amauri
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Message 1267237 - Posted: 3 Aug 2012, 20:43:33 UTC - in response to Message 1267053.  

Ralph, why don't you upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04? You'll have new versions of Boinc and NVidia drivers...
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Wedge009
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Message 1267246 - Posted: 3 Aug 2012, 21:09:05 UTC

10.04 is LTS release. Yes, so is 12.04, but maybe he doesn't want to go through the hassle of upgrading just yet.
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Message boards : Number crunching : Optimized client advice for BOINC 7 / Ubuntu 10.04


 
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