Posts by Sean Arrowsmith

21) Message boards : Number crunching : Changing to SETI crunching seems to produce a low RAC compared to Milkyway (Message 1073406)
Posted 2 Feb 2011 by Profile Sean Arrowsmith
Post:
Thanks.

I have now downgradge to Lunatics SSSE3 2 days ago and shall see what happens over the next week.

I have looked at the process priority and the apps run in low priority by default everytime the PC runs. I have altered the priority to high several times over the last few weeks but does not seem to make a difference and as soo as the PC shuts down then reset to low again on restart. When the projects apps run they all each hog 25% of the Q8300 (or 100% of each core as it depends how you look at it)

Perhaps running the 32bit version might work?

There are no other major applications running on the PC for most of thr 12hours apart from the last 4 hours when my Son uses the PC for video work (Aninmation) and that is just really taking snapshots via a webcam.

Perhaps alot was my expectation that all projects allocated WU credits evenly across all projects so SETI would give the same as Milkyway.

I shall look at the computer Id's you have quoted and see if or what I can do to make things work better.


Thanks




Sean Arrowsmith wrote:
...
My PC's are viewable at http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/hosts_user.php?userid=295004 and the PC which seems to me as really underperforming is is Tom-PC and in number http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=5243910

Any ideas why the RAC is low on this Quad core and how can I improve the RAC back up to 2200'ish as it was on Milkyway

Thanks

RAC isn't going to be suitable to judge whether the computer is underperforming, because credits are not exactly comparable between projects as others have pointed out, because you're not crunching 24/7, and because RAC takes about 5 weeks to stabilize.

The "Average processing rate" (APR) shown on the Application details is a suitable measure. It's calculated the same for all computers doing SETI@home Enhanced work from the run time and splitter specified fpops, and is nominally in GFLOPS. That computer achieved about 5.31 when it was using the stock 6.03 application, and is nearly at 6.55 with the optimized SSE4.1 build. The ~23% improvement is at the low end of what I'd have guessed and I agree that the SSSE3 build is likely to give a small improvement.

But what caught my attention immediately is that 6.55 figure very nearly matches my Pentium-M laptop at 1.4 GHz and running the 32 bit SSE2 optimized application. Your Q8300 at 2.5 GHz and with the Core 2 architectural improvements ought to be at least twice as fast as my P-M.

To get a better idea of what it might do I looked for some other Q8300 systems within the top computers list. Two running 64 bit Windows and the stock 6.03 are 5306191 and 5525417, both have much higher APR than yours did for stock. Then there's 5259251 running 64 bit optimized with APR 16.63 but it's the SSE3 rather than SSSE3 version. Finally, two running optimized 32 bit with APR more than twice yours, 4869855 and 5752798.

It's serious underperformance, and I don't see any good clues to what's causing it. Run time isn't too much more than CPU time as happens when some other process is stealing a lot of CPU, your benchmarks are in line with the other computers I've referenced, you have plenty of RAM to support four instances each using ~50 MiB, etc. But I have no experience with Win 7 64 bit nor multicore CPUs, I hope those with better knowledge will have some helpful ideas. 
                                                                 Joe

22) Message boards : Number crunching : Changing to SETI crunching seems to produce a low RAC compared to Milkyway (Message 1073402)
Posted 2 Feb 2011 by Profile Sean Arrowsmith
Post:
If you're in it for sheer abs quantity of numbers, this is not the place.


Been doing SETI for 10 years now, so it's not about the numbers. Just trying to make sure that if I do workunit then at least I am getting the best I can out of the equipment I am using after all it costs me money to run SETI and other projects in electricity.
23) Message boards : Number crunching : Changing to SETI crunching seems to produce a low RAC compared to Milkyway (Message 1072289)
Posted 30 Jan 2011 by Profile Sean Arrowsmith
Post:
Hello,
I have been cruching Milkyway WU's for over a year on most of my main PC with a few other projects on a lower resource shares.

The main cruchinch PC was getting an RAC 5000'ish when running 24hrs and when I cut the time the PC was switched on for down to 12hrs/day, the RAC settled at 2200'ish and has been that way for 6 months now.

After processing 2 million credits I have put Milkyway into the background and give SETI a very high resource share. I did this at the begining of the this year, however after 3 weeks this particular PC is no longer seeming to perform and has only reached a RAC of 700 and now seems to be flatting out.

I am using optimised apps on all the PC's (Lunatics latest) and if you look at my computers you can see that much slower processors/PC's are technically doing better with their RAC's yet the main crunching PC which is running AK_v8b_win_x64_SSE41.exe and is a Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q8300 @ 2.50GHz is doing poorly.


I can see all cores processing on this PC's and everything is the same, all I did was install the latest lunatic installer and chose SSSE4.1 which is what CPUz states.

My PC's are viewable at http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/hosts_user.php?userid=295004 and the PC which seems to me as really underperforming is is Tom-PC and in number http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=5243910

Any ideas why the RAC is low on this Quad core and how can I improve the RAC back up to 2200'ish as it was on Milkyway

Thanks
24) Message boards : Technical News : Out of the fire and into the pit of sulfuric acid. (Feb 19, 2010) (Message 972363)
Posted 20 Feb 2010 by Profile Sean Arrowsmith
Post:
Because of the outages last year I made sure that my profile collected 6 days worth of WU to keep working when SETI is down.

Last night I did upload quite a bit but now there is the blockage again with HTTP errors in BOINC

Here in the UK and my pathping results are
C:\Documents and Settings\Seanie>pathping 208.68.240.16 boinc2.ssl.berkeley.edu

Tracing route to boinc2.ssl.berkeley.edu [208.68.240.13]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
  0  sean-laptop [192.168.0.21]
  1  ipcop.localdomain [192.168.0.1]
  2  skyrouter [192.168.1.1]
  3  cr1.wmmal.uk.easynet.net [87.87.253.189]
  4  ip-87-87-147-1.easynet.co.uk [87.87.147.1]
  5  te0-0-0-2.er11.thlon.ov.easynet.net [89.200.135.133]
  6  linx.he.net [195.66.224.21]
  7  10gigabitethernet2-3.core1.nyc4.he.net [72.52.92.77]
  8  10gigabitethernet3-1.core1.sjc2.he.net [72.52.92.25]
  9  10gigabitethernet3-2.core1.pao1.he.net [72.52.92.69]
 10  64.71.140.42
 11  208.68.243.254
 12  boinc2.ssl.berkeley.edu [208.68.240.13]

Computing statistics for 300 seconds...
            Source to Here   This Node/Link
Hop  RTT    Lost/Sent = Pct  Lost/Sent = Pct  Address
  0                                           sean-laptop [192.168.0.21]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  1    0ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  ipcop.localdomain [192.168.0.1]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  2    1ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  skyrouter [192.168.1.1]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  3   37ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  cr1.wmmal.uk.easynet.net [87.87.25
3.189]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  4   35ms    81/ 100 = 81%    81/ 100 = 81%  ip-87-87-147-1.easynet.co.uk [87.8
7.147.1]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  5  ---     100/ 100 =100%   100/ 100 =100%  te0-0-0-2.er11.thlon.ov.easynet.ne
t [89.200.135.133]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  6   36ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  linx.he.net [195.66.224.21]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  7  103ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  10gigabitethernet2-3.core1.nyc4.he
.net [72.52.92.77]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  8  177ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  10gigabitethernet3-1.core1.sjc2.he
.net [72.52.92.25]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  9  179ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  10gigabitethernet3-2.core1.pao1.he
.net [72.52.92.69]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
 10  186ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  64.71.140.42
                                8/ 100 =  8%   |
 11  185ms     9/ 100 =  9%     1/ 100 =  1%  208.68.243.254
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
 12  184ms     8/ 100 =  8%     0/ 100 =  0%  boinc2.ssl.berkeley.edu [208.68.24
0.13]

Trace complete.
25) Questions and Answers : Preferences : Questions on Preferences home/work/school (Message 881603)
Posted 2 Apr 2009 by Profile Sean Arrowsmith
Post:
I have identified why I only get a few WU's to work on at a time even though I had the prefs set for 10 days.

When I loaded up the optimized clients for SETI a few months back it appears that I also created a global_prefs_override.xml file. Why I can not remember now or if someone instructed me to do it. Anyway, in the global_prefs_override.mxl file it had 0.250000 set for the days.

I have now set the global_prefs_override.xml to be 6 days and I had quite alot of files now loaded up.
26) Questions and Answers : Preferences : Questions on Preferences home/work/school (Message 881008)
Posted 31 Mar 2009 by Profile Sean Arrowsmith
Post:
Thanks Gundolf,

I have managed to change the location, but one point I would like to mention is that I never put the PC's into the home location in the first place. I just installed the optimized client and away I went.


As for getting hold of x days WU's, yes I know there is a problem with SETI (only for the last week) but I have had the 10 days supply ticked for more than 3 months now and would like to have a good supply of WU's to cover me during the outages that SETI has like it is now.

Does anyone else know why if you select 10 days yo only get a few WU's. I shall not use SETI but say Milkyway as an example TODAY. I have 10 days set there in the prefs yet it has only pulled in 6 WU' each taken 1:50hrs to completion. I have a dual core so it process 2 units at a time, therefore those 6 units will be all completed within 5:30hrs which is not 10days. I hope you see what mean.
27) Questions and Answers : Preferences : Questions on Preferences home/work/school (Message 880957)
Posted 31 Mar 2009 by Profile Sean Arrowsmith
Post:
I have a few PC's all connected up and running. There are all in the Home Preferences, how can I move one PC into say the Work Preferences.

What I want to achieve is on one PC I want to run SETI as the primary project and have Milkyway as the secondary (Only when there are no SETI WU available)

What setting do I need to do to achieve this?



Also, currently I have set my WU to cover 10 days worth of WU but I never get 10 days worth of units in the Boinc client, only several WU max which for 2 PC's is about 9 hours worth.
Is the amount (10 days) only worked out on the slowest PC in the accounts or does the Preference work with each individual PC's specs.

Thanks
28) Questions and Answers : Windows : Optimized Client For SETI Crunching (Message 851413)
Posted 9 Jan 2009 by Profile Sean Arrowsmith
Post:
That's good to hear, as long as the WU get check 100% then I will love to increase my bragging rights.
29) Questions and Answers : Windows : Optimized Client For SETI Crunching (Message 851322)
Posted 9 Jan 2009 by Profile Sean Arrowsmith
Post:
Now that all seems to be running, will the optimized client increase my RAC? if not how can you increase your RAC

30) Questions and Answers : Windows : Optimized Client For SETI Crunching (Message 851307)
Posted 9 Jan 2009 by Profile Sean Arrowsmith
Post:
You are correct about downloading tasks. As soon as it went Idle the tasks downloaded.

As for the 603 errors, I put 603 into the app_info.xml file and all is now OK.

Thanks again.
31) Questions and Answers : Windows : Optimized Client For SETI Crunching (Message 851270)
Posted 9 Jan 2009 by Profile Sean Arrowsmith
Post:
Hello,

I wanted to try an optimized client for running WU on one PC at home.

I ran CPU-Z and it shows my processor as being Intel Pentium T2080 (Dual Core) with MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3


I downloaded AK_v8.0_Win32_SSE3 from Lunatics site and followed the install instruction of just stopping the boinc service, copying the 4 files to the c:\ProgramData\BOINC\projects\setiathome.berkeley.edu folder and then restart the boinc service.

On starting the service Boinc produce the following messages.

09/01/2009 13:30:45||Starting BOINC client version 6.2.19 for windows_intelx86
09/01/2009 13:30:45||log flags: task, file_xfer, sched_ops
09/01/2009 13:30:45||Libraries: libcurl/7.18.0 OpenSSL/0.9.8e zlib/1.2.3
09/01/2009 13:30:45||Running as a daemon
09/01/2009 13:30:45||Data directory: C:\ProgramData\BOINC
09/01/2009 13:30:45||Running under account boinc_master
09/01/2009 13:30:45|SETI@home|Found app_info.xml; using anonymous platform
09/01/2009 13:30:45|SETI@home|[error] No app version for result: windows_intelx86 603
09/01/2009 13:30:45|SETI@home|[error] No app version for result: windows_intelx86 603
09/01/2009 13:30:45|SETI@home|[error] State file error: result 01no08ac.3416.8661.10.8.175_0 not found
09/01/2009 13:30:45|SETI@home|[error] State file error: result 01no08ad.15291.10297.14.8.247_1 not found
09/01/2009 13:30:45||Processor: 2 GenuineIntel Genuine Intel(R) CPU T2080 @ 1.73GHz [x86 Family 6 Model 14 Stepping 12]
09/01/2009 13:30:45||Processor features: fpu tsc pae nx sse sse2 pni mmx
09/01/2009 13:30:45||OS: Microsoft Windows Vista: Home Premium x86 Editon, Service Pack 1, (06.00.6001.00)
09/01/2009 13:30:45||Memory: 1.99 GB physical, 4.22 GB virtual
09/01/2009 13:30:45||Disk: 86.32 GB total, 24.18 GB free
09/01/2009 13:30:45||Local time is UTC +0 hours
09/01/2009 13:30:45|SETI@home|URL: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/; Computer ID: 4639734; location: home; project prefs: default
09/01/2009 13:30:45||General prefs: from SETI@home (last modified 21-Dec-2008 09:36:19)
09/01/2009 13:30:45||Computer location: home
09/01/2009 13:30:45||General prefs: no separate prefs for home; using your defaults
09/01/2009 13:30:45||Reading preferences override file
09/01/2009 13:30:45||Preferences limit memory usage when active to 1018.72MB
09/01/2009 13:30:45||Preferences limit memory usage when idle to 1833.70MB
09/01/2009 13:30:45||Preferences limit disk usage to 0.93GB
09/01/2009 13:30:45||Suspending network activity - user is active
09/01/2009 13:32:28||Resuming network activity
09/01/2009 13:32:28|SETI@home|Sending scheduler request: Requested by user. Requesting 0 seconds of work, reporting 0 completed tasks
09/01/2009 13:32:41||Project communication failed: attempting access to reference site
09/01/2009 13:32:41|SETI@home|Scheduler request failed: Couldn't resolve host name
09/01/2009 13:32:42||Internet access OK - project servers may be temporarily down.
09/01/2009 13:33:41|SETI@home|Sending scheduler request: Requested by user. Requesting 0 seconds of work, reporting 0 completed tasks
09/01/2009 13:33:46|SETI@home|Scheduler request succeeded: got 0 new tasks


As you can see Boinc only see my process as just having SSE2 and not SSE3 as CPU-Z shows.

Anyway from the messages you can see that Boinc found app_info.xml and running as an anonymous platform as the instructions say. But then there are errors in the messages and Boinc can no longer download tasks.

Please help, do I need an different optimized client or is the problems elsewhere.

Thanks
32) Message boards : Number crunching : Extend the Graphing in Statistics Tab on client (Message 850786)
Posted 8 Jan 2009 by Profile Sean Arrowsmith
Post:
Thanks for the reply.


For info to others if they come across this thread, here is what I did.

I first checked in the BOINC program directory (in my case c:\program files\boinc ) for a file called cc_config.xml

I did not have one so I created one in notepad and put the following data in and saved it to the BOINC program directory.

<cc_config>
<log_flags>
[ flags ]
</log_flags>
<options>
[ <save_stats_days>360</save_stats_days> ]
</options>
</cc_config>



This will now set my data storage for 360 days. I set it for this length because I loved to see what I have done over a longer period of 30 days.

33) Message boards : Number crunching : Extend the Graphing in Statistics Tab on client (Message 850783)
Posted 8 Jan 2009 by Profile Sean Arrowsmith
Post:
I am using 6.2.19 and would like to know if I can extend the length of the axis of the statics graph to show more that 30 days(month) worth of data.
34) Questions and Answers : Preferences : Astropulse disabled but got workunits (Message 827904)
Posted 7 Nov 2008 by Profile Sean Arrowsmith
Post:
Thank you, I should be crunching on my original account from 2001 but I seem to be posting here as my old business login. Got mixed up somewhere.


So how do I go about closing the old SniffTheGlove account that I do not wish to use anymore.

Thanks again :-)


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