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Posts by Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein) |
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Message boards :
Problems and Bug Reports :
Project initialization fails
(Message 112815)
Posted 30 Mar 2014 by  Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Post: Hi, I guess this was a transient error, I see several users joining the Albert@Home project successfully recently. HBE |
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Message boards :
Problems and Bug Reports :
Website, URL wrong? httpS now?
(Message 112711)
Posted 2 Aug 2013 by Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Post: As the title said. I couldn't add the project in Boinc on Android because it wasn't https. (Once I added the S, it worked fine.) Thanks for reporting this. Cheers HB |
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Message boards :
Wish List :
App for Intel HD graphics?
(Message 112697)
Posted 10 Jul 2013 by Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Post: Hi! As suggested by Bernd, I made a feedback thread on E@H, let's continue the discussion there where we have a greater audience: http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/forum_thread.php?id=10214 Before closing this thread, I'd like to say thank you to the guys who persistently "pestered" me :-) to begin looking into Intel GPU app versions. Sometimes we have other things on the top of our priority list but it's good to be reminded about things we always wanted to do. Cheers HB |
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Message boards :
Wish List :
App for Intel HD graphics?
(Message 112690)
Posted 10 Jul 2013 by Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Post: First of all, thanks to all who have tested the app so far. However it seems we could use more testers & feedback, as we see quite a lot of Intel GPU tasks erroring out at Einstein@Home. I wonder whether this is a driver problem, unfortunately the driver version is not yet recorded on Einstein@Home. What are the driver versions used here? Cheers HB |
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Message boards :
Wish List :
App for Intel HD graphics?
(Message 112653)
Posted 25 Jun 2013 by Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Post: Thanks for testing!
The BOINC server side code is not yet updated to have the INTEL GPU code in it, and therefore there is no app version installed on the server for Intel GPUs, so yes, those files are still required on the client side. Cheers HB |
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Message boards :
News :
Beta-testers wanted for new official BOINC Android client/manager
(Message 112652)
Posted 25 Jun 2013 by Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Post: If you want to support the effort to bring the BOINC experience (and also Einstein@Home) to Android smart phones and tablets, please join the group of beta testers for the upcoming official BOINC client/manager on Android. For details, please see this thread: http://albert.phys.uwm.edu/forum_thread.php?id=8985&nowrap=true#112629. |
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Message boards :
Wish List :
App for Intel HD graphics?
(Message 112647)
Posted 24 Jun 2013 by Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Post: Thanks, I got my HD iGPU working together with a Radeon HD 7790. But as you suggested, it took some configuring in the BIOS settings and connecting a second monitor. I'm afraid this is a big caveat wrt. to the usefulness of Intel HD GPUs for Einstein@Home (and other BOINC projects). Maybe I'm wrong but I'm afraid most of the Ivy Bridge hosts crunching for Einstein@Home will have iGPUs not visible to BOINC either because of the iGPU being diabled by BIOS default settings in connection with a dedicated card, or because it is deactivated when not connected to a monitor :-(. Bernd is currently taking care of the server code on Einstein to make it "Intel GPU aware", I guess we will have a clearer picture about the number of Intel GPU OpenCL enabled hosts on E@H. Cheers HB |
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8)
Message boards :
Wish List :
App for Intel HD graphics?
(Message 112645)
Posted 21 Jun 2013 by Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Post: Cool! The plan on our side here is to test Intel OpenCL <-> AMD OpenCL driver compatibility, as there were reports about problems earlier. Hopefully this is fixed by now. We as a project would be reluctant to advertise Intel GPU OpenCL processing on E@H if it is likely to result in problems for AMD GPU users. I guess I'll try this weekend to put a HD 7790 in my i3-3220 system, install the drivers and see what happens. If that goes well, we will discuss the matter at E@H and see if the effort for the necessary server side changes is worth it, but my personal view on this is rather optimistic now. Currently I have no idea how much computing power can be gained by it (I guess the target group would be all Windows Systems running on third generation or later Intel Core processors with a BOINC client version of 7.0.29 or later). Holmis, I have a question for you: your system also has an NVIDIA GFX card (which, I assume, is used for the primary display?). This page https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/GPU_computing states that you need to connect a monitor or VGA-dummy-plug for the Intel GPU to be detected (or activated...). Can you confirm this? Cheers HB |
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Message boards :
Wish List :
App for Intel HD graphics?
(Message 112642)
Posted 20 Jun 2013 by Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Post: That entry is caused by a deprecated app, it was never used in the project. The only OpenCL driver for Linux that Intel offers is supporting the CPU cores itself (so for multi-threading CPU programs), and the Xeon Phi accelerator card, not for the build-in Intel HD GPUs :-( Cheers HB |
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Message boards :
Wish List :
App for Intel HD graphics?
(Message 112634)
Posted 19 Jun 2013 by Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Post:
Oh yes, just checked it by diff and eyeball and spotted only insignificant differences. Cheers HB |
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Message boards :
Problems and Bug Reports :
GPU almost not used
(Message 112631)
Posted 19 Jun 2013 by Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Post: Hi Interesting...and puzzling. This is not a general problem of the app, others are seeing much better performance & GPU usage. It is expected that the GPU usage will fluctuate a lot between 0% and higher values, but on a timescale of seconds or less, not minutes. At least for most of the processing time of the app. Cheers HB |
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Message boards :
Problems and Bug Reports :
Beta-testers wanted for official BOINC Android client/manager
(Message 112629)
Posted 19 Jun 2013 by Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Post: Dear volunteers, We would like to forward a request from BOINC development: Currently support for the Android platform is being added to the official BOINC code base and a BOINC manager & client app is now available via the Google Play Store to registered beta testers. All you need to do is to join the Google Group boinc-android-testing, using the same email address that is associated with your Google Play Store account. The group is open to all who wish to test BOINC on Android. More details are explained in the group's forum at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/boinc-android-testing Once you have downloaded this app, you should attach to at least one, better several projects that already offer Android science applications, one of them is Albert@Home. Feedback is welcome, please send bug reports, but also reports about working phone models, and other relevant comments to boinc-android-testing[at]googlegroups.com . (Reports about problems that are not related to the BOINC client itself but clearly related to the science app should as usually be posted in the forum of the respective project, e.g. here at Albert@Home.) Thanks for your support |
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13)
Message boards :
Wish List :
App for Intel HD graphics?
(Message 112627)
Posted 18 Jun 2013 by Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Post: Hi! Finally I got the BRP app running even under BOINC control on my PC. Because the server software doesn't yet support Intel GPUs (and it's not trivial to add the support in our customized server software), it is a combination of app_info.xml and cc_config.xml file hack. I used this cc_config.xml file (goes into the BOINC data directory):
Where <device_nums> should be set to the device number of your Intel HD GPU (see above) (here 0 in this example). The app_info.xml file (goes into the projects\albert.phys.uwm.edu sub directory):
This assumes you have renamed the downloaded executable to einsteinbinary_BRP4U_1.35_windows_x86_64__opencl-intel_gpu.exe . This will process the unbundled BRP4U workunits to allow speedy tests. The tasks should automatically reserve a full CPU core. On my PC, I now get close to 100% GPU usage this way, according to GPU-Z. So running many of these units in parallel on my HD 2500 GPU would not help. I used the currently recommended BOINC client version for this. Cheers HB |
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Message boards :
Wish List :
App for Intel HD graphics?
(Message 112622)
Posted 18 Jun 2013 by Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Post: Hi! Thanks very much, see your PM box for an address to send the result files to. I think for an integrated GPU the runtime isn't shabby at all. Thanks again! HB |
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Message boards :
Wish List :
App for Intel HD graphics?
(Message 112619)
Posted 17 Jun 2013 by Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Post: Thanks very much indeed! Very interesting. The log shows the same error messages that I saw on my HD 2500 (somehow the results are still valid). Cheers HB |
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Message boards :
Problems and Bug Reports :
S6 Directed Search (CasA) Feedback thread
(Message 112615)
Posted 17 Jun 2013 by Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Post: I noticed that the h1_0996 tasks are taking 3-4 times longer than the h1_005x tasks. On one of my systems that is also running Einstein BRP tasks doubled in time also even with one core reserved for the GPU. I see you have some Intel and AMD hosts, so this is valuable info. I wonder whether anything can be said about whether the spread of runtimes is especially bad on certain CPUs. We did some tests on a Sandy Bridge Inte CPU and the relative difference in runtime wasn't that big. Anyway, thanks for the feedback, it's exactly this kind of results we are looking for from the testers who have a lager variety of systems in use than we have at our disposal. Cheers HB |
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Message boards :
Problems and Bug Reports :
S6 Directed Search (CasA) Feedback thread
(Message 112614)
Posted 17 Jun 2013 by Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Post: Hi! I haven't checked your tasks specifically but sometimes tasks are aborted by us on the server side as well (whenever we make some tweeks and we need to get the results from the tweaked stuff rather than wasting resources on completing the un-tweaked stuff, so to say). Cheers HB |
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18)
Message boards :
Problems and Bug Reports :
GPU almost not used
(Message 112613)
Posted 17 Jun 2013 by Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Post: Hmm.... Still a period of several minutes of virtual GPU inactivity is not to be expected. There can several reasons I can think of: 1) The program that is used to query the GPU usage will do so at very regular intervals, and theoretically it could be possible that this polling frequency by chance happens to poll the process just at the right time to catch an inactive period. Unlikely but possible. 2) The GPU process is starved because all CPU cores are doing other Things (BOINC or other loads). Try to free a core by limiting the number of cores used by BOINC via (local) preferences 3) The default settings when creating an account on Albert (and Einstein as well) is to suspend GPU computations when BOINC believes that the computer is "in use". The preferences allow to configure some parameters that define BOINC's threshold for the "in use" state (e.g. mouse and keyboard activity). Or you can just configure BOINC to leave GPU jobs running even if there is user activity detected. So I would check the "Event Log" of BOINC for messages saying that teh computations were suspended. Cheers HB |
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Message boards :
Wish List :
App for Intel HD graphics?
(Message 112612)
Posted 17 Jun 2013 by Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Post: I've recently tested a app on Seti@home using the HD 4000 while at the same time running Einstein tasks on a GTX660Ti, no problems encountered if you disregard the serverside inability to handle Intel GPUs. Thanks for the feedback. If my recollection is right, the bulk of the problems was with running Intel HD and AMD GPU jobs in parallel, as both would use OpenCL and I think that's where the drivers would somehow collide. But this as well could have been fixed by now, so any additional feedback on this problem is welcome. Cheers HB |
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20)
Message boards :
Wish List :
App for Intel HD graphics?
(Message 112610)
Posted 16 Jun 2013 by Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Post: Hi all, Sorry for the delay. Yesterday I finally got my hands on a Windows PC with Ivy Bridge CPU and a HD 2500 integrated GPU ...yeah... !! So I played around with it a bit, with mixed results: I was unable so far to trick BOINC into doing E@H work units on the HD GPU under BOINC control. I got it as far as requesting CPU work and then trying to run it on the GPU, but at that point it fails. The server software of E@H doesn't yet understand work requests for Intel GPUs, so I thought some combination of app_info.xml and cc_config.xml editing might do the trick, but so far this doesn't work for me. I'll keep trying and will need to talk to Bernd next week when back at the office, Bernd is our expert on the E@H server part software. If all else fails I will build a special app version that ignores all input from the BOINC side and will run the task on the first Intel GPU it can find....for testing only, of course. Oh well, so let's start with standalone testing. You can download a ZIP file containing the input files for a BRP4 task (complete with 8 sub-tasks) from here: http://www.ehea-obs.org/boinc/intel_hd_test.zip and unpack it to some directory. Now download the OpenCL-ATI binary from Albert to the same directory: Win 32: http://albert.phys.uwm.edu/EinsteinAtHome/download/einsteinbinary_BRP4_1.35_windows_intelx86__opencl-ati.exe Win 64: http://albert.phys.uwm.edu/EinsteinAtHome/download/einsteinbinary_BRP4_1.35_windows_x86_64__opencl-ati.exe Look up the device number of teh Intel HD GPU , there should be something the event log of BOINC like
where N is the number you are looking for. Now run this in the directory you have created with all the downloaded stuff: run_test.bat EXE-FILE N where EXE-FILE is the name of the executable you downloaded and N is the device number (see above). Ideally, the BRP4 workunit will now start processsing in standalone mode. Output will be continuously written to the file stderr.txt so you can periodically check there for messages. On my new PC it took about 10 hours while the CPU was under full load with regular BOINC CPU jobs. So not a very realistic test yet. I'll have to make some tests with one phycical or virtual core reserved for the GPU app. Some observations: I got some error messages in my stderr.txt which need some investigation. I suspect that the dynamic memory allocation of the GPU as opposed to the dedicated video RAM of GPUs on PCIe boards may cause some problems. I used GPU-Z to monitor the GPU, and it seems to be very aggressive in downclocking the GPU clock rate. Well, the GPU shares the power and thermal envelope with the CPU. Does anyone know what kind of control one has to configure the Intel HD GPU, via BIOS or Intel tools? I need to explore this a bit more. During the tests, the HD 2500 was also driving the video output for the PC. There have been numerous reports that the Intel OpenCL drivers cause problems for running OpenCL apps on other GPUs, so I will only later install a HD 7790 in this system. Has anyone manged to install drivers in a way that both an Intel HD GPU and an AMD GPU are visible as OpenCL cards to BOINC at the same time? If so, how? I would be grateful to hear about results of running the standalone test on an Intel HD 4000. Cheers HB |
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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant PHY-0555655 and by the Max Planck Gesellschaft (MPG). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the investigators and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF or the MPG.
Copyright © 2024 Bruce Allen for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration