Seti computational farm

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bluestar

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Message 1303467 - Posted: 8 Nov 2012, 9:06:17 UTC
Last modified: 8 Nov 2012, 9:30:34 UTC

After cleaning up my house after the earlier refurbishment of my flat and purchasing a new computer for one which broke which was used quite intensively for this project, I recently went upstairs and brought down all my computer equipment which earlier had been stowed away.

The equipment had drawn several kilograms of dust, also because a new school was built on an earlier military storage facility nearby which was demolished, turning quite a lot of dust into the air.

After bringing down the computer equipment, a motherboard of another brand or model I am used to (MSI, processor unknown), was brought back upstairs once more.

I am left with an old box containing an Intel Pentium 486 DX2-50, (there was also a slightly more powerful DX-50 processor in that series). The power supply and probably the processor in this box apparently has died. A box which once originally held a Pentium II, was probably later replaced by that MSI motherboard and a also a separate power supply. I went for a better solution and bought an Intel Pentium IV based motherboard and a new power supply as well (at least I have two separate ones which apparently are for that box).

Also my previous box which held the Intel Pentium D 3.40 processor comes with a quite big power supply which apparently has become burnt, as opposed to the two other ones which apparently still are functional. Also the monitor cards is not working as well because of having inhaled (or perhaps rather ejected) a lot of white dust.

I am also left with a heck of a lot of accessories, including cables, RAM memory and several different cards going into both ISA, PCI and possibly other types of slots as well. The equipment is everything from damaged or destroyed to possibly functioning on its own or separate from other components.

Lesson to be learnt from all of this:

Motherboards, expansion cards slots and memory slots are individual, separate and specific components for each type of motherboard, even when they come from one specific vendor. You may start up with 1 through 8 MB RAM memory, perhaps with some 1 through 8 slots available for these different memory cards on such a motherboard.

Also the expansion cards which are both ISA and PCI as well matches differently to separate motherboards. Earlier motherboards came with only ISA expansion slots and possibly VESA for the monitor card. This later improved and you got a combination of ISA and PCI slots for the usual cards and a AGP connector for the monitor card. My previous box had no ISA slots, only PCI. The monitor card was AGP based.

The newer motherboards apparently comes with the same dilemma readily visible. The separate expansion slots are of different types. Now, a combination of at least PCI and PCIe (or PCI Express) is available. Recently, PCI Express 2.0 was the standard, it is now being upgraded to PCI Express 3.0. Apparently the physical characteristics are the same for PCI Express 2.0 and 3.0.

For the similar PCI based motherboards of the newer brands or models, apparently PCI goes with the Intel LGA 1366 architecture and PCI Express 2.0 or 3.0 goes with the more recent Intel LGA 2011 architecture which may have an Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme processor instead of an Intel Core i7 990X Extreme processor, which was meant for the previous LGA 1366 motherboards and PCI (only) based motherboards.

The newest motherboards available comes with PCI Express 2.0 or 3.0 and room for 8 GB RAM expansion cards or kits giving a maximum memory capacity of 64 GB. Apparently 16 GB and 32 GB memory cards are available right now, or will be so soon, but right now, the 8 GB memory cards that are available are very handy and possibly the "best bang for the buck" right now.

Still, you are left with the choice of selecting which processor you are going to choose as well as the best monitor card.

Cooling has become an important factor when it comes to computers right now. The old fan for the PC is generally not up to the task anymore, you got to have either liquid cooling or water cooling in your system and this has to match the box as a whole, not just the processor or the motherboard. You also need to have an adequate power supply which can deliver power to either one and possibly two or more monitor cards.
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Message 1303505 - Posted: 8 Nov 2012, 13:55:03 UTC - in response to Message 1303452.  

I don't think the problem would be HOW to build them, but how to tell Boinc Manager to activate-see those computers, or any other computer.

You may build as many you want but how BM will understand them?

Is there any setting to tell BM that you are working on a farm computer, and use all of them at the same time?

IIRC the issue with with BOINC is that is uses shared memory to communicate to the science apps. Shared memory is not accessible across nodes in a cluster unless you are buying expensive purpose build hardware.

However there are some strides being made into running virtual machines on top of a cluster. Forming several off the shelf systems into one large system for HPC usage. There is at least one company selling this kind of setup. http://www.scalemp.com/architecture
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Message 1303586 - Posted: 8 Nov 2012, 17:27:55 UTC - in response to Message 1303452.  
Last modified: 8 Nov 2012, 17:28:24 UTC

I don't think the problem would be HOW to build them, but how to tell Boinc Manager to activate-see those computers, or any other computer.

You may build as many you want but how BM will understand them?

Is there any setting to tell BM that you are working on a farm computer, and use all of them at the same time?


The boinc manager will manage remote clients as well, however each client/node will likely report as a separate machine

EDIT : darn your quick hal ..beat me to the post
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Richard Haselgrove Project Donor
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Message 1303602 - Posted: 8 Nov 2012, 17:44:05 UTC - in response to Message 1303586.  

As Tron says, BOINC manager can view/control remote hosts as well, but only one at a time. Much better to use a third-party tool like the venerable Boinc View or the newer Boinc Tasks, which can manage multiple remote hosts on a single consolidated console screen.
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Profile Fred J. Verster
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Message 1303737 - Posted: 8 Nov 2012, 22:16:48 UTC - in response to Message 1303602.  
Last modified: 8 Nov 2012, 22:21:07 UTC

As Tron says, BOINC manager can view/control remote hosts as well, but only one at a time. Much better to use a third-party tool like the venerable Boinc View or the newer Boinc Tasks, which can manage multiple remote hosts on a single consolidated console screen.


A mobo with 3 or 4 PCIe(2.0/3.0)x16/x8 and 3 or 4 DUAL GPU cards, GTX590/690 or
AMD/ATI 5890/6990 GPUs and a separate PSU for +12V, 4 x 35 -50Amp* connectors,
is probably a more (cost) & effective way to achieve your goal.*(PSU=2500Watt)
An 6 core AMD or i7-2600/2700(K) can 'drive'them.

Then expand it by building x # of them ;-)
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Message 1303907 - Posted: 9 Nov 2012, 7:59:50 UTC - in response to Message 1303737.  

Would building a super cruncher like that actually be the most cost effective?

Those high end components are NOT cheap, maybe 5 or 10X what common or garden components will cost. So even if you need to buy 3X of them, so what?

I would suspect that using 3 lower spec machines, with $50 parts, motherboards / CPU / PSU etc. Just enough to feed your single slot high end GPU properly. But a basic 4 core AMD would keep that CPU humming. It has nothing else important to do, and you don't have the bus and RAM contention that a machine with more cores and GPUs probably have. So even if the system board isn't as fast, it's also under much less load, so I suspect that performance would be similar?

Ian
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Profile Fred J. Verster
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Message 1304024 - Posted: 9 Nov 2012, 15:32:26 UTC - in response to Message 1303907.  

Would building a super cruncher like that actually be the most cost effective?

Those high end components are NOT cheap, maybe 5 or 10X what common or garden components will cost. So even if you need to buy 3X of them, so what?

I would suspect that using 3 lower spec machines, with $50 parts, motherboards / CPU / PSU etc. Just enough to feed your single slot high end GPU properly. But a basic 4 core AMD would keep that CPU humming. It has nothing else important to do, and you don't have the bus and RAM contention that a machine with more cores and GPUs probably have. So even if the system board isn't as fast, it's also under much less load, so I suspect that performance would be similar?

Ian


Well, as they always say: Your Mileage May Vary, but 1 high-end single
or double GPU card, compaired to 2 or 3 GPUs, with the same amount of CUDA-cores
or Compute Units altogether, is more efficient and gives more choice of mobos
and a CPU. Also easier to build.
Also, when you're in a warmer climate and water/other cooling will be simpler.
This also applies to the case, a good PSU with enough amps on the +12V rails
remains necessary.


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Message 1304765 - Posted: 11 Nov 2012, 2:39:34 UTC - in response to Message 1304024.  

Would building a super cruncher like that actually be the most cost effective?

Those high end components are NOT cheap, maybe 5 or 10X what common or garden components will cost. So even if you need to buy 3X of them, so what?

I would suspect that using 3 lower spec machines, with $50 parts, motherboards / CPU / PSU etc. Just enough to feed your single slot high end GPU properly. But a basic 4 core AMD would keep that CPU humming. It has nothing else important to do, and you don't have the bus and RAM contention that a machine with more cores and GPUs probably have. So even if the system board isn't as fast, it's also under much less load, so I suspect that performance would be similar?

Ian


Well, as they always say: Your Mileage May Vary, but 1 high-end single
or double GPU card, compaired to 2 or 3 GPUs, with the same amount of CUDA-cores
or Compute Units altogether, is more efficient and gives more choice of mobos
and a CPU. Also easier to build.
Also, when you're in a warmer climate and water/other cooling will be simpler.
This also applies to the case, a good PSU with enough amps on the +12V rails
remains necessary.


I am running a sabertooth 990fx with an 8 core 8150 Zambezi cpu 1 hd6870 and 1 hd5770 and am running about 100,000 seti work units a day. if i where to do it agin i'd catch a $50 mobo on sale at new egg and get 4 core with apu chip, and two hd6870's . the 6870's can be had for $50 to $100 on ebay if you take your time, and the cpu can be had for a little over $100 too $200 depending on the apu core this would probably run about 250,000 work units a day on 650 watts.

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Mark Lybeck

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Message 1304796 - Posted: 11 Nov 2012, 6:56:54 UTC - in response to Message 1304765.  

[/quote]
I am running a sabertooth 990fx with an 8 core 8150 Zambezi cpu 1 hd6870 and 1 hd5770 and am running about 100,000 seti work units a day. if i where to do it agin i'd catch a $50 mobo on sale at new egg and get 4 core with apu chip, and two hd6870's . the 6870's can be had for $50 to $100 on ebay if you take your time, and the cpu can be had for a little over $100 too $200 depending on the apu core this would probably run about 250,000 work units a day on 650 watts.
[/quote]

Could you post a link the producing 100k WU/day? I thought Nvidia was faster than AMD....
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bill

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Message 1304797 - Posted: 11 Nov 2012, 7:05:27 UTC - in response to Message 1304796.  


I am running a sabertooth 990fx with an 8 core 8150 Zambezi cpu 1 hd6870 and 1 hd5770 and am running about 100,000 seti work units a day. if i where to do it agin i'd catch a $50 mobo on sale at new egg and get 4 core with apu chip, and two hd6870's . the 6870's can be had for $50 to $100 on ebay if you take your time, and the cpu can be had for a little over $100 too $200 depending on the apu core this would probably run about 250,000 work units a day on 650 watts.
[/quote]

Could you post a link the producing 100k WU/day? I thought Nvidia was faster than AMD....[/quote]

Yep, color me skeptical, at least here at SAH.
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Message 1305058 - Posted: 11 Nov 2012, 20:42:47 UTC

I think dancer42 confused credits per day with WU/day. At Primegrid his/her host 293503 has a RAC over 100000, but the tasklist shows work earning about 50 credits per hour. I know nothing about the various kinds of tasks there, perhaps there's an ATI GPU app which earns credit very fast when there's work for it.
                                                                    Joe
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Message boards : Number crunching : Seti computational farm


 
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