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Posts by robertmiles
1) Message boards : Problems and Bug Reports : Most of a page jumping sideways (Message 112844)
Posted 31 May 2014 by robertmiles
Post:
It's the scroll bar. I hadn't noticed it before.
2) Message boards : Problems and Bug Reports : Most of a page jumping sideways (Message 112840)
Posted 29 May 2014 by robertmiles
Post:
I've noticed that both the Einstein@Home and the Albert@Home project appear to have some difference from most other BOINC projects in the way they specify the project name for the Project column of the Projects page of the Advanced View of BOINC Manager. Most of what's on this page jumps sideways if the users switches between selecting another BOINC project and selecting either Albert@Home or Einstein@Home.

Is this deliberate? If not, could you check if it's some difference in invisible characters before the project name?
3) Message boards : Problems and Bug Reports : Can't upload completed tasks (Message 112292)
Posted 1 Dec 2012 by robertmiles
Post:
For my 14 workunits waiting for uploads, all the files appear to have reached 100% in transferring their contents to the server, but the server appears not to have sent back some signal saying that the transfer is complete. Currently getting workunits from several other BOINC projects.
4) Message boards : News : Main database corrupted (Message 112286)
Posted 30 Nov 2012 by robertmiles
Post:
Is it still corrupted? I have five workunits still trying to upload.
5) Message boards : Problems and Bug Reports : [New release] BRP app v1.23/1.24 (OpenCL) feedback thread (Message 112104)
Posted 2 Jun 2012 by robertmiles
Post:
When you're able to try it on both HD 69xx cards and similar HD 79xx cards, could you give us the relative speeds of the two?

Some of us would like that information before deciding which card to buy next.
6) Message boards : Wish List : Nvidia 301.32+ drivers (Message 112099)
Posted 26 May 2012 by robertmiles
Post:
GPUGRID has recently announced that they are about to release a new version of their application which requires 301.32 or higher drivers (I downloaded 301.42).
Will you be ready for users sharing their Nvidia GPUs between your project and GPUGRID?
7) Message boards : Problems and Bug Reports : [New release] BRP app v1.22 feedback thread (Message 111959)
Posted 16 Apr 2012 by robertmiles
Post:
I've seen a message elsewhere saying that OpenCL workunits tend to need much more CPU use than running similar workunits using CUDA. This implies that slow CPUs will slow down OpenCL workunits much more than they slow down CUDA workunits.
8) Message boards : News : New App S6LV1 (Message 111623)
Posted 24 Dec 2011 by robertmiles
Post:
Gravitational Wave S6 LineVeto serch 1.01 (SSE2)
h1_0052.00_S6GC1__50_S6LV1A

Appeared to resume from checkpoint properly after I shut down BOINC for a minute (not left in memory).

Still running now.

Looks like time for a check of whether this had an effect on getting the right answers.

You might want to check the spelling of "serch", though.

9) Message boards : News : New App S6LV1 (Message 111620)
Posted 21 Dec 2011 by robertmiles
Post:
OK, I'll try that when I get another S6LV1 workunit if there's no other workunit from another BOINC project with an especially long CPU time since the last checkpoint.

Currently, the XXL workunits from RNA World are about the worst for long times
between checkpoints.
10) Message boards : News : New App S6LV1 (Message 111617)
Posted 21 Dec 2011 by robertmiles
Post:
I'll have to disable S6LV1 on one of my computers, then. A certain part of its backup software needs to run every night with BOINC not running.

Upgrading to BOINC 7.0.2 might have fixed the problem requiring frequent reboots on a second computer. It will probably take a few more days to tell. For now, I'll let it keep trying to get S6LV1 workunits.


I've now found that BOINC 7.0.2 has made the problem requiring frequent reboots on the second computer less frequent, but not fully eliminated it. S6LV1 still enabled there.

I've found a way to reduce the problem on the first computer to a few minutes every 24 hours without BOINC running and without it in memory, without rebooting Windows, but it requires staying up until 1 AM to start the backups for that computer manually. I'll check if that if good enough for the newest S6LV1.
11) Message boards : News : Sending work (Message 111594)
Posted 16 Dec 2011 by robertmiles
Post:
I've read that at least some of the BOINC versions never initialize one of the variables often used in runtime estimation. You may want to add reporting of the variables you use so you can check for signs of this.
12) Message boards : News : New App S6LV1 (Message 111589)
Posted 16 Dec 2011 by robertmiles
Post:
I'll have to disable S6LV1 on one of my computers, then. A certain part of its backup software needs to run every night with BOINC not running.

Upgrading to BOINC 7.0.2 might have fixed the problem requiring frequent reboots on a second computer. It will probably take a few more days to tell. For now, I'll let it keep trying to get S6LV1 workunits.
13) Message boards : News : Sending work (Message 111586)
Posted 16 Dec 2011 by robertmiles
Post:
Have you thought of starting with a certain number of dummy tasks, to be replaced with similar information from tasks actually completed as soon as there are enough of them?

Some BOINC projects limit the number of tasks any computer can have downloaded and in progress at first, with this limit relaxed as soon as there are enough tasks successfully completed by that computer to get a better idea of how often it can handle yet another workunit.
14) Message boards : News : New App S6LV1 (Message 111578)
Posted 15 Dec 2011 by robertmiles
Post:
So, far, both of those workunits I've had so far gave a computation error near the end of the predicted runtime.

Server status suggests that no one else has completed one of those workunits successfully, either.
15) Message boards : News : Sending work (Message 111576)
Posted 14 Dec 2011 by robertmiles
Post:
Over on GPUGRID, I saw something about them finding that the HD4xxx series cards had some type of memory access problem - a limit on the amount of graphics memory each processor on the GPU can access before it starts using a much lower bandwidth path to the computer's main memory instead. I haven't kept up with whether more recent software updates have removed this restriction.
16) Message boards : News : Sending work (Message 111510)
Posted 8 Dec 2011 by robertmiles
Post:

Can the developers in the mean time fix the driver detection?


Sorry, not up to us. I'm not sure whether the BOINC devs can do anything about it since this might even be an AMD driver issue.


You may talk about two different things here.

Jord, what exactly do you think should be fixed?

I do see that displaying the ATI CAL/driver version on the host web pages appears broken (on Albert), and possibly the string in the DB is, too.

In the scheduler the ATI "driver" version is stored as "char version[50]" and "int version_num" in coproc_ati, and in "char opencl_driver_version[32]" in opencl_device_prop. These could in principle be used in app_plan(), though we don't check this yet.

BM


I just read something related on the boinc_dev mailing list. It seems that BOINC 7.01 and 7.02 don't allocate enough digits in one of the places they store
ATI version numbers, and are therefore likely to get at least some of the version numbers wrong.
17) Message boards : News : Sending work (Message 111329)
Posted 20 Nov 2011 by robertmiles
Post:
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.


I've recently received some SSE and CUDA workunits. Should I consider them outdated workunits left over from Einstein@Home, or should I consider them Nvidia and CPU versions of the OpenCL workunits?
18) Message boards : News : Sending work (Message 111312)
Posted 19 Nov 2011 by robertmiles
Post:

I've seen rumors that the 7.0 version of BOINC will be available soon, with at least some support for OpenCL GPU workunits, but almost nothing more on just how much OpenCL GPU support.

BOINC 7 (being tested as BOINC 6.13) will support both ATI and nVidia GPUs, with a possibility for Intel GPUs to follow once Intel gets an API out. But really, BOINC doesn't need to support OpenCL, as it doesn't do any of the work. The science application will need to do OpenCL.

All that BOINC will do is detect if your GPU is OpenCL capable and if so, which version it is compliant to. Just as it already did detect if the nVidia GPU is CUDA capable and the ATI GPU CAL/Brook+ capable.


Looks adequate for computers with only one GPU.

On other BOINC projects, I've seen one thing mentioned that BOINC really needs to do if you want to be able to run both an OpenCL GPU workunit and a non-OpenCL GPU workunit at the same time on computers with more than one GPU - provide a standard way of mapping the way BOINC identifies which GPU it has assigned to a workunit to the way OpenCL identifies those GPUs. Otherwise, it's likely that those two workunits will often attempt to use the same GPU at the same time, with both failing.

Except for this, I've seen nothing on features for OpenCL that need to be in BOINC instead of the application. Adding more features would be helpful, but not required, for BOINC projects wanting OpenCL GPU workunits.

I currently don't have any AMD/ATI GPUs, so I won't be able to much for Albert@Home soon, at least until I find time to measure the size requirements for putting such a graphics board into my newest computer.
19) Message boards : News : Sending work (Message 111277)
Posted 16 Nov 2011 by robertmiles
Post:
Could you mention a little more about what GPUs are suitable for the current A@H application? What I've seen so far suggests that it may require AMD/ATI GPUs, and is not ready for Nvidia GPUs yet.

For example, must the GPU have hardware support for double precision?

Also, is the current CPU application compiled from OpenCL, somewhat similar the the way the current POEM@HOME application is?

I've seen rumors that the 7.0 version of BOINC will be available soon, with at least some support for OpenCL GPU workunits, but almost nothing more on just how much OpenCL GPU support.





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.

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