Hi all, I'm a long time user of BOINC/SETI. I've never used any optimisations other than overclocking my hardware. Could one of you very knowledgeable fellows check out my stats please, I just want to be sure that I'm performing well for the project and not ruining any work units that I'm processing. I would be very grateful for your time.

I only recently noticed the Lunatics installer for BOINC, but am reluctant to use it. I don't want to have the possibility of devaluing the work units being processed. Are there any issues with using the Lunatics installer for BOINC, what are the advantages of using it?

Many thanks in advance.

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The software provided as stock applications will work almost as well as the ones offered by Lunatics. At this moment, they are almost the same as far as performance - as far as I'm aware.

However you can use the app_config.xml and command line parameters to tune your Titan to perform better. There are read me files in your SETI directory for this, or the info you read on these forums regarding Lunatics tuning also applies.

Happy Crunching!

Hi all, I'm a long time user of BOINC/SETI. I've never used any optimisations other than overclocking my hardware. Could one of you very knowledgeable fellows check out my stats please, I just want to be sure that I'm performing well for the project and not ruining any work units that I'm processing. I would be very grateful for your time.

I only recently noticed the Lunatics installer for BOINC, but am reluctant to use it. I don't want to have the possibility of devaluing the work units being processed. Are there any issues with using the Lunatics installer for BOINC, what are the advantages of using it?

Many thanks in advance.

Actually the "stock" GPU application are all Lunatics apps. Just slightly older revisions depends on the current development and testing phases.
The CPU applications provide SSE and other optimizations that can generally improve processing speed 25-50% depending on your hardware. There are often bug fixes in the Lunatics apps that may or may not make it into the stocks apps. So there isn't much rick of devaluing data by using the optimized CPU apps.

One thing to watch is keeping up with the current builds. Especially with the opencl_nvidia_SoG app. As it is current in active development. The build in the Lunatics v0.45 - Beta6 package is probably where you would want to start.

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Ah yes, I forgot about AVX, that is a BIG improvement for his 12 cores.

Ah yes, I forgot about AVX, that is a BIG improvement for his 12 cores.

I've not seen a huge difference between SSE3 & AVX on my systems, but it is significant enough that I am glad they put forth the effort to make it.
Perhaps AVX2 will show some speed improvements one day as well.

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Thanks to you both so much. I'm just playing at this compared to you guys and many others. I've been doing SETI for a long time but never really got into the nitty gritty of performance and the technicalities of it. You guys really do an incredible job for the project.

So to summarise, you think I should try out Lunatics, it will process more units over using the standard BOINC/SETI apps, and it has no detrimental effect on the units I'm sending back to SETI. I guess by using Lunatics my GPU will process more than 1 unit simultaneously too, right?

As you can tell by my average I don't run this 24/7, or have multiple machines like you dedicated members. This is my main PC, my hobby, my gaming PC. In your opinions are my results OK, no errors or corrupt returned units?

I do have a spare 2011-3 motherboard here, do you have any recommendations regarding getting an efficient CPU for SETI, on the cheap? Maybe a server pulled Xeon?

Thank you again Brent and HAL9000 for your help, much appreciated.

Thanks to you both so much. I'm just playing at this compared to you guys and many others. I've been doing SETI for a long time but never really got into the nitty gritty of performance and the technicalities of it. You guys really do an incredible job for the project.

So to summarise, you think I should try out Lunatics, it will process more units over using the standard BOINC/SETI apps, and it has no detrimental effect on the units I'm sending back to SETI. I guess by using Lunatics my GPU will process more than 1 unit simultaneously too, right?

As you can tell by my average I don't run this 24/7, or have multiple machines like you dedicated members. This is my main PC, my hobby, my gaming PC. In your opinions are my results OK, no errors or corrupt returned units?

I do have a spare 2011-3 motherboard here, do you have any recommendations regarding getting an efficient CPU for SETI, on the cheap? Maybe a server pulled Xeon?

Thank you again Brent and HAL9000 for your help, much appreciated.

Basically the optimized apps will increase your computing efficiency. So you could for fewer KW/h get the same amount of work done or get more work for the same KW/h.

I don't believe the Lunatics installer automatically enables running more than 1 GPU app instance per card. The easiest way to configure the number of GPU app instances by creating an app_config.xml.
The instructions on the BOINC site may look overly complicated at first but is pretty straight forward. Here are a few basic samples.

This will run 1 GPU app instance and allocate 1 CPU core/thread to "feed" the GPU.

<app_config>
	<app>
		<name>setiathome_v8</name>
		<gpu_versions>
			<gpu_usage>1.0</gpu_usage>
			<cpu_usage>1.0</cpu_usage>
		</gpu_versions>
	</app>
</app_config>

This will run 2 GPU app instances and allocate 2 CPU core/threads to "feed" the GPU.

<app_config>
	<app>
		<name>setiathome_v8</name>
		<gpu_versions>
			<gpu_usage>0.5</gpu_usage>
			<cpu_usage>1.0</cpu_usage>
		</gpu_versions>
	</app>
</app_config>

This will run 2 GPU app instances and allocate 1 CPU core/thread to "feed" the GPU.

<app_config>
	<app>
		<name>setiathome_v8</name>
		<gpu_versions>
			<gpu_usage>0.5</gpu_usage>
			<cpu_usage>0.5</cpu_usage>
		</gpu_versions>
	</app>
</app_config>

This will run 3 GPU app instances and allocate 1 CPU core/thread to "feed" the GPU.

<app_config>
	<app>
		<name>setiathome_v8</name>
		<gpu_versions>
			<gpu_usage>0.33</gpu_usage>
			<cpu_usage>0.33</cpu_usage>
		</gpu_versions>
	</app>
</app_config>

This will run 4 GPU app instances and allocate 2 CPU core/threads to "feed" the GPU.

<app_config>
	<app>
		<name>setiathome_v8</name>
		<gpu_versions>
			<gpu_usage>0.25</gpu_usage>
			<cpu_usage>0.5</cpu_usage>
		</gpu_versions>
	</app>
</app_config>

This will run 4 GPU app instances and allocate 1 CPU core/thread to "feed" the GPU.

<app_config>
	<app>
		<name>setiathome_v8</name>
		<gpu_versions>
			<gpu_usage>0.25</gpu_usage>
			<cpu_usage>0.25</cpu_usage>
		</gpu_versions>
	</app>
</app_config>

Also worth considering is making use of the optional tuning parameters for the GPU applications. There are ReadMe files included in the Lunatics installer. I believe the server also sends a version with the "stock" GPU apps as well.
Normally I tend to let the people that really know what they are doing find good vales and then use their configurations as a starting point for tuning.

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