Einstein@Home down
The main Einstein@Home server crashed about half an hour ago with a filesystem error. Checking and repairing this will take a while. We are trying to keep the downtime below 24h.

(since we don't have any means to notify people over at Einstein, I'm doing this here)

BM
13 Jun 2013 | 12:34:14 UTC · Comment

Main database corrupted
Our main project DB here on Albert@Home got partially corrupted during last weekend's shutdown. We're looking into it...

Oliver
19 Nov 2012 | 14:56:47 UTC · Comment

Planned downtime of Albert@Home: Nov, 17th (this weekend)
Out test project will be shut down on Nov, 17th due to a planned power outage. More details here (message board of our main/production project).

Cheers,
Oliver
16 Nov 2012 | 10:11:48 UTC · Comment

Work availability
Hi,

You may have noticed that we didn't produce new work units over the past few days. This was due to an infrastructure upgrade in our data center. While we made sure that our production project wasn't affected, our test project ran out of work. Oh well, it's a test project after all.

Anyway, we began producing work again, at least for the binary radio pulsar search, so you should be able to fetch new work units soon.

FYI, we're also going to update the BRP apps themselves over the next days. They include improvements that should make them more robust against external termination, in particular the GPU apps.


Thanks for your patience!

Oliver
5 Nov 2012 | 14:24:25 UTC · Comment

[New release] BRP4 app v1.30 (new 64bit versions)
Dear volunteers,

we just released some new BRP4 1.30 app versions. These are based on the same code basis as the v1.28 versions, but are compiled for 64 bit.

The app versions support the following platforms

- CPU, 64 bit, for Windows,
- NVIDIA CUDA , 64 bit, Linux
- OpenCL (ATI/AMD), 64 bit, Linux.

Requirements & known limitations

The OpenCL version requires BOINC 7.0.27 or later, the CUDA app requires 6.10 or later.
The Linux 64bit v1.30 app versions come without a graphics-app ("screensaver" equivalent).

Please report any issues / feedback in the "Problems" section of the forum here: http://albert.phys.uwm.edu/forum_thread.php?id=8938&nowrap=true#112238


Thanks for
contributing to Albert@Home
HBE


15 Oct 2012 | 13:43:38 UTC · Comment

[New release] BRP app v1.28
We just released the first app versions of a new BRP4 v1.28 app release. Over the next days, we will release this app for all supported platforms, today we released

- OpenCL (ATI/AMD), 32 bit, for Linux,
- OpenCL (ATI/AMD), 32 bit, Windows and
- OpenCL (ATI/AMD) OSX (Lion and later).

All versions require BOINC 7.0.25 or later, but we encourage volunteers to actually use the latest recommended BOINC versions, currently 7.0.28 or 7.0.31.

Versions for CPU and NVIDIA CUDA GPU will follow soon, plus some app versions that are native 64 bit apps.

New in this app version:
- Various performance improvements
- cross-validation improvements for HD 69xx GPUs

For discussion on this new version, please use this thread http://albert.phys.uwm.edu/forum_thread.php?id=8912
8 Aug 2012 | 17:39:47 UTC · Comment

New BRP application released: v1.25 (OpenCL Mac (intel), "Lion")
We just released BRP4 v1.25 for ATI/AMD OpenCL under OSX for Intel Macs, our first OpenCL app for BRP4 which might work under OSX.

For discussion on this new version, please use this thread http://albert.phys.uwm.edu/forum_thread.php?id=8897

Notes:
* Workaround for an oddity in the OpenCL implementation by Apple

* Known issue: no support for OSX versions older than "Lion"

* Please let us know how running the app is impacting the responsiveness of your Lion Desktop.

* Please use BOINC client (>=7.0.27) or later. Note that this BOINC version is still a development version (but fixes some OpenCL related problems), it can be downloaded from here:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php

Without updating to this BOINC version, you will not be able to get OpenCL work on Albert!


Thanks,
Heinz-Bernd 11 Jun 2012 | 14:22:06 UTC · Comment

New BRP applications released: v1.24 (OpenCL ),v1.25(Win32 CUDA)
We just released BRP4 v1.24 for ATI OpenCL under Linux and Windows, and v1.25 for Win32 with CUDA, which adds a number of improvements.

For discussion on this new version, please use this thread http://albert.phys.uwm.edu/forum_thread.php?id=8888

Notes:
* Fix for crashing Win 32 CUDA app
* OpenCL apps now (again) handle smaller cards with restricted capabilities correctly (max work group size < 128)

* Known issue: no OpenCL support for Mac OS X for the time being (we're still looking into a potential Apple bug)

* Please use the latest Catalyst driver (>=12.1) and BOINC client (>=7.0.26). Note that this BOINC version is still a development version (but fixes some OpenCL related problems), it can be downloaded from here:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dl/

Without updating to this BOINC version (or a newer one), you will not be able to get OpenCL work on Albert!

Heinz-Bernd 8 May 2012 | 13:25:33 UTC · Comment

New BRP application released: v1.23 (OpenCL)
We just released BRP4 v1.23 for ATI OpenCL under Linux and Windows which adds a number of improvements.

For discussion on this new version, please use this thread http://albert.phys.uwm.edu/forum_thread.php?id=8888

Notes:
* Now handles work units compatible with those on Einstein@Home (previously workunits on Albert were tweaked to work around a limitation in the OpenCL code)
* OpenCL GPU memory usage reduced
* modest performance improvement
* minor bug fixes
* better selection of work group size for kernels

* Known issue: no OpenCL support for Mac OS X for the time being (we're still looking into a potential Apple bug)

* Please use the latest Catalyst driver (>=12.1) and BOINC client (>=7.0.26). Note that this BOINC version is still a development version (but fixes some OpenCL related problems), it can be downloaded from here:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dl/

Without updating to this BOINC version, you will not be able to get OpenCL work on Albert!

Heinz-Bernd 27 Apr 2012 | 10:05:45 UTC · Comment

New BRP application released: v1.22 (CPU, CUDA, OpenCL)
Discussion of the new app release takes place over in this thread.

Notes:
* OpenCL GPU memory requirements reduced by 128 MB (to ~360 MB)
* Dropped support for OpenCL 1.0 GPUs (in favor of the above, OpenCL 1.0 only GPUs like the Radeon 4xxx are too slow anyway)
* More graceful OpenCL memory error handling
* Known issue: no OpenCL support for Mac OS X for the time being (we're looking into a potential Apple bug, no pun intended)
* CUDA apps are enabled again for the time being
* Input data download volume (per work unit) can be reduced by a factor of two (soon)
* Please use the latest Catalyst driver (>=12.1) and BOINC client (>=7.0.12).


Cheers,
Oliver 27 Feb 2012 | 15:51:21 UTC · Comment

New OpenCL application released: v1.20
Discussion of the new app version takes place over in this thread.

Best,
Oliver
2 Feb 2012 | 13:19:20 UTC · Comment

CUDA tasks suspended for the time being
We stopped sending CUDA tasks on this test project for the time being. We like to focus on getting the OpenCL app ready for production release and have gathered enough CUDA results. We'll reenable the CUDA apps again as needed - we don't want to burn GPU cycles without a reason, right...

Best,
Oliver
20 Jan 2012 | 17:04:52 UTC · Comment

New App S6LV1
Along with the ongoing test related to OpenCL we will soon begin to test the setup for the next Einstein@Home Gravitational Wave search "S6LV1" (S6 data with "LineVeto", run #1). For now this will be a pure CPU App. 13 Dec 2011 | 13:39:15 UTC · Comment

Updated OpenCL requirements
The minimum BOINC client version for OpenCL tasks got raised to 7.0.1 (get it here) as it fixes an important bug.

Cheers,
Oliver
6 Dec 2011 | 8:39:33 UTC · Comment

OpenCL requirements
Hi,

For those of you who want to participate in testing our upcoming OpenCL app targeting AMD/ATI GPUs, here are the current system requirements (we'll update this posting if the need arises, so I suggest you watch/subscribe to this thread):

* AMD GPU (360 MB free GPU memory, OpenCL 1.1 support)
* AMD Catalyst 11.7 (8.872) driver (and newer)
* BOINC 7.0.12 (and newer)
* Windows, Linux or Mac OS (10.7 only)

Please post your bug reports in a separate thread in the appropriate forum section.

Also, please note that NVIDIA GPUs will continue to be supported by our existing CUDA applications.


Thanks,
Oliver 28 Nov 2011 | 13:29:35 UTC · Comment

No work this weekend
Due to problems with the download server Albert@Home won't send work over this weekend. 19 Nov 2011 | 12:26:52 UTC · Comment

Forum cleanup
I intend to clean up the forums a bit from the stuff unintentionally carried over from Einstein@home. Don't be worried when your posts / threads seem to randomly (dis)appear in the next few hours. 14 Nov 2011 | 10:38:48 UTC · Comment

Sending work
Albert@home is still an unofficial, non-public test project. Don't expect anything to work here. The only type of work Albert@home is currently sending out is for a highly experimental BRP4 OpenCL application. 31 Oct 2011 | 8:42:08 UTC · Comment

Credit reset
The BOINC database on Albert@Home was (and actually still is) an outdated copy of that on Einstein@Home. This includes (outdated) credit gained on Einstein@Home, which would mess up stats if stat site would include Albert@Home. In order to get Albert@Home ready as an officiall public test project, we reset the credit records on Albert@Home.

BM 17 Aug 2011 | 13:17:05 UTC · Comment

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