I stated in amother thread that I was trying to build a faster Mac Enhanced client.

it has even been the canonical result a couple times, and looks to be about 9% faster than the stock client on both g4's and g5's.

The G4 version is here: http://boog.is-a-geek.org/seti/seti_enhanced_g4_b7.tgz

The G5 version: http://boog.is-a-geek.org/seti/seti_enhanced_g5_b7.tgz

I also built a boinc version 5.5.0 universal binary (but it's not needed to run the seti clients). There is also a universal binary screensaver that works too http://boog.is-a-geek.org/boinc/boinc550_screensaver.tgz.

I think I have all the files with it that are supposed to be there (gpl stuff), I borrowed (swiped) them from one of crunch3r's downloads, Thanks crunch3r!!!

Hopefully later someone with more knowledge than myself will be able to build a faster one.

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Thanks boog, it's great that you have worked on optimizing the Mac version! I'm trying it out now, I'll let you know how it runs.

BTW, where is the other thread?

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Thanks boog, it's great that you have worked on optimizing the Mac version! I'm trying it out now, I'll let you know how it runs.

BTW, where is the other thread?

You replied to it! lol http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=30811

I hope it runs as well on all hardware as it did on mine.

I also wish that I could get the performance increase that crunch3r got out of his!

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...
I also wish that I could get the performance increase that crunch3r got out of his!

If you can get your hand on the intel compiler and the ipp libraries for OSX on intel macs... That'll surely boost the performance on intel macs.

Regarding the G4/G5 macs... well i know that alex kan is looking at it but i wouldn't expect much speed improvements.

P.S.

Did you compile fftw with fma enabled ? at least g5 are capable of fma and it should give a little performance increase.

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...
I also wish that I could get the performance increase that crunch3r got out of his!

If you can get your hand on the intel compiler and the ipp libraries for OSX on intel macs... That'll surely boost the performance on intel macs.

Regarding the G4/G5 macs... well i know that alex kan is looking at it but i wouldn't expect much speed improvements.

P.S.

Did you compile fftw with fma enabled ? at least g5 are capable of fma and it should give a little performance increase.

I compiled fftw with altivec and fma enabled for both the g4 and g5, along with other options (took lots of research and trial and error).

And on the intel Macs, I wish I could afford to get one right now, might be a bit before I can get the $$ up to get one of the intel iMacs, or mini for that matter.

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...
I also wish that I could get the performance increase that crunch3r got out of his!

If you can get your hand on the intel compiler and the ipp libraries for OSX on intel macs... That'll surely boost the performance on intel macs.

Regarding the G4/G5 macs... well i know that alex kan is looking at it but i wouldn't expect much speed improvements.

P.S.

Did you compile fftw with fma enabled ? at least g5 are capable of fma and it should give a little performance increase.

I compiled fftw with altivec and fma enabled for both the g4 and g5, along with other options (took lots of research and trial and error).

And on the intel Macs, I wish I could afford to get one right now, might be a bit before I can get the $$ up to get one of the intel iMacs, or mini for that matter.

IMHO

selling the G4 and G5 mac as fast as you can is the best you can do atm to get the most money out of them.

PPC apps are dead and won't be able to compete in any further applications.
(remember the change from 68k to ppc ? But this time the transition will go even faster while apple allready developed darin x86 along to the ppc version)

Just think of what will happen if adobe decides to compile photoshop with the intel compiler...

Maybee only a g5 quad is capable of compete with a dual core intel.

---

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IMHO

selling the G4 and G5 mac as fast as you can is the best you can do atm to get the most money out of them.

PPC apps are dead and won't be able to compete in any further applications.
(remember the change from 68k to ppc ? But this time the transition will go even faster while apple allready developed darin x86 along to the ppc version)

Just think of what will happen if adobe decides to compile photoshop with the intel compiler...

Maybee only a g5 quad is capable of compete with a dual core intel.

Maybe I could name my computer "Charity" and take donations to get an intel mini and the intel compiler? lol

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IMHO

selling the G4 and G5 mac as fast as you can is the best you can do atm to get the most money out of them.

PPC apps are dead and won't be able to compete in any further applications.
(remember the change from 68k to ppc ? But this time the transition will go even faster while apple allready developed darin x86 along to the ppc version)

Just think of what will happen if adobe decides to compile photoshop with the intel compiler...

Maybee only a g5 quad is capable of compete with a dual core intel.

Maybe I could name my computer "Charity" and take donations to get an intel mini and the intel compiler? lol

Well at least you can try to get yourself into intels beta test programm for the compiler and the ipp library on osx... ;)

I'm pretty sure if you mention what you'll like to do with the compiler they'll grant you access.

P.S.

I would have distributed optimized mac biniaries myself but i realy dont have the time to look into it any further.

ATM I'll have to maintain more windows & linux apps on different platforms than i could handle.

Taking one more is not possible atm. Maybe later if the whole thing settled a bit.


EDIT

If you'd like me to add you app to my webpage, just contact me ;)
You can find my mail adress on my page.

/EDIT

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Regarding the G4/G5 macs... well i know that alex kan is looking at it but i wouldn't expect much speed improvements.

Alex is working on it now! :)

And his 1st release that is very unfinished is about fast as mine without heavy compiler flags!

I'm actually excited to see what his final result will bring!

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After some trials, alex over at Team MacNN has outdone himself!

You can find optimized PPC seti workers over at http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?t=295708&page=5

They are at v5 you can find it on that page, and it looks like what he has done will rival the binaries that were compiled with the intel compiler!

I forsee the G5 quads back at the top of the participating computers list soon :)

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Bump!

This Seti Client is great, Alex's 5.13 Seti client is up to 80% faster than the original Berkeley client. And therefore far more productive.

Thanks Alex for making our PPC Mac's competitive again.

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Chris Bosshard
Visit my homepage
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Thanks Alex!

Incredible stuff. For me, gains run somewhere between 50 and 60 percent (this is on a G4 MacMini) - all I can say is "Wow".

Great work on the optimization, I'm not getting any client errors or crashes so far. However, the fan's on way more than with the default client ;D That can only mean it's doing more real computation as opposed to wasting clocks.

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Nice performance from my puny 1.42 GHz G4...one of the last results included a 3.73 GHz P4 EE..

3.73 GHz P4 EE Crunch time:
19,928.30 seconds

1.42 GHz MacMini Crunch time:
20.796.55 seconds

I can only imagine what a nice dual G5 can do. Of course, that P4EE can do up to 4 units at once...

PPC is dead - long live PPC! ;D

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FYI.

Alex posted a new G4-specifc compile of his v5 worker at:

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?t=295708

It will make a G4 sizzle!
On a 1.33 G4, v5-G4 tests @ 96%!!! faster than the standard worker against a reference WU.

http://tbp.berkeley.edu/~alexkan/seti/seti_enhanced-ppc-v5-g4.zip

1) Suspend Seti-Enhanced project
2) Close Boinc
3) Navigate to system Library\\Application Support\\BOINC Data\\projects\\setiathome.berkeley.edu
4) Trash (or save in folder elsewhere) stock seti worker & app_info.xml
5) unzip file & drag the seti_enhanced-ppc-v5 worker and new app_info.xml into folder
6) restart BOINC, resume project

You do not have to reduce cache or wait until the WU completes before install. You can install w/ a WU already in process and the new worker will pick-up from the point the old worker stopped.
You can also verify that it recognized and is crunching w/ the new worker by looking at the messages tab of BOINC Mgr. and looking for this: "Found app_info.xml; using anonymous platform"
In the WU result, the stderr out will show the worker version as well as the other customary info.

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/result.php?resultid=338837248

If you like it, please be sure to drop a line and let Alex know. He's workin' hard to keep our PPCs competitive.
Regards.

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Well,

the G5 version already worked wonders, even on my G4. Now if this version can do even more remains to be seen :)
Will post more stats as results finish.

In any case, really good work, thanks again Alex!

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Should be @ 5%-7% faster than the G5 compile on G4.
I've benched each revision against a Ref WU on my G4 going back to the stock worker.
Take a look:

AlexKan v5-G5 compile (Test4 6.6.06)
real 276m12.600s ( =16572.600s)
user 275m38.475s
sys 0m32.771s
wu_cpu_time = ????

AlexKan v5-G4 compile (Test5 6.9.06)
real 258m57.563s (= 15537.563s)
user 258m24.204s
sys 0m31.797s
wu_cpu_time = 15298.139857

& stock worker to compare:

Stock 5.13 Worker (Test1 5.24.06)
real 499m12.054s ( = 29952.054s)
user 498m11.342s
sys 0m57.878s
wu_cpu_time = 29915.352618

---

FYI.

Alex posted a new G4-specifc compile of his v5 worker at:

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?t=295708

It will make a G4 sizzle!
On a 1.33 G4, v5-G4 tests @ 96%!!! faster than the standard worker against a reference WU.

http://tbp.berkeley.edu/~alexkan/seti/seti_enhanced-ppc-v5-g4.zip

1) Suspend Seti-Enhanced project
2) Close Boinc
3) Navigate to system Library\\Application Support\\BOINC Data\\projects\\setiathome.berkeley.edu
4) Trash (or save in folder elsewhere) stock seti worker & app_info.xml
5) unzip file & drag the seti_enhanced-ppc-v5 worker and new app_info.xml into folder
6) restart BOINC, resume project

You do not have to reduce cache or wait until the WU completes before install. You can install w/ a WU already in process and the new worker will pick-up from the point the old worker stopped.
You can also verify that it recognized and is crunching w/ the new worker by looking at the messages tab of BOINC Mgr. and looking for this: "Found app_info.xml; using anonymous platform"
In the WU result, the stderr out will show the worker version as well as the other customary info.

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/result.php?resultid=338837248

If you like it, please be sure to drop a line and let Alex know. He's workin' hard to keep our PPCs competitive.
Regards.

I just installed it on my [edit] imac [/edit] PPC G3 350 and it seems to be working fine so far. I'll keep you guys posted as to successful completion and times. Current estimated time for the work unit is 41 hours.

messages when installed follow:


Fri Jun 9 23:51:16 2006||Starting BOINC client version 5.4.9 for powerpc-apple-darwin
Fri Jun 9 23:51:16 2006||libcurl/7.15.3 OpenSSL/0.9.7i zlib/1.2.3
Fri Jun 9 23:51:16 2006||Data directory: /Library/Application Support/BOINC Data
Fri Jun 9 23:51:17 2006|SETI@home|Found app_info.xml; using anonymous platform
Fri Jun 9 23:51:17 2006||Processor: 1 Power Macintosh PowerMac2,1
Fri Jun 9 23:51:17 2006||Memory: 192.00 MB physical, 0 bytes virtual
Fri Jun 9 23:51:17 2006||Disk: 6.38 GB total, 3.43 GB free
Fri Jun 9 23:51:17 2006|SETI@home|URL: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/; Computer ID: 2440182; location: home; project prefs: home
Fri Jun 9 23:51:17 2006|SETI@home Beta Test|URL: http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/beta/; Computer ID: 7249; location: home; project prefs: default
Fri Jun 9 23:51:17 2006||General prefs: from SETI@home (last modified 2005-10-16 18:17:04)
Fri Jun 9 23:51:17 2006||General prefs: no separate prefs for home; using your defaults
Fri Jun 9 23:51:17 2006||Listening on port 31416
Fri Jun 9 23:51:17 2006|SETI@home Beta Test|Resuming task 01jn01aa.1212.13761.254826.3.235_1 using setiathome_enhanced version 513
Fri Jun 9 23:51:17 2006|SETI@home|Deferring task 21fe99ab.27562.17218.336072.3.71_1
Fri Jun 9 23:51:23 2006||Rescheduling CPU: result suspended, resumed or aborted by user
Fri Jun 9 23:51:24 2006|SETI@home Beta Test|Pausing task 01jn01aa.1212.13761.254826.3.235_1 (removed from memory)
Fri Jun 9 23:51:24 2006|SETI@home|Restarting task 21fe99ab.27562.17218.336072.3.71_1 using setiathome_enhanced version 513

Please advise if you need any additional info, and thanks for all your work with this!

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I just installed it on my [edit] imac [/edit] PPC G3 350 and it seems to be working fine so far. I'll keep you guys posted as to successful completion and times. Current estimated time for the work unit is 41 hours.

I haven't released any compiles for G3, so you should revert to the stock client. In fact, I can guarantee that you'll run into problems as soon as you hit the parts of the code that use Altivec, which are all over the place.

Thank you all for your messages of support, although I recognize a bunch of you from the MacNN forums... :)

I just installed it on my [edit] imac [/edit] PPC G3 350 and it seems to be working fine so far. I'll keep you guys posted as to successful completion and times. Current estimated time for the work unit is 41 hours.

I haven't released any compiles for G3, so you should revert to the stock client. In fact, I can guarantee that you'll run into problems as soon as you hit the parts of the code that use Altivec, which are all over the place.

Thank you all for your messages of support, although I recognize a bunch of you from the MacNN forums... :)

I didn't have any errors, yet, but I followed your advise and removed the optimized client. Upon resuming the work, however, I immediately got an unrecoverable error. Oh, well.

Can you recommend (does one exist?) an optimized client for G3s?

Jack

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So far, it seems that for results with the same credit claim, the G4 compile is really around 8-10% faster than the G5 one (on my G4 MacMini). Great work Alex!

Using your optimized client results in claimed/granted credit being perfectly the same. No computation or client errors with either G5 or G4 client, either (plus, they all validate). Very happy with it so far.

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