41) Message boards : Number crunching : AstroPulse for Intel GPUs, open beta2 (Message 1452631) Posted 11 Dec 2013 by ausymark Post: Hi Claggy Thanks for that confirmation. Looks like i wont be crunching anything on that GPU then. Luckily I have an nVidia 570 joining my 580 in the next week to help crunching. Im sure that will perform better than the intel gpu in the i7 2600K cpu ;) Cheers Mark

42) Message boards : Number crunching : Hyperthreading VS Not (Message 1452611) Posted 11 Dec 2013 by ausymark Post: I leave Hyperthreading on, but, I set seti up to run on 50% of the processors - and hence use the actual number of real cores. This also leaves half the hyperthreads available to handle normal computing tastks so the system is fluid and responsive. If i am running a GPU (Graphical Processing Unit - Video Card/Processor) I free up an actual CPU core to feed each GPU. Any loss of processing power on that CPU core is made up for by the superior procesing power of the GPU. Doing it this way also ensures your system does not bog itself down from user and/or server based tasks. Just my 2c worth. :)

43) Message boards : Number crunching : AstroPulse for Intel GPUs, open beta2 (Message 1452603) Posted 11 Dec 2013 by ausymark Post: Sandy Bridge GPU I know the Sandy Bridge GPU's handle Open CL 1.01. So I was wondering why they arent being included in the trial (Unless they are and I missed it). Yes they maybe limited compared to the two recent gens of intel GPU's but my guess is that they could still outperform the cpu cores by a factor of 2. Cheers Mark

44) Message boards : Number crunching : AstroPulse for Intel GPUs, open beta2 (Message 1452601) Posted 11 Dec 2013 by ausymark Post: Just some general thoughts on intel GPU results. Firstly, on hyperthreaded systems I always run seti on 50% of the processors, this equates to the actualy number of cores. The extra hyperthreads I keep 'spare' for normal task usage so the computer still is a fluid beast. Secondly I always free up a core or two for feeding any gpu's running. This assumes that the GPU can process faster than any CPU doing the same task. So freeing up a core or two or three (depending on how many GPU's you are feeding) is essentual to feeding the "GPU Beast". In the light of the above, with the Intel GPU in this specific case, i would keep at least one real core free. So, with 50% processor usage, (100% actualy cores), drop that to 37.5% or to 25% if you want to free up two actual cores. (maybe you want to run 2 instances on the GPU). Doing so should free the CPU to feed the GPU and run a smaller amount of CPU tasks while keeping the computer 'fluid and free'. By not bogging the CPU down you maximise GPU use and overall computer crunching rate should increase. Just my 2c worth. PS: Waiting for the linux versions of the test to arrive ;)

45) Message boards : Number crunching : CUDA on 64bit Linux with new V7 Seti (Message 1376451) Posted 4 Jun 2013 by ausymark Post: Hi Team, Even though I am downloading nVidia CUDA WU's Seti V7 does not seem to be processing them. Is CUDA on 64bit linux available yet on the latest SETI V7? If not whats the ETA? Any work arounds until then? Cheers Mark

46) Message boards : Number crunching : Which is the best CPU configuration? (Message 1275077) Posted 24 Aug 2012 by ausymark Post: lol It was late when I wrote that, I forgot that the i3's are only dual core. I was mainly used to demonstrate the point that a less powerful CPU may struggle under workloads that a more powerful CPU would breeze through. The way I have my i7 2600K setup is that I have 4 physical cores running at 100%, this keeps all cores relatively busy. Using Hyperthreading on the the i7, which simulates 8 cores, leaves 4 virtual cores "free". These are used to run apps and feed my GPU - nVidia 580gtx. This setup leaves the computer fluid and responsive for general use as we as enabling sufficient data flow to/from the GPU. If I leave the PC running 24x7 it will reach RAC scores of over 40K, so it seems to work well for me. Cheers Mark

47) Message boards : Number crunching : Which is the best CPU configuration? (Message 1274853) Posted 24 Aug 2012 by ausymark Post: Depends what your 4 cores are apart of, what your other application loads are, and how much memory you have. 4 cores on an Intel i7 are going to be more powerful than 4 cores on an Intel i3 Your application load may be light in relation to an i7, but heavy on an i3 And RAM wise running 2 copies (2 cores only) will use less RAM than 4 cores (4 seti copies) Swapping to/from hard disk is also increased using 4 cores - however given a large enough write to disk time this is also negligible. My recommendation would be to run 3 cores at 100% and see what the computers response is running other apps. (Just make sure your CPU/Case has adequate cooling - CPU temps should stay under 85C to ensure long term cpu life.) Just my 2c worth :) Cheers Mark

48) Message boards : Number crunching : GTX680 + NVidia Beta 304.79 + BOINC 7.0.28 = "Error while computing" (Message 1260277) Posted 14 Jul 2012 by ausymark Post: Just on a side note, what have your found to be the optimal number of parallel SETI GPU tasks on the 680? (I am guessing its somewhere between 4 and 6 before adding more tasks doesn't gain any more throughput - i.e. the existing running tasks start to run longer with no actual increased overall throughput.) Cheers Mark

49) Message boards : Number crunching : Linux 32-bit CUDA Client? (Message 1250770) Posted 24 Jun 2012 by ausymark Post: You may want to put a request into the Lunatics team, however my guess is that 32 bit cuda on linux is such a small user population that it may not be worth the effort (Like we could be talking a handfull of people worldwide.) However it cant hurt to ask ;) Cheers Mark

50) Message boards : Number crunching : Question about feeding the GPU (Message 1250768) Posted 24 Jun 2012 by ausymark Post: My guestamate was worst case scenario, it could be as high as 50K :) Cheers Mark

51) Message boards : Number crunching : Question about feeding the GPU (Message 1250406) Posted 23 Jun 2012 by ausymark Post: Hi Irok My setup is similar to yours (i7 2600K overclocked to 4.5Ghz on air with an nvidia 580). On 64bit Ubuntu 12.04 linux. The i7 is an interesting beast as its 8 virtual cores, 4 real ones. This allows i7 uses to do something quite unique as far as CPU/GPU computing goes. Core goals for CPU crunching is to use up to 100% of all cores to crunch (assuming the CPU has appropriate cooling) and .... Core goals of GPU crunching is to crunch as many GPU work units as the GPU memory can handle while allowing the PC system user to use the graphics ability of their machine without degradation to the 'user experience'. On the GPU front for me that meant running just 2 work units on it at a time. This is primarily because I play games on the system, as well as use it for normal office/web tasks. (Running 3 work units causes runtime issues with graphics games as graphics memory became contested resulting in GPU Seti work unit errors). Now we come to the i7. The CPU must keep the data communication with the GPU occurring as quickly as possible with as much data as required. This is where the i7 works well ..... I have seti configured to use 50% of my CPU - that is 4 cores. But why just 4 when I have 8 virtual? Simply that by increasing it past 4 results in longer work unit processing times with very little RAC advantage. The operating system will schedule each CPU work unit on each of the 4 physical cores. Some will now argue that these 4 cores may not be operating at 100% all the time. Well, great! Your operating system needs some space to do other things besides seti - so the system still remains fluid and responsive to all tasks - including seti. Now this is also where the virtual cores come in. The operating system thinks there are 8 cores and will assign 'GPU data feeding' tasks for the GPU to one, or more, of the virtual cores not running the seti cpu task. This ensures that fluid scheduling is given to the 'quieter' seti cpu core and allows for the GPU to get the workload communication it requires. This ends up being the best of all 3 worlds: 1) The real CPU cores being worked very hard 2) The GPU running efficiently - with maximum communication to the CPU 3) The PC itself remaining fluid for user interaction (a core goal of 'running seti in the background') If you look at my stats atm they dont look great at around just 6000RAC, but thats with the pc running for only 3 to 4 hours a day atm. - so if it was run 24/7 it would be around the 35K RAC mark. Anyway thats just my 2c worth. :) Cheers Mark

52) Message boards : Number crunching : Linux 32-bit CUDA Client? (Message 1250371) Posted 23 Jun 2012 by ausymark Post: Hi Justin The 32bit CUDA client was pulled as it was buggy and generated work unit errors. As most crunchers were running 64bit distributions I believe it was deemed a waste of resources to fix and so it was pulled. Do what I did .... upgrade to the 64 bit version of your distribution (I did it to both Ubuntu and Mandriva) - I haven't looked back since and my seti scores have increased ten-fold from running the CUDA client. (Actually its more than ten-fold lol) Cheers Mark

53) Message boards : Number crunching : i7 Hyperthreading + GPU + Most Efficient Seti Workload (Message 1216812) Posted 11 Apr 2012 by ausymark Post: Hi Chris Simply set the number of CPU's to use as 50%, that way it will run on 4 of the 8 cores. As far as the GPU side of things I am using the optimised CUDA program from lunatics ( http://lunatics.kwsn.net/ ) In the configuration (app_info.xml ) file for that change the setting that says: --------- <type>CUDA</type> <count>1.0</count> -------- to ------- <type>CUDA</type> <count>0.5</count> --------- This will cause 2 seti instances to run on your gpu. Hope this helps :)

54) Message boards : Number crunching : i7 Hyperthreading + GPU + Most Efficient Seti Workload (Message 1202253) Posted 4 Mar 2012 by ausymark Post: Hi Team Well my computer online time is going to be sporadic over the next several months so for the moment I am abandoning the experiment. I will be running 4 SETI processes on the cpu and 2 on the nvidia 580 graphics card. So for now i will just crunch on. The server and data supply issues have also made getting any form of consistent baseline pretty much impossible - so not sure if those issues will get better over time or not. Bottom line is however that this rig is way faster than anything I have used before. I have already crunched 15 times more work than I have in the preceding 11 years of doing seti - thats just crazily amazing :-) Cheers Mark.

55) Message boards : Number crunching : i7 Hyperthreading + GPU + Most Efficient Seti Workload (Message 1183664) Posted 8 Jan 2012 by ausymark Post: Update Hi team Yes I am actually running the latest Firestorm Viewer. The crux of the issue after some discussion is that the user selectable texture memory limit in the viewer does not account for how the SL viewer uses all the VRAM - the texture memory part is only a small part of the VRAM usage for the viewer. So basically the SL viewer will use up as much VRAM as it wants regardless of the texture memory setting. So I have to consign myself to the fact that Second Life is going to hog the VRAM and contend with the CUDA client for resources. Back to the experiment .... wondering what else will pop up :p Cheers

56) Message boards : Number crunching : i7 Hyperthreading + GPU + Most Efficient Seti Workload (Message 1183370) Posted 7 Jan 2012 by ausymark Post: Update OK, going back to the older CUDA client seems to crash Second Life more so I've switched back to the x41g client. I have raised a bug issue with the Second Life viewer team and will see what gets resolved from that end. Cheers Mark

57) Message boards : Number crunching : i7 Hyperthreading + GPU + Most Efficient Seti Workload (Message 1182935) Posted 5 Jan 2012 by ausymark Post: Update OK, seems as though the previous CUDA client was also being 'starved' for VRAM when Second Life was running - however seemed to be handing it better. Previous experience indicates that I would get around 10 computational errors per week in this configuration, whereas the x41g allows 30+ computational errors to slip through - which I am guessing is VRAM issue. So for the moment I am going to run with the old CUDA client as overall I wil get better throughput. Will wait for an update to the Second Life viewer to see if its VRAM memory configuration setting actually works like it once did. Cheers Mark

58) Message boards : Number crunching : i7 Hyperthreading + GPU + Most Efficient Seti Workload (Message 1182889) Posted 5 Jan 2012 by ausymark Post: OK have done some more testing. Seems as though Second Life is competing with the x41G CUDA clients that is causing the VRAM usage expansion in a way that the previous CUDA clients did not. I may temporarily go back to the previous version to see if it does the same thing. Cheers Mark

59) Message boards : Number crunching : i7 Hyperthreading + GPU + Most Efficient Seti Workload (Message 1182547) Posted 3 Jan 2012 by ausymark Post: HI aaronhaviland OK, update time: Running 2 instances of x41G is now failing - running out of VRAM when running Second Life. (Generated a whole bag of Compilation errors). I've gone back to just a single CUDA instance and am seeing that my free VRAM memory is around 340mb. So its no wonder that a second instance is generating errors (300MB + 100MB of 'dynamic expansion'. I will monitor this configuration and see how it goes. Im wondering if a more ram optimised client is possible - or conversely a client that fully utilises the processing ability of the card - even with a slight memory increase would probably be preferable. Anyway the experiment continues ;) Cheers Mark

60) Message boards : Number crunching : i7 Hyperthreading + GPU + Most Efficient Seti Workload (Message 1182491) Posted 2 Jan 2012 by ausymark Post: Hi Dave Sorry, Im not leaving my PC run 24/7 due to the environmental impacts that has and the extra cost of electricity. I also don't agree with your logic. All computer parts have a Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF) rating. Running those parts when I don't require the computer means that MTBF "dead line" comes up sooner. Yes I am aware of cool down/heatup issues with shutting the thing down but I have purchased good quality parts when I built the rig so it should be able to handle it. Also, as a side point - having it run 24/7 increases the probability of a power spike (even with a surge protector) - and that is more deadly to any powering up/down of the system. And yes, I fully realise that with the system running it would be churning through somewhere between 20K and 35K RAC's. Anyway, thats my 2c worth :) Cheers :)

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