Lunatics Windows Installer v0.41 Release Notes

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Message 1375941 - Posted: 3 Jun 2013, 15:04:23 UTC
Last modified: 3 Jun 2013, 16:01:24 UTC

Lunatics are pleased to announce the availability of the v0.41 installer.

Currently hosted HERE.

Please take care you use the right installer (32/64 bit) for your system.

Should you have any questions or problems - ask! Post in this thread or open a new one.

New in this installer:
Update of all MB applications to support MB v7
Update of all AP apps to latest revisions.

How to use the installer

For the CPU applications, you need to know what your CPU supports. Either check the Boinc startup messages or check with CPU-Z downloadable from http://www.cpuid.com
Tick or untick CPU AP and MB applications as desired.
Tick ATI (OpenCL) AP or MB if/as desired.
Tick NVidia (OpenCL) AP or CUDA MB if/as desired.
More details further down.

NB We use default values throughout the app_info.xml. If you have previously installed optimised applications and manually edited app_info.xml (e.g. <count> for multithreading GPUs, <flops>, <cmdline> for ATI) you WILL lose those edits on running the installer and have to redo them. You may wish to make a note of them. You will also lose all other manual edits to app_info.xml such as beta applications.

Known issues - general
The installer is supposed to shut down the BOINC client whilst leaving the Manager running - noticable from the red 'disconnected' dot in the tray. After finishing the BOINC client should restart and the red dot vanish when the Manager reconnects. This may take a few minutes. On some systems however this fails to work. Please ensure BOINC has restarted.
Advanced users only: If you know you are going to edit app_info.xml, it may be easier to shutdown and restart BOINC manually, so you can get the changes into app_info.xml before the restart.


CPU MB apps - AKv8c

If you have any doubt at all about what instruction sets your CPU supports, download CPU-Z from http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html. We have now incorporated a 3rd party CPU feature detection tool into the installer. Unsupported applications will be greyed out.


CPU AP app - r1797

Updated from r555/r557


NVidia GPU (CUDA) app - x41zc

For details please see the separate ReadMe_x41zc.txt.

Rule of thumb selection guide:
Cuda 2.3: PreFermi - NOT to be used on Fermi/Kepler
Cuda 3.2: mixed systems
Cuda 4.2: Fermi
Cuda 5.0: Kepler
If you have run stock and have established APR you can also pick the fastest app from there.
For compatible cards see http://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus
Should run on all NVidia CUDA cards with at least 512MiB video RAM.
Actual free memory required is in the region of 200-235MiB, depending on driver, OS flavour and CUDA variant. The code will scale up if more memory is available.
Running on a 256MiB card is just possible, but you will have to free up as much VRAM as possible, e.g. by disabling Aero.
Used video RAM can be checked with GPU-Z downloadable from http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/2244/techpowerup-gpu-z-v0-7-1/
Watch closely on GPU-Z and in BOINC manager if the application finds enough memory.
Symptoms of insufficient memory are
- in BOINC manager: tasks start up and run a few seconds then go to 'waiting to run' and the next task tries to start
- on GPU-Z: the sensor for memory shows used VRAM ramping up and almost immediately dropping again.
Depending on BOINC version your tasks will either error out with 'too many exits' or get stuck in an infinite loop.
If you don't have enough memory, set BOINC to NNT, abort tasks and uninstall the CUDA application by rerunning the installer with CUDA MB UNticked.
If in doubt ask for help on NC:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_forum.php?id=10
To multithread on Fermi/Kepler cards, find all instances of <count>1</count> in app_info.xml and decrease to 0.5 or 0.3 to run two or three tasks in parallel.
Again, if you are uncertain of how to do this correctly, ask on the above mentioned forum. 'Your mileage may vary' - it depends on your specific system which count will give the highest throughput.
For full release notes and history please see the readme provided in the docs folder [after install].


NVidia (OpenCL) AP app - r1843

Please see the separate ReadMe_AstroPulse_OpenCL_NV.txt for details.
Reserving one CPU core per GPU card will improve performance.


ATI (OpenCL) MB app - r1843

Please see separate ReadMe_MultiBeam_OpenCL_ATI.txt for details, especially on driver requirements.
Reserving one CPU core per GPU card will improve performance.
We offer the MB application in two different variants, depending on card:
plain - for most HD4xxx owners and those with HD5xxx, HD6xxx cards and HD7xxx cards who suffer from driver incompatibilities.
HD5 - for most if not all owners of HD5xxx GPUs and HD6xxx GPUs. For most HD7xxx cards ('Tahiti' core cards may prefer the plain app).

ATI (OpenCL) AP app - r1843
ATI (Brook) AP app - r1854

Please see separate ReadMe_AstroPulse_OpenCL_ATI.txt or ReadMe_AstroPulse_Brook.txt for details, especially on driver requirements.
Reserving one CPU core per GPU card will improve performance.

For cards without OpenCL support (from HD2xxxx on) use the 'hybrid' r1854 Astropulse application. NB this is a combined CPU/GPU application and will only use the GPU for some of the calculations, while doing the rest on a CPU core.
Minimum driver version Catalyst 9.x.
The Hybrid AP application uses about 80% of a CPU core and does only about 20% of the calculations on the GPU. Parameters have been choosen to reflect this usage. However present BOINC can not reserve '0.8' of a CPU core and therefore reserves none. This means your CPUs will be overcommitted and runtimes and DCF (if applicable) will suffer. You do increase the overall output though.



This time the thanks go to Joe (Josef W. Segur) for the optimised CPU apps, to Raistmer (with additional input from Urs Echternacht) for OpenCL apps and to Jason (jason_gee) for CUDA apps.
Thanks guys. There would be no need for an optimised app installer if there weren't optimised apps in the first place!

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank our active alpha testers (in no particular order and apologies to anybody we've forgotten):
Claggy, arkayn and Mike.

Additional thanks go to BilBg for thoroughly beta-testing the installer and chasing several bugs out of it.


The Lunatics Installer team AD MMXIII
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Message 1375947 - Posted: 3 Jun 2013, 15:27:03 UTC

Have a kepler card. Have limit of cuda 42 tasks on hand. If I install the cuda 50 option, will the cuda 42 tasks be trashed by BOINC? Looks like there is not an option to install both 42 and 50. Any way to get resends?

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Message 1375948 - Posted: 3 Jun 2013, 15:31:49 UTC

Mods might want to make this a sticky thread.

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Message 1375950 - Posted: 3 Jun 2013, 15:34:09 UTC - in response to Message 1375947.  

Have a kepler card. Have limit of cuda 42 tasks on hand. If I install the cuda 50 option, will the cuda 42 tasks be trashed by BOINC? Looks like there is not an option to install both 42 and 50. Any way to get resends?

The installer is designed to pick up ANY stock work in progress plus any installer marked work.
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Message 1375951 - Posted: 3 Jun 2013, 15:35:05 UTC - in response to Message 1375948.  

Mods might want to make this a sticky thread.

The announcement thread is sticky and links here. That's enough.
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Message 1375953 - Posted: 3 Jun 2013, 15:39:50 UTC

Thanks to all Lunatics Team for this installers, works perfect.
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Message 1375959 - Posted: 3 Jun 2013, 15:59:00 UTC

Thanks but need a website please
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Message 1375960 - Posted: 3 Jun 2013, 15:59:38 UTC

Preempting a question:

The applications in the 32 and 64 bit installer are absolutely identical - we do not have 64 bit applications at this time.
The 64 bit installer is required on 64 bit BOINC installs, to correctly pick up work in progress - you have been warned.
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Message 1375961 - Posted: 3 Jun 2013, 16:00:15 UTC - in response to Message 1375959.  

Thanks but need a website please

As per announcement post currently HERE
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Message 1375970 - Posted: 3 Jun 2013, 16:23:04 UTC

Thanks to all Lunatics Team for the installer works perfectly if I could i'd buy you all a drink you all diserve one
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Message 1375973 - Posted: 3 Jun 2013, 16:30:21 UTC - in response to Message 1375959.  

Thanks but need a website please

Tried it on my old machine think it is working so will wait until tomorrow and try it on my quad
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Message 1375981 - Posted: 3 Jun 2013, 16:37:56 UTC

Great job guys!!

The install/upgrade went smoothly on three of my four rigs. Actually, the one in question - this one - is running the opti app, just not the correct one.

It's an AMD Phenom 9650. It ran the v6 SSE3 apps, but the SSE3 tic box is greyed out in the installer. Just the SSE2 option is available. CPUz says that it's SSE3 capable too.

Not a big problem but if there's a way to change it I'll do it.

Also, on another machine I can use the AVX app. Is it/should it be faster than SSE3?

Thanks again to EVERYBODY that contributed to the apps and the installer, it's very much appreciated.
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Message 1375982 - Posted: 3 Jun 2013, 16:39:19 UTC

I'm puzzled by the problem I'm having. I get a bad app_info.xml file - just one line:

<app_info>

This was with BOINC completely shut down. Have repeated several times, with the same results. Can't read the installer's messages to see if has an error message- they fly by too fast for me.
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Message 1375986 - Posted: 3 Jun 2013, 16:41:44 UTC

Ok
I have it installed on my win 7 64bit machine , Have 1 question...
The app_config.xml file that I put in earlier , to run 2 GPU WU's at a time , Is it ok to disable that by changing name to " app_configOLD.xml "
Or should I just leave it as it is ?
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Message 1375989 - Posted: 3 Jun 2013, 16:42:57 UTC - in response to Message 1375981.  

Great job guys!!

The install/upgrade went smoothly on three of my four rigs. Actually, the one in question - this one - is running the opti app, just not the correct one.

It's an AMD Phenom 9650. It ran the v6 SSE3 apps, but the SSE3 tic box is greyed out in the installer. Just the SSE2 option is available. CPUz says that it's SSE3 capable too.

Not a big problem but if there's a way to change it I'll do it.

Also, on another machine I can use the AVX app. Is it/should it be faster than SSE3?

Thanks again to EVERYBODY that contributed to the apps and the installer, it's very much appreciated.


There's no SSE3 in the installer it's SSSE3 (triple X!) and AFAIK AMD doesn't have that. We plan to make additional versions available at some point (after we sorted out that stupid upload problem so we can actually host ourselves...).
AVX should be best, if you can run AVX, yes. YMMV - if in doubt run one app and note runtimes at different AR and then run the other app and compare runtimes at similar AR.
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Message 1375990 - Posted: 3 Jun 2013, 16:43:02 UTC - in response to Message 1375986.  
Last modified: 3 Jun 2013, 16:47:32 UTC

Ok
I have it installed on my win 7 64bit machine , Have 1 question...
The app_config.xml file that I put in earlier , to run 2 GPU WU's at a time , Is it ok to disable that by changing name to " app_configOLD.xml "
Or should I just leave it as it is ?

Are you sure it's still there?
I would think the installer would have overwritten it with the new one.

EDIT..
Pardon my error....
I am running older Boinc versions and am not used to app_config VS app_info.
My bad.
"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

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Message 1375991 - Posted: 3 Jun 2013, 16:45:39 UTC - in response to Message 1375986.  

Ok
I have it installed on my win 7 64bit machine , Have 1 question...
The app_config.xml file that I put in earlier , to run 2 GPU WU's at a time , Is it ok to disable that by changing name to " app_configOLD.xml "
Or should I just leave it as it is ?

You can leave as is. It takes precedence over <count> in app_info.xml because it's read later. (At least that's how I understood Joe....)
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Message 1375992 - Posted: 3 Jun 2013, 16:46:15 UTC - in response to Message 1375981.  
Last modified: 3 Jun 2013, 16:47:13 UTC

Currently there is no SSE3 app.

Due to time constraints, the team decided to focus on SSE2, SSSE3 and AVX development.
The gain from going from SSE2 to SSE3 has been very small on many never architectures, so it was decided to skip SSE3 for know and perhaps include it in a later installer.

So your installer is working as it should.

The AVX ought to be the fastest on hardware that supports it.
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Message 1375993 - Posted: 3 Jun 2013, 16:46:21 UTC

Ive not used the installer, but Ive seen a great work in the naming and versioning of the apps, which made the manual installation much easier than ever. Congrats and thanks for all the hard work!!

Low priority question: Is there any readme about the command line options for the AKb8c (CPU) apps? If not, is there any parameter to do a fine tunning or are they only needed when something goes wrong?
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Message 1375996 - Posted: 3 Jun 2013, 16:50:31 UTC - in response to Message 1375990.  

Ok
I have it installed on my win 7 64bit machine , Have 1 question...
The app_config.xml file that I put in earlier , to run 2 GPU WU's at a time , Is it ok to disable that by changing name to " app_configOLD.xml "
Or should I just leave it as it is ?

Are you sure it's still there?
I would think the installer would have overwritten it with the new one.

EDIT..
Pardon my error....
I am running older Boinc versions and am not used to app_config VS app_info.
My bad.

The new installer has been designed to leave app_config.xml files in place. That's a change from v0.40, which will delete them - app_config files didn't exist when we designed v0.40
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Message boards : Number crunching : Lunatics Windows Installer v0.41 Release Notes


 
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