Hey Everyone,

I have a rig that uses NVidia and ATI cards at the same time. Recently, I reserved the ATI card for MB7 and NVidia card for Astropulse. The reason being because with lunatics my Nvidia card does not always get valid results for MB7.

With the recent lack of AP tasks, I am wondering if it is possible to have my ATI card use the lunatics app, and the NVidia card use the stock MB7 application. I would like to see if my NVidia card can get valid results for MB7 under these conditions.

The task doesn't sound too complicated, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to ask the general question before I go and try to do anything. Thank you to anyone with some insight here!

The project and Lunatics are both distributing Jason's x41zc CUDA builds. You get the same thing either way.

                                                                   Joe

The project and Lunatics are both distributing Jason's x41zc CUDA builds. You get the same thing either way.

                                                                   Joe

Wow, Today I learned.

Thanks very much! Here's hoping the AP DB gets back up soon then! :D

For ATI MB7 and Astropulse ATI and Nvidia stock and Lunatics apps are Raistmer`s apps.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

For ATI MB7 and Astropulse ATI and Nvidia stock and Lunatics apps are Raistmer`s apps.

Sorry Mike, I'm not sure I fully understand. Would you mind rephrasing?

For ATI MB7 and Astropulse ATI and Nvidia stock and Lunatics apps are Raistmer`s apps.

Sorry Mike, I'm not sure I fully understand. Would you mind rephrasing?

Raistmer is the programmer that produces the ATI/AMD GPU MBv7 and APv7 apps, as well as the Nvidia APv7 apps, whether they are Stock or Lunatics,
the only real difference is with Lunatics Installer supplied app is that you normally get a newer revision, this may include bug and api fixes that the Stock app doesn't have,
it also may introduce retrograde steps, ie the recent ATI/AMD MBv7 apps don't have such a large supported driver range, ie don't support really old drivers.

Claggy

For ATI MB7 and Astropulse ATI and Nvidia stock and Lunatics apps are Raistmer`s apps.

Sorry Mike, I'm not sure I fully understand. Would you mind rephrasing?

Raistmer is the programmer that produces the ATI/AMD GPU MBv7 and APv7 apps, as well as the Nvidia APv7 apps, whether they are Stock or Lunatics,
the only real difference is with Lunatics Installer supplied app is that you normally get a newer revision,

Claggy

Ah, thank you! I was under the (wrong) impression that they were separate apps entirely. Thank you!

For ATI MB7 and Astropulse ATI and Nvidia stock and Lunatics apps are Raistmer`s apps.

Sorry Mike, I'm not sure I fully understand. Would you mind rephrasing?

Raistmer is the programmer that produces the ATI/AMD GPU MBv7 and APv7 apps, as well as the Nvidia APv7 apps, whether they are Stock or Lunatics,
the only real difference is with Lunatics Installer supplied app is that you normally get a newer revision,

Claggy

Ah, thank you! I was under the (wrong) impression that they were separate apps entirely. Thank you!

The Stock MBv7 CPU app, and the Lunatics supplied AKv8c apps are separate apps,
the Lunatics CPU APv7 app is also supplied by the project, although only in SSE and SSE2 form, the Lunatics Installer gives you an option of running a SSE3 APv7 app.

Claggy

Thanks very much Claggy for the information!

Actually... They aren't identical apps. They may both have the same core code, but the stock app for seti is smaller than the Lunatics. I have 3 AMD machines running Maxwell GPU's, 1 also has a Kepler, and after extensive benchmarking on a variety of workunits I find the Stock app is 0 to 10% faster and uses 5 to 10% less CPU time. Results were identical using the stock cuda 4.2 on a GTX 560.

Easiest way to use the stock app in a Lunatics install, is simply rename it to match the lunatics app and put it in the projects folder.. Just rename the Lunatics app before hand and keep it so you can easily switch back.

Thanks very much for your information Zule! That is a head scratcher for me, but I'm pretty sure I get the idea!

The project uses UPX to reduce file size of executables and DLLs where practical. The NSIS installer for Lunatics does overall LZMA compression, so reducing the individual file sizes hasn't been done. Anyway, although the builds are the same the files do differ.

The packed form reads from disk quicker but incurs some unpacking time, that tradeoff can go either way. There are also effects on layout of the loaded executable in memory and such which can influence execution speed. I seem to recall a discussion during the early days at Lunatics about possibly testing both ways and distributing UPXed files if they performed better, but even then there were probably too few active testers and too small a variety of systems to support a reasonable judgement.

                                                                   Joe

That's an interesting user case study, which in Agile/Scrum based development is referred to as 'Sushimi':
"A term used to describe one or more user stories, indicating that they are thin slices of a product feature or capability."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(software_development)

Similar are the preferences expressed for using old drivers in potential sacrifice of other considerations (that can be reasonable for dedicated crunching only)

So I'd say down the line (given reeources) it'd be reasonable to provide both UPX packed and non-UPX packed options, and suitable install time test capability. That would bring the case specific choices back to the user, just like there will remain options to use older drivers (with appropriate builds). They are there for choice, and there aren't single best options to suit everybody.

[boring background story to explain]: While originally trained in traditional waterfall cycle, I gravitated to the extreme programming (XP, not the ms kind) cycle typical of small open source projects. That comprises the familier 'Test Driven Development' and 'continuous Integration' which a lot of people still expect. With x41zc, the XP model kindof 'ran out of rope', because base requirements haven't changed much since autocorrelations were added, and failure rates tend to be either low or with not much of a useful pattern to drive that development.

The problems it (x41zc) does have, particularly the challenges it needs to face with scalability to bigger GPUs/systems and Data going forward, along with inherent problems computing on consumer grade gear etc, demand more 'Design and Architecture' changes than either the XP or newer Agile development cycles offer in pure form. That probably means at least for this branch It'll be heading in a 'hybrid Agile' direction, mixed with elements of older waterfall processes. Technically that would make me a 'ScrumBut', and impediments like faulty driver releases, crazy build systems different for every platform, and the Boinc Credit system are 'ScrumBags'

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.