Posts by Graham Thomas

1) Message boards : Number crunching : x64 Windows CPU build testing on beta (Message 1854337) Posted 10 Mar 2017 by Graham Thomas Post: This thread's been quiet for a while. I looked at it because I saw yesterday that I've got a number of 8.05 units. I'm not involved in beta-testing, so can I assume that the x64 application is now out of beta? I've got an old (bought 2011) 64-bit AMD PC, so it will be interesting to see how well it handles the new app. By the way, I'm really pleased with the 8.22 app for my GPU. With previous versions I had to tweak the relevant mb_cmdline_8.xx... files to stop my display from crashing and units locking up after recovery (thanks again for your help with that, Raistmer). After the mess with 8.23 and erroneous nvidia units I reset the project and then forgot to re-tweak the mb_cmdline_8.22... files - but everything's been running fine. I don't know what changed, but I'm glad it did and hope it continues with future versions.
2) Message boards : Number crunching : SETI@home v8.22/23 Windows GPU applications support thread (Message 1842125) Posted 14 Jan 2017 by Graham Thomas Post: I suspect this doesn't add anything significant, but as confirmation I got this message about a few 8.24 units yesterday. For instance: 13/01/2017 18:31:40 \| SETI@home \| [error] No app version found for app setiathome_v8 platform windows_intelx86 ver 824 class opencl_ati5_SoG_cat132; discarding 26no15ad.9508.20549.11.38.220_0 Looking back, I had similar messages about 8.24 units at around 13.00 and 03.00 yesterday. (All times are UTC in case that's not clear.)
3) Message boards : Number crunching : SETI@home v8.22/23 Windows GPU applications support thread (Message 1841377) Posted 11 Jan 2017 by Graham Thomas Post: It's been days since the bulk of the discussion about the missing 8.23 app for ATI GPUs, but I'm still getting several messages each day like this: 11/01/2017 05:17:59 \| SETI@home \| [error] No app version found for app setiathome_v8 platform windows_intelx86 ver 823 class opencl_ati5_SoG_cat132; discarding 05mr09aa.28271.2526.10.37.36_2 Has the cause of the problem been found, and has anything been done about it? It's not urgent for me - I've got lots of other work units to process - but it may not be good for the project as a whole to have this mismatch.
4) Message boards : Number crunching : SETI@home v8.22/23 Windows GPU applications support thread (Message 1840383) Posted 6 Jan 2017 by Graham Thomas Post: Thanks, Raistmer. It may be that all it needs is for the filename of the app to be changed from 8.22 to 8.23 (but, as I said, I'm no expert and could be way off beam).
5) Message boards : Number crunching : SETI@home v8.22/23 Windows GPU applications support thread (Message 1840312) Posted 6 Jan 2017 by Graham Thomas Post: I'm seeing the same behaviour - all 8.23 tasks for ati5_SoG.... are being rejected because there's no matching app. This is probably not relevant, but could the absence of the app needed to handle these tasks have anything to do with the presence of the 8.22 nvidia_SoG app that was incorrectly downloaded to ATI machines (and which I have)? I don't think it should, and I don't think deleting this app would halp, but I'm no expert. Alternatively, when Eric Korpela did this: Another typo in another manually edited script copied the wrong base app_version into the ati5_SoG app_versions. I've rereleased them at 8.23 and cancelled the results for the bad app_versions (8.22 opencl_ati5_SoG_nocal and opencl_ati5_SoG_cat132). is it possible that no new 8.23 app was created to match the tasks' version number change? It may have been done quickly in the holiday period.
6) Message boards : Number crunching : How to get v8.12 units to complete on ATI GPU (APU)? (Message 1790015) Posted 24 May 2016 by Graham Thomas Post: Thanks. I hadn't realised that the 8.12 support thread was relevant to my problems. I'll try your suggested solutions. Yes, I do have ATI GPU driver restarts - yesterday I saw one 'Display driver has stopped and has recovered' message and I had one black screen for a few seconds. I don't think I want more GUI lag (I had noticed that it was getting worse even before the 8.12 units started) so I may try increasing -period_iterations_num to make it higher than 100. I'll try 100 first, though, and I'll see what the TDR registry key patch involves.
7) Message boards : Number crunching : How to get v8.12 units to complete on ATI GPU (APU)? (Message 1789788) Posted 23 May 2016 by Graham Thomas Post: I'd got this sorted for v8.00, but obviously I didn't note down the solution in the right place... Longer v8.12 work units that use my ATI GPU get to a certain point, then hang in some way. The 'Progress' percent (typically about 20%) stays the same, and both the 'Elapsed' and 'Remaining' times just keep increasing. The solution for v8.00 was to add a line to a file whose name begins mb_cmdline-[version], and the line was something like: -period_iterations_num 50 -sbs 256 -hp I'm saying 'something like' because I remember I had to increase one or both of the numbers in that line. The example I've given is for an earlier version (7.03) because I can no longer see the equivalent for version 8.00. I think the equivalent 8.00 file was deleted when I started to process v8.12 units. So, I have two questions: 1) What should the numbers in that line be (roughly - I can increase it/them if necessary)? 2) To which file should I add the line? For v8.12 there are five possibilities. They all start mb_cmdline-8.12_windows_intel_opencl_ and then the five files end as follows: ati_sah.txt ati5_sah.txt ati5_SoG.txt atiapu_sah.txt atiapu_SoG.txt I think I remember that for v8.00 I put the line into the file ending ati5_sah.txt, but I'm not 100% sure. Would there be a problem if I added the line to all five files? Thanks for any help you can give. If necessary I can add details of my GPU - it's old (a 5-year-old APU) but I keep the driver up-to-date. Graham
8) Message boards : Number crunching : Forced to abandon GPU processing of SETI work (Message 1761380) Posted 1 Feb 2016 by Graham Thomas Post: Thanks again, everyone. I'd already changed my settings to those given in AllenIN's last message, including -cpu_lock. I've now upped -period_iterations_num to 550. If that doesn't work I'll increase -sbs too. Should I increase -sbs by a number such as 64 or 128, or doesn't it matter?
9) Message boards : Number crunching : Forced to abandon GPU processing of SETI work (Message 1761005) Posted 31 Jan 2016 by Graham Thomas Post: OK - so not 100% fantastic. I've had two SETI@Home v8 GPU units stall in the last four days. I'm not sure what they have in common, but I suspect they're the ones that are scheduled to take the longest times to run. However, I can live with that. Would increasing the number of iterations in AllenIN's tweak (above) be likely to help - and if so, why?
10) Message boards : Number crunching : Forced to abandon GPU processing of SETI work (Message 1759630) Posted 27 Jan 2016 by Graham Thomas Post: Fantastic! The tweaks to the config file appear to have done the trick. All SETI@home v8 units that ran on my GPU yesterday completed without problems. Thanks once again, everyone, for your help.
11) Message boards : Number crunching : Forced to abandon GPU processing of SETI work (Message 1759423) Posted 26 Jan 2016 by Graham Thomas Post: Thanks for all your help. Bob Smith: I'm pretty sure I'm using the ATI drivers, as I update them using the AMD Catalyst Control Center. Your suggestion for choosing only Astropulse would mean that I couldn't run SETI@home v8 tasks on my CPUs, and I'd still like to be able to do that: on balance I'd prefer to turn off GPU processing if necessary. AllenIN: I've now implemented your suggested change and I'll see how that goes. I had something similar (though with a lower number of iterations) in the file for a previous version and it didn't work, but I now see I had implemented the earlier change in the wrong file (for v7.03 rather than v7.07). Anyway, I've now made the change in the file for v8.00. I'll post again to let you know if it works.
12) Message boards : Number crunching : Forced to abandon GPU processing of SETI work (Message 1759022) Posted 24 Jan 2016 by Graham Thomas Post: When SETI@home v8 units were first released I hoped that the problems I'd had with v7 units and my ATI GPU might go away. With longer work units (those estimated to take around 2 hours on my GPU, as opposed to the shorter 45-minute units which were fine, the unit would complete a certain percentage of its work, often around 20%, then cause the display driver to stop working. The display driver would recover, but processing on the unit would then stop (i.e. the percentage of work done would remain the same while both the elapsed time and the remaining time would increase). When I discussed this on the SETI message board a while back, several people made helpful suggestions, typically involving tweaking my config file. Thanks to everyone who made these suggestions, but alas nothing worked. So, I hoped things would change with v8, but they haven't. Longer units still stop at around 20% completed. I haven't received any shorter units to compare yet. I suspect they'd be OK, and Astropulse units - on the rare occasions when I get any - are also fine. However, in the absence of an option to have only Astropulse and/or shorter SETI@home v8 units processed on the GPU, I've decided to allow no SETI units to run on the GPU rather than having to check which ones to abort several times a day. It means I'll run a lot fewer SETI units than before, but there are plenty of other machines out there so it's OK. I don't expect anyone to try to fix the problem, because I doubt whether enough people have the same GPU to make it worthwhile. Here are the details of my setup, in case anyone else has the same problem: 23/01/2016 18:56:21 \| \| CAL: ATI GPU 0: AMD Radeon HD 6520G/6530D/6550D/6620G (SuperSumo) (CAL version 1.4.1848, 512MB, 479MB available, 960 GFLOPS peak) 23/01/2016 18:56:21 \| \| OpenCL: AMD/ATI GPU 0: AMD Radeon HD 6520G/6530D/6550D/6620G (SuperSumo) (driver version 1800.11 (VM), device version OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (1800.11), 512MB, 479MB available, 960 GFLOPS peak) 23/01/2016 18:56:21 \| \| OpenCL CPU: AMD A8-3850 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics (OpenCL driver vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., driver version 1800.11 (sse2), device version OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (1800.11))
13) Message boards : Number crunching : Can I prevent longer 7.03 WUs being downloaded? (GPU problem) (Message 1653136) Posted 15 Mar 2015 by Graham Thomas Post: Thanks for all that extra info. Very useful. I've now detached from and reattached to the project. I noticed that the apps were downloaded again, so I guess that the recompilations have been done. I tried leaving some of the longer 7.03 units in the list to see if they would complete. The first one that was processed did stall, but it got further along (ca 60%) than was the case previously. Now I'll try leaving just the 'shorter longer' units (if that makes sense - those scheduled to take, say, 2 hrs 15 mins to finish rather than the 3 hrs or more scheduled for the longest ones) and see what happens. I'll then try adding the line suggested above to the two files. (Oh, and I also tried letting Device Manager update my display driver, just in case my AMD Catalyst suite wasn't up-to-date. Big mistake. It 'updated' to a 2011 driver and totally knocked out the GPU. Thank goodness for the roll-back feature.) Admiral Gloval: it looks like your machine is processing the 7.03 units about twice as fast as mine. How good that it depends of course on how capable your processor is supposed to be (there are comparison tables you can search for), but from here it looks OK.
14) Message boards : Number crunching : Can I prevent longer 7.03 WUs being downloaded? (GPU problem) (Message 1652464) Posted 13 Mar 2015 by Graham Thomas Post: OK, now I'm a bit confused. Some of the results reported above (especially the Astropulse 6 result) are from several months ago, before I updated my ATI drivers. They were certainly old then, and I updated after I saw that Astropulse 7 units were exiting (or stalling - can't remember - as soon as they started. You can see what I'm running now from my post at the top of this thread. I've just checked my AMD Catalyst Control Center and the software update checker tells me I'm up-to-date (I'm running the standard version, not the beta.) The Catalyst software suite version is given as 14.501.1003.etc I can see a CAL version from my seti@home event log. It's 1.4.1848, which is higher than the minimum given in posts above. My OpenCL version is 1.2 and as far as I know it just comes with the Catalyst suite. I can't see any mention of SDK. I can certainly try detaching from the project and reattaching. But what would that change?
15) Message boards : Number crunching : Can I prevent longer 7.03 WUs being downloaded? (GPU problem) (Message 1652028) Posted 12 Mar 2015 by Graham Thomas Post: Thanks, Mike. However, I can't see a file called mb_cmdline_win_x86_SSE_OpenCL_ATi_HD5.txt in my C:\ProgramData\BOINC\projects\setiathome.berkeley.edu folder (which I hope is what you meant by 'projects' folder). I do, though, have two (empty) files there called: mb_cmdline_7.03_opencl_ati_sah.txt mb_cmdline_7.03_opencl_ati5_sah.txt Would it be useful to add the -period_iterations_num line to either or both of these?
16) Message boards : Number crunching : Can I prevent longer 7.03 WUs being downloaded? (GPU problem) (Message 1651592) Posted 11 Mar 2015 by Graham Thomas Post: I haven't seen any Astropulse units for a long time now, but I do get lots of seti@home v7 7.03 WUs downloaded for my GPU. This in itself isn't a problem, but units scheduled to take a longer time to complete end up stalling. They reach a certain percentage of their worktime (usually around 20%), then stick at that percentage and amount of time completed, while incrementing the time to completion. Also, at the point when the WU stalls, my screen display goes blank and then recovers. These WUs are typically scheduled to take 2-3 hours on my machine, whereas shorter WUs that are scheduled to complete in just over an hour run without problems. I've been told (in response to an earlier post here) that there are some combinations of GPU hardware and drivers that just don't handle the longer units. (Details of my setup are below.) I've got used to aborting the longer WUs before they run, but it's tedious. Is there a way to make sure they don't download in the first place? From the spec of the cc_config.xml file, it looks like it might be possible to stop all v7.03 WUs from downloading (via the exclude_gpu option, though I'm no expert here), but that would leave my GPU idle until Astropulse units start flowing again. Is there any way to distinguish between longer and shorter WUs? Here's my setup: 11/03/2015 08:51:59 \| \| CAL: ATI GPU 0: AMD Radeon HD 6520G/6530D/6550D/6620G (SuperSumo) (CAL version 1.4.1848, 512MB, 479MB available, 960 GFLOPS peak) 11/03/2015 08:51:59 \| \| OpenCL: AMD/ATI GPU 0: AMD Radeon HD 6520G/6530D/6550D/6620G (SuperSumo) (driver version 1642.5 (VM), device version OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (1642.5), 512MB, 479MB available, 960 GFLOPS peak) 11/03/2015 08:51:59 \| \| OpenCL CPU: AMD A8-3850 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics (OpenCL driver vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., driver version 1642.5 (sse2), device version OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (1642.5)) 11/03/2015 08:51:59 \| \| Processor: 4 AuthenticAMD AMD A8-3850 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics [Family 18 Model 1 Stepping 0] 11/03/2015 08:51:59 \| \| Processor features: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 htt pni cx16 popcnt syscall nx lm svm sse4a osvw ibs skinit wdt page1gb rdtscp 3dnowext 3dnow 11/03/2015 08:51:59 \| \| OS: Microsoft Windows 7: Home Premium x64 Edition, Service Pack 1, (06.01.7601.00)
17) Message boards : Number crunching : Long Seti@home v7.7.03 units (not Astropulse) on AMD GPU - don't finish? (Message 1611800) Posted 10 Dec 2014 by Graham Thomas Post: Thanks for all that helpful advice. I'll take a look at that config file and its help file and see if I can work out what those parameters mean. I'm not sure I want to go for any of the more specialised apps at this point.
18) Message boards : Number crunching : Long Seti@home v7.7.03 units (not Astropulse) on AMD GPU - don't finish? (Message 1611639) Posted 10 Dec 2014 by Graham Thomas Post: Recently I've been getting Seti@Home v7.7.03 workunits that run on my AMD GPU (as opposed to the v7.7.00 units that run on the CPU). They seem to come in two flavours. One has an estimated time of just over an hour, and these units complete with no problems. The other has an estimated time of about three and a half hours, and these units seem to get stuck. Generally, after starting OK, when they get stuck they show as being about 20% done, and although the 'elapsed' column keeps counting the 'remaining' column doesn't change. The first few times this happened I let the computation proceed for 6-8 hours before aborting. Now I abort as soon as I see them in the queue. Has anyone else seen this behaviour? Is there anything I can do about it? And are there any negative consequences of aborting units frequently? Astropulse units complete OK. Here's my setup: 06/12/2014 11:53:00 \| \| CAL: ATI GPU 0: AMD Radeon HD 6520G/6530D/6550D/6620G (SuperSumo) (CAL version 1.4.1848, 512MB, 479MB available, 960 GFLOPS peak) 06/12/2014 11:53:00 \| \| OpenCL: AMD/ATI GPU 0: AMD Radeon HD 6520G/6530D/6550D/6620G (SuperSumo) (driver version 1573.4 (VM), device version OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (1573.4), 512MB, 479MB available, 960 GFLOPS peak) 06/12/2014 11:53:00 \| \| OpenCL CPU: AMD A8-3850 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics (OpenCL driver vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., driver version 1573.4 (sse2), device version OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (1573.4)) 06/12/2014 11:53:00 \| \| Host name: ----- 06/12/2014 11:53:00 \| \| Processor: 4 AuthenticAMD AMD A8-3850 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics [Family 18 Model 1 Stepping 0] 06/12/2014 11:53:00 \| \| Processor features: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 htt pni cx16 popcnt syscall nx lm svm sse4a osvw ibs skinit wdt page1gb rdtscp 3dnowext 3dnow 06/12/2014 11:53:00 \| \| OS: Microsoft Windows 7: Home Premium x64 Edition, Service Pack 1, (06.01.7601.00) Graham
19) Message boards : Number crunching : Seti@Home 7.7.03 tasks seem to run on GPU - is this normal? (Message 1598545) Posted 8 Nov 2014 by Graham Thomas Post: Thanks to both of you. I'll (probably) let the scheduler sort itself out. The progress bar and 'time remaining' indicators don't seem to work well with the v7.7.03 Seti@Home units that are running on the GPU. They don't appear to get done any faster than the others so I'm not sure that there's any advantage in running them in this way. I'll see how things settle down and then decide whether to intervene.
20) Message boards : Number crunching : Seti@Home 7.7.03 tasks seem to run on GPU - is this normal? (Message 1598516) Posted 8 Nov 2014 by Graham Thomas Post: It used to be the case that my normal Seti@Home tasks ran on my CPU(s) while Astropulse tasks ran on "0.128 CPUs + 1 ATI GPU". (I've got an AMD A8 3850 quad processor with built-in ATI GPU.) Recently I've been receiving Seti@Home v7.7.03 tasks that claim to be running on 0.128 CPUs + 1 ATI GPU. These tasks all have either (opend_ati_cat132) or (opend_ati5_nocal) following their version number. v7.7.00 tasks are running on CPUs as normal and have nothing in brackets following their version number. Is this all OK? And if I get more Astropules tasks will these take priority over the Seti@Home tasks on the GPU?

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SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.