Long Seti@home v7.7.03 units (not Astropulse) on AMD GPU - don't finish?

Message boards : Number crunching : Long Seti@home v7.7.03 units (not Astropulse) on AMD GPU - don't finish?
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Profile Graham Thomas

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Message 1611639 - Posted: 10 Dec 2014, 9:51:37 UTC

Recently I've been getting Seti@Home v7.7.03 workunits that run on my AMD GPU (as opposed to the v7.7.00 units that run on the CPU). They seem to come in two flavours. One has an estimated time of just over an hour, and these units complete with no problems. The other has an estimated time of about three and a half hours, and these units seem to get stuck. Generally, after starting OK, when they get stuck they show as being about 20% done, and although the 'elapsed' column keeps counting the 'remaining' column doesn't change.

The first few times this happened I let the computation proceed for 6-8 hours before aborting. Now I abort as soon as I see them in the queue.

Has anyone else seen this behaviour? Is there anything I can do about it? And are there any negative consequences of aborting units frequently?

Astropulse units complete OK.

Here's my setup:

06/12/2014 11:53:00 | | CAL: ATI GPU 0: AMD Radeon HD 6520G/6530D/6550D/6620G (SuperSumo) (CAL version 1.4.1848, 512MB, 479MB available, 960 GFLOPS peak)
06/12/2014 11:53:00 | | OpenCL: AMD/ATI GPU 0: AMD Radeon HD 6520G/6530D/6550D/6620G (SuperSumo) (driver version 1573.4 (VM), device version OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (1573.4), 512MB, 479MB available, 960 GFLOPS peak)
06/12/2014 11:53:00 | | OpenCL CPU: AMD A8-3850 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics (OpenCL driver vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., driver version 1573.4 (sse2), device version OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (1573.4))
06/12/2014 11:53:00 | | Host name: -----
06/12/2014 11:53:00 | | Processor: 4 AuthenticAMD AMD A8-3850 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics [Family 18 Model 1 Stepping 0]
06/12/2014 11:53:00 | | Processor features: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 htt pni cx16 popcnt syscall nx lm svm sse4a osvw ibs skinit wdt page1gb rdtscp 3dnowext 3dnow
06/12/2014 11:53:00 | | OS: Microsoft Windows 7: Home Premium x64 Edition, Service Pack 1, (06.01.7601.00)

Graham
Graham Thomas
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TBar
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Message 1611693 - Posted: 10 Dec 2014, 11:43:53 UTC - in response to Message 1611639.  

I believe these are the Low Angle Range (LAR) tasks. Not to be confused with the Very Low Angle Range (VLAR) tasks. Although they are similar in that with certain Hardware & Software combinations they both produce Very Long Run Times And Screen Lag. I ran across a few of these in a recent test with a few ATI cards.

First, this is a VLAR;
Run time: 2 hours 21 min 53 sec
CPU time: 1 hours 38 min 4 sec
WU true angle range is : 0.008849


This is a LAR;
Run time: 1 hours 23 min 29 sec
CPU time: 1 hours 1 min 28 sec
WU true angle range is : 0.201916


With the software I tested, any angle range lower than around 0.5 started giving problems, i.e. Screen Lag and High CPU usage. On the other hand, similar Software on a different platform cut through a VLAR like Butter without any Screen Lag;
Run time: 25 min 14 sec
CPU time: 1 min 39 sec
WU true angle range is : 0.008979


So the results would appear to vary with Hardware & Software combinations. You just happen to be on the wrong end of the spectrum...
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Message 1611744 - Posted: 10 Dec 2014, 14:06:38 UTC
Last modified: 10 Dec 2014, 14:07:41 UTC

Check for a file called mb_cmdline_win_x86_SSE_OpenCL_ATi_HD5.txt.
Its located in your boinc data folder.
Add the following.

-period_iterations_num 50 -sbs 256 -hp.

Save the file as text.

Also i would suggest to run a more recent version of the application.
Easiest way is to run the Lunatics Installer.

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=76035


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Message 1611745 - Posted: 10 Dec 2014, 14:14:30 UTC

Besides the information Tbar mentioned.
The only takes you have been completing are VHAR tasks, AKA shorties.

If you want to stay with the stock apps. There are tuning commands that can be added to the configuration txt file that may help. There should also be a readme in your SETI@home project folder with the tuning commands IIRC.

Another option is to use the Lunatics installer. Then you could select only AP for the GPU. Then MB & AP for the CPU if you wanted.
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Message 1611800 - Posted: 10 Dec 2014, 17:15:17 UTC - in response to Message 1611745.  

Thanks for all that helpful advice. I'll take a look at that config file and its help file and see if I can work out what those parameters mean. I'm not sure I want to go for any of the more specialised apps at this point.
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Message 1611824 - Posted: 10 Dec 2014, 18:52:40 UTC - in response to Message 1611744.  

Check for a file called mb_cmdline_win_x86_SSE_OpenCL_ATi_HD5.txt.
Its located in your boinc data folder.

In Graham Thomas's case (since he's running Stock) the files he wants to add the cmdline parameters to will be named similar to:

mb_cmdline-7.03-opencl_ati_sah.txt

mb_cmdline-7.03-opencl_ati5_sah.txt

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Message boards : Number crunching : Long Seti@home v7.7.03 units (not Astropulse) on AMD GPU - don't finish?


 
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