Posts by Eric Korpela

21) Message boards : Number crunching : Flakey AMD/ATI GPUs, including RX 5700 XT, Cross Validating, polluting the Database (Message 2027247)
Posted 11 Jan 2020 by Eric Korpela Project Donor
Post:
I think I've fixed that problem, so the 8.22s should no longer be sent.

So far 4 results have come back. One has been through the validator and it validated successfully.
22) Message boards : Number crunching : Flakey AMD/ATI GPUs, including RX 5700 XT, Cross Validating, polluting the Database (Message 2027211)
Posted 10 Jan 2020 by Eric Korpela Project Donor
Post:
As of about 30 seconds ago, the modified app (8.24__opencl_ati*) is on beta. Enjoy, I hope.
23) Message boards : Number crunching : Flakey AMD/ATI GPUs, including RX 5700 XT, Cross Validating, polluting the Database (Message 2027197)
Posted 10 Jan 2020 by Eric Korpela Project Donor
Post:
According to AMD, the new driver also need a change to the OpenCL compile flags (get rid of -funsafe-math-optimizations). We'll be testing that in beta soon.
24) Message boards : Number crunching : The Server Issues / Outages Thread - Panic Mode On! (118) (Message 2026350)
Posted 4 Jan 2020 by Eric Korpela Project Donor
Post:
Sorry, I just have not had time to figure out what has gone wrong with the beta SSDs. It could just be a file system problem. Or it could be worse. Hopefully this coming week I'll have a chance.
25) Message boards : Number crunching : Flakey AMD/ATI GPUs, including RX 5700 XT, Cross Validating, polluting the Database (Message 2025149)
Posted 27 Dec 2019 by Eric Korpela Project Donor
Post:
Some bad results are still coming through when AMD machines with the bad drivers pair up 2 out of 3. At its worst the problem was on par with bad CPUs in term of bad inserted results (which are usually a few out of every 100,000 results) . Compared to the amount of data we lose to RFI it's small, but we still try to prevent it.

If we decide the database and the download server can handle the additional load, I might bump the overflow quorum to 4 next week.
26) Message boards : Number crunching : Flakey AMD/ATI GPUs, including RX 5700 XT, Cross Validating, polluting the Database (Message 2025033)
Posted 26 Dec 2019 by Eric Korpela Project Donor
Post:
Since yesterday, we've fallen back to the old server so anonymous platform apps should be able to get work. Since this morning we should have had the validator that requires 3 results for overflow results. Merry Christmas!

Now I just need to explain why some workunits like this one are sneaking through.

<edit>Problem found and fixed....</edit>
27) Message boards : Number crunching : The Server Issues / Outages Thread - Panic Mode On! (117) (Message 2024312)
Posted 22 Dec 2019 by Eric Korpela Project Donor
Post:
Unfortunately there a database change that renders the 7.09 server inoperable. :(

Really going to bed this time.
28) Message boards : Number crunching : The Server Issues / Outages Thread - Panic Mode On! (117) (Message 2024305)
Posted 22 Dec 2019 by Eric Korpela Project Donor
Post:
Debugging the server is virtually impossible. If anyone wants to help.... The setiathome_server branch is at

https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/tree/setiathome_server/sched

Something goes wrong in the function SCHED_SHMEM::no_work.

bool SCHED_SHMEM::no_work(int pid) {
    if (!ready) return true;
    for (int i=0; i<max_wu_results; i++) {
        if (wu_results[i].state == WR_STATE_PRESENT) {
            wu_results[i].state = pid;
            return false;
        }
    }
    return true;
}


This function works properly unless the requesting computer has anonymous platform apps, for which it always returns true. How could that be? I don't know despite additional 500 lines of debugging code. It's almost as if something else is pausing anonymous platform requests until the queue is empty. Well it's bed time now. :(
29) Message boards : Number crunching : The Server Issues / Outages Thread - Panic Mode On! (117) (Message 2024252)
Posted 22 Dec 2019 by Eric Korpela Project Donor
Post:
I'm looking into the problem. Grrrrr.....
30) Message boards : Number crunching : Flakey AMD/ATI GPUs, including RX 5700 XT, Cross Validating, polluting the Database (Message 2024148)
Posted 21 Dec 2019 by Eric Korpela Project Donor
Post:
I've made a change to the validator that raises the effective quorum for overflow results. The should limit the number of successful cross validations for these GPUs.

That change is still missing a few, so I need to check the overflow detection mechanism. No, my mistake. It is working. The results I was looking at were before the change.
31) Message boards : News : Some server issues today... (Message 2023883)
Posted 20 Dec 2019 by Eric Korpela Project Donor
Post:
It's the Friday before a holiday week and the servers know it.

The file system containing the beta project uploads directory is having problems, so beta is down until further notice.

This problem may be affecting the rate at which the main project can handle results, so the validation and assimilation queues are getting large, which may affect the rate of work generation.
32) Message boards : News : New paper on observing "Clarke Exo-belts" (Message 2021979)
Posted 7 Dec 2019 by Eric Korpela Project Donor
Post:
Just one Q: why is it important to find and study belts around exoplanets of M-class stars?

M-class stars are the most common type (around 75% of stars) and because they are the most common, most nearby stars are going to be M-class and most planets will be found around M-stars. The TESS mission, looking for nearby planetary systems, will mostly find planets around M-stars. That's why we spend a lot of time talking about M-stars. There aren't many stars like the sun (G-class) that are close enough for us to observe these effects (even though G-stars are much brighter than M-stars). It was also the focus of Hector Socas-Navarro's earlier paper on Clarke belts, and we wanted to respond to some of the misconceptions people had about that paper.

Of course we don't know if life is common around M-stars (yet).
33) Message boards : News : New paper on observing "Clarke Exo-belts" (Message 2021712)
Posted 4 Dec 2019 by Eric Korpela Project Donor
Post:
Dr. Korpela and his colleagues Prof. Shauna Sallmen and Ms. Kaisa Crawford-Taylor have published a new paper today in the Astronomical Journal about whether astronomers be able to detect belts of satellites circling planets around other stars. Unfortunately, the answer is that even the thickest satellite belts will be very difficult to see with current technology. Even the James Webb Space Telescope will find it difficult.

If, like most sentient beings in the Galaxy, you don't have a subscription to the Astronomical Journal you can see a preprint of the article at arXiv.org.
34) Message boards : News : Fall/Winter 2019 Funding drive has started (Message 2020975)
Posted 28 Nov 2019 by Eric Korpela Project Donor
Post:
We've started our 2019 funding drive. Many of you have probably received our email penned by Jeff Cobb who has been in the SETI group longer than I have. If you can't wait, you can read yours here.

Because of our continued effort to be GDPR compliant, we're not sending emails to anyone with an EU/EAA email addresses, anyone who listed an EU/EAA country, or anyone who listed "International" as their country. And, of course, anyone who has opted out of our emails won't get them.

Thanks for your support!
35) Message boards : News : New SETI Perspectives: "Is ET in Our Solar System?" (Message 2020719)
Posted 27 Nov 2019 by Eric Korpela Project Donor
Post:
Richard Lawn has posted a new SETI Perspectives entitled "Is ET in Our Solar System?"
36) Message boards : News : SETI@home news for Alexa (Message 2015866)
Posted 18 Oct 2019 by Eric Korpela Project Donor
Post:
SETI@home member Morris Penasso has developed a SETI@home News "skill" for Amazon Alexa/Echo that can tell you the latest from our news feed.
You can get it here.
37) Message boards : News : New SETI Perspectives: "What to expect from ET?" (Message 2009623)
Posted 28 Aug 2019 by Eric Korpela Project Donor
Post:
Richard Lawn has posted another interesting article to "SETI Perspectives". This one is titled What to expect from ET? .
38) Message boards : News : Dan Werthimer wins 2019 Carl Sagan Prize. (Message 2009250)
Posted 25 Aug 2019 by Eric Korpela Project Donor
Post:
Congratulations to our own Dan Werthimer for winning the 2019 Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization! The Sagan Prize is presented specifically to recognize and encourage researchers who “have contributed mightily to the public understanding and appreciation of science.” You can read more about the Sagan Prize and see past winners at http://wonderfest.org/sagan-prize/ .
39) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Happy Birthday Eric (Message 2001220)
Posted 5 Jul 2019 by Eric Korpela Project Donor
Post:
Thanks you all!!! I hadn't noticed the thread until today. I went to the lab on my birthday, and just kept my eyes on the screen for most of the day. Angela made me a lovely dinner when I got home.

Hope everyone had a great 4th!
40) Message boards : News : New SETI Perspectives: "Seeing the Unseeable: The Black Hole Image" (Message 2001216)
Posted 5 Jul 2019 by Eric Korpela Project Donor
Post:
Richard Lawn has posted another interesting article to "SETI Perspectives". This one is titled Seeing the Unseeable: The Black Hole Image and is about the Event Horizon Telescope's image of the black hole in M87.


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