Posts by CalicoSkies

1) Message boards : SETI@home Staff Blog : This hurts me as much as it hurts you. (Message 2038522)
Posted 17 Mar 2020 by Profile CalicoSkies
Post:
I just saw the notice about this, and it's sad to see. I joined SETI@Home in May 1999, and was using a 350mhz AMD K6-2 at the time. I have been running SETI@Home on and off ever since. I just built a new PC last year and have enjoyed seeing SETI@Home run on it, faster than I've ever seen on any of my own PCs. I hope volunteer work continues again some day.

It's been a great run Eric. I joined with a 386dx4 in May of '99, and I've been active since. While I may swap over to another project, rest-assured my computers will ALWAYS be linked to SETI@Home if and when you fire it back up.

I didn't know there was such a thing as a 386DX4. I thought the fastest 386 was AMD's 386DX-40.
2) Message boards : Number crunching : NVidia 436.xx and later drivers can cause very long compute times especially on Arecibo VHAR work units (Message 2033244)
Posted 21 Feb 2020 by Profile CalicoSkies
Post:
I think 442.19 has definitely fixed it!

In my testing of the 442.19 drivers, I had no problems processing VHAR work items, on my main rig (RTX 2080, GTX 980 Ti, GTX 980) using Windows 10.
All 3 GPUs acted correctly.

I can second this. Yes, I recently installed the 442.19 driver (game-ready) and started running BOINC again in the last few days and have not seen any problems running the SETI@Home SoG tasks. They have all been completing within 2-4 minutes for me (RTX 2070 Super) on Windows 10.
3) Questions and Answers : GPU applications : Fix for freezing/long running time with Nvidia game-ready drivers ? (Message 2018538)
Posted 11 Nov 2019 by Profile CalicoSkies
Post:
3. SoG app only
4. Arecibo VHAR tasks only.

Is there any way to restrict it to the SoG app or Arecibo VHAR tasks? When I go to my SETI@Home preferences at the setiathome web site, I see the option "Run only the selected applications", but the only options there are AstroPulse v7 and SETI@Home v8. There are also options for whether or not to use an ATI GPU, Intel GPU, or NVidia GPU, but no options to choose which specific GPU applications & tasks to run.
4) Questions and Answers : GPU applications : Fix for freezing/long running time with Nvidia game-ready drivers ? (Message 2018472)
Posted 11 Nov 2019 by Profile CalicoSkies
Post:
Not too long ago, I noticed some of the SETI@Home Nvidia tasks were stopping after about 0.602% for me, and I found the following threads where people recommended reverting the Nvidia drivers back to version 431.x:
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=84694
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=84761
I've noticed the Nvidia task freezing issue still persists in the latest drivers (441.x). I've reverted back to 431.68. I'd like to be able to use the latest Nvidia drivers when they're released though. I'm curious if anyone knows if there will soon be a fix (either in the Nvidia SETI@Home apps or Nvidia driver) that will resolve the task freezing issue with Nvidia?
5) Message boards : Number crunching : SETI@home v8.22 Windows GPU applications support thread (Message 2010417)
Posted 2 Sep 2019 by Profile CalicoSkies
Post:
I have an Nvidia RTX 2070 Super graphics card (Asus ROG STRIX), and SETI@Home Nvidia tasks would normally take up to 3-4 minutes to complete on the GPU. However, today I noticed SETI@Home Nvidia tasks get to about 0.603% complete and stop, and the estimated time to finish keeps going up.

What might be causing this?
Today I had updated my Nvidia driver, and I'm wondering if that might have something to do with it. I'm currently using the Nvidia 436.15 driver.
6) Message boards : Number crunching : SETI@Home (alt) versions and CPU processing (Message 2000970)
Posted 4 Jul 2019 by Profile CalicoSkies
Post:
I started running BOINC and SETI@Home again recently, on a new PC. I found that my CPU temperature was reaching about 70-75C when running BOINC tasks, including SETI@Home. More recently, I've noticed some SETI@Home tasks appearing with "(alt)" in the name (such as "SETI@home v8 8.08 (alt)", vs. "SETI@Home v8 8.00" and "SETI@Home v8 8.05"), and with the (alt) tasks, my CPU temperature has been around 80-83C. I'm curious if these (alt) versions are doing something a bit more that the other SETI@Home versions don't do?
7) Message boards : Number crunching : SETI@Home mostly only GPU tasks, few CPU tasks (Message 2000478)
Posted 1 Jul 2019 by Profile CalicoSkies
Post:
I have set World Community Grid and Rosetta to not get more tasks for now, and now I'm getting a lot more SETI tasks.

The GPU tasks seem to take a lot less time than the CPU tasks, so I wonder if the balance was good already..
8) Message boards : Number crunching : SETI@Home mostly only GPU tasks, few CPU tasks (Message 2000235)
Posted 29 Jun 2019 by Profile CalicoSkies
Post:
I have 3 projects set up in my BOINC: SETI@Home, World Community Grid, and Rosetta@Home. I wanted it to run mostly SETI@Home tasks though, but for some reason, the vast majority of SETI@Home tasks I'm getting are for my GPU. I'm getting very few CPU-bound SETI@Home tasks. Thus, most of the tasks my BOINC has been running are for my other projects.

I've even tried setting the resource share of SETI@Home way higher than the others. Currently I have the SETI@Home resource share set to 500 and the other two projects set at 75. Despite that, I seem to be getting mostly GPU tasks for SETI@Home.

Currently, I have 101 SETI@Home tasks in my queue, and 100 of them are for the GPU (only one is for the CPU). It seems a little imbalanced. I only have one GPU, so each of those tasks will run sequentially, whereas my CPU has 8 cores with hyperthreading (16 threads total).. Though, I realize a GPU has many more compute cores to work with.. My GPU is currently an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 TI 8GB (Asus ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1070 TI).

Is it just that there isn't enough SETI@Home work right now, or is there anything I can do to at least balance it out more?
9) Message boards : News : 20 years and counting! (Message 1999856)
Posted 26 Jun 2019 by Profile CalicoSkies
Post:
I remember reading somewhere that LCD screens are still susceptible to image burn-in at some point. I wouldn't keep my LCD screen on all the time..
10) Message boards : News : 20 years and counting! (Message 1999845)
Posted 26 Jun 2019 by Profile CalicoSkies
Post:
I just realized I created my SETI@Home account just 3 days after SETI@Home was first released. SETI@Home was released on May 17, 1999, and I've had my account since May 20, 1999. I don't remember how I heard about SETI@Home, but I must have heard about it on a news site somewhere when it was new. I've been using it on and off since then. I had just started college in 1999 and had a speech class that year (part of the English department), and I gave a presentation on SETI@Home in that class. I remember one of the other students in that class telling me she (I think it was a she) started running SETI@Home after I gave my presentation in that class.
11) Message boards : SETI@home Science : The ultimate question.. (Message 1619193)
Posted 26 Dec 2014 by Profile CalicoSkies
Post:
I was thinking about this today. Considering the size of the universe and the number of planets in it, I have a hard time believing that we're alone. It's possible that radio signals from other civilizations just haven't reached us yet. It's also possible that there have been radio signals from other civilizations that have already passed by us long ago before those civilizations moved onto some more advanced form of communication - so perhaps we're already too late to pick up some civilizations' signals.
12) Message boards : Number crunching : Validation Inconclusive (Message 1484707)
Posted 5 Mar 2014 by Profile CalicoSkies
Post:
It seems there is a lot of discussion on various message boards online about people's work units ending up with the status "Completed, validation inconclusive". I'm wondering, how normal is this, and is it anything to worry about? I've seen this with tasks running on my GPUs as well as CPUs, with the SETI@Home v7 7.00 apps. The number of inconclusive results I've generated has gone up and down; Right now I have 12 inconclusive results. I have a couple of Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 GPUs in my main PC, and I've read in other threads that the GeForce 560 is a popular GPU for SETI@Home but is also known to produce errors. I suppose I could see how different computers could disagree on some of the results, so I'm wondering if it's normal and nothing to worry about? My main concern is whether my PC hardware might be faulty or starting to fail.
13) Message boards : Number crunching : SETI@Home not getting CPU work; only running on GPU (Message 1481115)
Posted 24 Feb 2014 by Profile CalicoSkies
Post:
Ageless has a good point, I'd be interested in knowing this too..I can see the i5 has CPU work units but your i7 still doesn't, though the GPUs are working fine :) Are you listing them at different locations with different parameters?

My i5 finally got some CPU units. Maybe it just needed some time. I don't yet have any separate parameters for different locations.

Recently I had tried temporarily disabling my setting my "Accept work from other applications" and setting the BOINC client on my i7 machine to not accept new tasks from other projects, and I got a few CPU AstroPulse tasks on my i7. Those took a very long time though - BOINC estimated they would take 24 hours, but they were finished (or stopped) after about 10-16 hours. My i5 machine has some SETI@Home v7 7.00 tasks running on its CPU that seem to be taking about 2 hours.

I'm thinking the lack of CPU tasks on my i7 might just be luck, or as others have said, due to scheduler decisions since I'm running other projects as well.
14) Message boards : Number crunching : SETI@Home not getting CPU work; only running on GPU (Message 1480493)
Posted 22 Feb 2014 by Profile CalicoSkies
Post:
Well, just for something to try, I've (temporarily) set my "accept work from other applications" setting to No and in my client, I've temporarily set my other projects to "Won't accept new tasks". Now I see that there are a few AstroPulse tasks for SETI@Home in my task list. Thees are the first AstroPulse tasks I've seen since I started running BOINC again last weekend.
15) Message boards : Number crunching : SETI@Home not getting CPU work; only running on GPU (Message 1478960)
Posted 19 Feb 2014 by Profile CalicoSkies
Post:
Calico,

Just a question. I noticed that there is about a 3 hour gap between your first CPU work unit and the GPU..What happen in between those times? Did you not have the graphic card installed yet or did you change out what you had? Just curiosity for my own sake. Since it's still not working, finish what you have, don't get any new task. After they upload, uninstall Bonic. Then turn of the computer for a little bit (5-10 mins). Restart and download bonic (just incase the previous downloaded installer is corrupt) and install. Let it run for a while (hours) before you try to tinker with it and lets see what it does. Just my 2 cents

Nothing changed between the CPU and GPU work units. One thought I had was that I had just started running BOINC again after months of not using it - so I wonder if I had some leftover work units in my cache that somehow got corrupted, perhaps by using a newer version of BOINC or something.

I might try uninstalling and re-installing like you've suggested. Thanks.
16) Message boards : Number crunching : SETI@Home not getting CPU work; only running on GPU (Message 1478956)
Posted 19 Feb 2014 by Profile CalicoSkies
Post:
I don't believe anyone has asked yet what your setting is for Minimum work buffer. If you've got it set to a high number, say 9 or 10 days, you might want to try reducing it, perhaps down to 1.

I mention that because, in the back of my mind, I have a vague recollection of someone else mentioning that a large work buffer number causes the project to think that your machine will take much longer to process the tasks it receives, and actually ends up sending it fewer tasks to ensure that deadlines will be met. Because your machines haven't established a usable APR for v7 CPU tasks, estimated run times will initially be vastly inflated to begin with. If a large work buffer number adds to those estimates, it's possible that the scheduler thinks that it simply has no tasks available that could possibly be completed by the expected deadline, rather than having no tasks available at all. That might be especially true when you have other projects sharing the CPU.

I had a minimum work buffer of 3 days. I've set it to 1 day (for both SETI@Home and Rosetta@Home), so I'll see if that helps. Thanks for the suggestion.
17) Message boards : Number crunching : SETI@Home not getting CPU work; only running on GPU (Message 1478764)
Posted 18 Feb 2014 by Profile CalicoSkies
Post:
Well, my question has been partially answered.. I suppose I should have just read the SETI@Home CUDA FAQ:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/cuda_faq.php
From that FAQ:
[quote]Q) Does SETI@home run GPU and CPU versions simultaneously?

No. If BOINC determines your CPU is capable of running the CUDA version, only the CUDA version of SETI@home will run. One copy will run on each GPU you have installed. If you want to keep your CPUs occupied at the same time, you can join another BOINC project.
The BOINC developers expect the capability to run CPU and GPU jobs simultaneously for the same application will be added in the next couple months.

And it was. I run both CPU and GPU WU at the same time with no problem.

So it seems that page is out of date. So I'm still left wondering why SETI@Home is only running on my GPU..
18) Message boards : Number crunching : SETI@Home not getting CPU work; only running on GPU (Message 1478763)
Posted 18 Feb 2014 by Profile CalicoSkies
Post:
Well, my question has been partially answered.. I suppose I should have just read the SETI@Home CUDA FAQ:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/cuda_faq.php

If I had to guess, I'd say that FAQ is about 5 years out of date! Too bad they didn't put a datestamp on it.

I was wondering about that. Without a date on the help pages, how are we supposed to know if it's accurate anymore?
19) Message boards : Number crunching : SETI@Home not getting CPU work; only running on GPU (Message 1478762)
Posted 18 Feb 2014 by Profile CalicoSkies
Post:
Well, my question has been partially answered.. I suppose I should have just read the SETI@Home CUDA FAQ:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/cuda_faq.php
From that FAQ:
Q) Does SETI@home run GPU and CPU versions simultaneously?

No. If BOINC determines your CPU is capable of running the CUDA version, only the CUDA version of SETI@home will run. One copy will run on each GPU you have installed. If you want to keep your CPUs occupied at the same time, you can join another BOINC project.
The BOINC developers expect the capability to run CPU and GPU jobs simultaneously for the same application will be added in the next couple months.

Obviously you are not reading/understanding that page properly at all. :-(

It clearly states that CPU and GPU jobs simultaneously is not (or was not) supported. I don't think it's written in a confusing manner. What's not to understand about that?
20) Message boards : Number crunching : SETI@Home not getting CPU work; only running on GPU (Message 1478546)
Posted 18 Feb 2014 by Profile CalicoSkies
Post:
Well, my question has been partially answered.. I suppose I should have just read the SETI@Home CUDA FAQ:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/cuda_faq.php
From that FAQ:
Q) Does SETI@home run GPU and CPU versions simultaneously?

No. If BOINC determines your CPU is capable of running the CUDA version, only the CUDA version of SETI@home will run. One copy will run on each GPU you have installed. If you want to keep your CPUs occupied at the same time, you can join another BOINC project.
The BOINC developers expect the capability to run CPU and GPU jobs simultaneously for the same application will be added in the next couple months.


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