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Posts by pragmatic prancing periodic problem child, left

21) Message boards : Problems and Bug Reports : Wrong estimates of "Remaining" time (Message 111752)
Posted 26 Jan 2012 by Profile pragmatic prancing periodic problem child, left
Post:
The problem you run into is one that's always been with BOINC. Unless a project stands up that only allows one type of computer to attach, with exactly the same hardware as the one they made their tasks on, this cannot be solved that easily.

Until that time, with a lot of different sorts of hardware out there and the project really only putting out one kind of task --which is the same for CPU and GPU-- it is impossible for them to definitely state how long that task is going to take.

On one CPU it may take 24 hours, on another 14 hours, on your GPU perhaps 10 hours, on another GPU slightly over an hour. So what value of estimated time should they give such work then? Impossible to know up front.

So what a project can do is run some of this work on a variety of own computers, and from their run time they extract a general average that can be calculated into a flops estimate. The tasks of this gender will get that estimate.

BOINC on the other hand will learn from running work. It --at least up till the 6.12s-- sports what's called the TDCF, or Task Duration Correction Factor. This value will go up or down, whenever work is finished. Slower running work will increase the value, faster work will decrease it. Using this TDCF value BOINC will eventually, after many a task, show you a more correct number for the task's run time estimate.

Which is all fine, until you change which tasks you run, as the TDCF is only project wide, not per application. But that's something different completely. ;-)
22) Message boards : Problems and Bug Reports : WUs cancelled? (Message 111744)
Posted 26 Jan 2012 by Profile pragmatic prancing periodic problem child, left
Post:
Most of the time Albert@Home will have no work to run at all, and when it has, the applications are experimental, might be unstable, unreliable and may even damage your computer. Validation might be unreliable and we may cancel workunits without prior notice. If you care about credit, this project is certainly not the right one for you.


http://albert.phys.uwm.edu/index.php
23) Message boards : Problems and Bug Reports : Running on ATI (Message 111741)
Posted 24 Jan 2012 by Profile pragmatic prancing periodic problem child, left
Post:
OK, I found a hint in the HD7900 thread.
BM 7.0.11 is latest version, but the boinc page lists only up to version 7.0.8

Has anyone a link to the newest version?

The Change Log Thread has links.
24) Message boards : Problems and Bug Reports : Catalysts 11.11, Windows 7 - 64bit. (Message 111723)
Posted 20 Jan 2012 by Profile pragmatic prancing periodic problem child, left
Post:
However, I thought this should be ok, it is an OpenCL-app, so why should it use the CPU?

How do you think that data gets from the hard drive into the videocard's memory? The CPU will do the translation of the data in the task to something the GPU understands, transport this translated data over to the GPU, then wait for the GPU to be ready with it, transport it back to PC memory, translate it back into something the humans understand and write it to disk.

No GPU application can run without CPU usage.

By the way, I since changed videocard, went to a HD6850 2GB and am very happy with that one. :)
25) Message boards : Problems and Bug Reports : Gpu tasks never start: status 'Scheduler wait' Windows 7 64 bit (Message 111718)
Posted 20 Jan 2012 by Profile pragmatic prancing periodic problem child, left
Post:
Upon startup BOINC will detect if the GPU is OpenCL capable, which driver it's using and how much memory is on the GPU and what is available. Would you mind exiting BOINC and restarting it, then post those lines about your videocards?

I mean these ones:
18/01/2012 19:52:15 | | ATI GPU 0: AMD Radeon HD 6800 series (Barts) (CAL version 1.4.1646, 2048MB, 2015MB available, 2400 GFLOPS peak)
18/01/2012 19:52:15 | | OpenCL: ATI GPU 0: Barts (driver version CAL 1.4.1646 (VM), device version OpenCL 1.1 AMD-APP (831.4), 2048MB, 2015MB available)
26) Message boards : Problems and Bug Reports : Gpu tasks never start: status 'Scheduler wait' Windows 7 64 bit (Message 111712)
Posted 19 Jan 2012 by Profile pragmatic prancing periodic problem child, left
Post:
-SETI app OpenCl MB version .390 for HD5xxx ATI cards
(I have completed tasks on them both earliar).

You can't use the 5xxx app on a HD4850.

From Lunatics Windows Installer v0.39 release notes:
ATI MB apps - upgraded to r390

We offer the application in two different variants, depending on card:
plain - for most HD4xxx owners and those with HD5xxx and HD6xxx cards who
suffer from driver incompatibilities.
HD5 - for most if not all owners of HD5xxx GPUs and HD6xxx GPUs.

The ATI MB application will not work on ATI cards with workgroup size 128 (e.g. HD43xx). To check workgroupsize run CLinfo, downloadable (at present) from {http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dl/clinfo.zip}
If you have problems running the HD5 flavour (anything from reduced performance to BSOD), you should run the plain variant.

The recommended apps (r521 for Astropulse, r390 for MultiBeam) need OpenCL support from the ATI driver - for recent driver versions, look for a driver *with* APP or OpenCL listed. For compatible drivers see http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx
For cards, see hhttp://ttp://developer.amd.com/gpu/AMDAPPSDK/pages/DriverCompatibility.aspx
On most systems GPU-Z (see above) will tell you if your setup supports OpenCL.
Minimum required driver: Something that is OpenCL capable. You can check with GPU-Z (see above).
Catalyst 10.7b with SDK
Catalyst 10.10 Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) Technology Edition
The following drivers are known to be incompatible with the app:
11.10 and 11.11.
On some drivers the app shows increased CPU usage.

For cards without OpenCL support (from HD2xxxx on) use the 'hybrid' r453 Astropulse application. NB this is a combined CPU/GPU application and will only use the GPU for some of the calculations, while doing the rest on a CPU core.
Minimum driver version Catalyst 9.x.

NB using this installer will give you arbitrary default cmdline parameter entries.
If you are already running ATI applications: Make a note of what numbers you are using to be able to restore to those values PRIOR to running the installer. This also applies to setting the <count> variable according to your -instances_per_device variable for multithreading.

The Hybrid AP application uses about 80% of a CPU core and does only about 20% of the calculations on the GPU. Parameters have been choosen to reflect this usage. However present BOINC can not reserve '0.8' of a CPU core and therefore reserves none. This means your CPUs will be overcommitted and runtimes and DCF will suffer. You do increase the overall output though.
27) Message boards : Problems and Bug Reports : Radeon 7900 thread (Message 111705)
Posted 18 Jan 2012 by Profile pragmatic prancing periodic problem child, left
Post:
7.0.11 was released to testing the past night. See the change log thread for changes and location.
28) Message boards : Problems and Bug Reports : Gpu tasks never start: status 'Scheduler wait' Windows 7 64 bit (Message 111703)
Posted 18 Jan 2012 by Profile pragmatic prancing periodic problem child, left
Post:
I've tried all the versions from 7.0.3 and up and They are all still Scheduler Wait.

On what system? The one with the 256MB videocard or the one with the 1024MB videocard? What model videocard is it?

If the one with the 256MB videocard, then that's not so weird as the minimum requirements state for a 500MB videocard.
If the one with the 1024MB videocard, then we'd be interested. What model videocard is it? Which OS X version is it running? Is the videocard embedded (in the CPU or on the motherboard)? Is the Intel HD graphics unit still enabled, and if so, what happens when you disable it?

As said, the "Scheduler wait" message means that there's not enough memory reserved to continue the operation. This can be on the videocard (GPU), or through other sources. Just stating in one line that you tried BOINC versions up the wazoo without even telling on what system, which OS and what else you tried (in your first post here), isn't exactly going to help.
29) Message boards : Problems and Bug Reports : OpenCL.dll is is ok to get rid of compute errors with ATI card with x64 OS (Message 111697)
Posted 16 Jan 2012 by Profile pragmatic prancing periodic problem child, left
Post:
Idont know whay project itself not supply these files to data dir.

Because it's installed through means of your hardware drivers (videocard at this time) and only for that vendor's videocards. In your case for ATI, not for Nvidia, or Intel, or any other manufacturer.

So the project can't go distribute an OpenCL.dll file that encompasses all possible compatible hardware vendors, as that would make the file very unwieldy. Also not sure if they're even allowed to do so, due to possible proprietary (copyrighted) content in the file.

Copying the file to your Projects' directory shouldn't matter, since it's BOINC that does the detection of whether or not you have OpenCL capable hardware in the computer, and it looks in specific places for the OpenCL.dll, which is normally in Windows\system32\drivers\

The Albert application checks with BOINC whether or not you're OpenCL capable, it won't go scour directories to see if the OpenCL.dll file is present anywhere. And even if it were to use a copy of this file, it would need it in its 'run directory', the slot directory that that running task gets appointed.
30) Message boards : Problems and Bug Reports : Radeon 7900 thread (Message 111695)
Posted 15 Jan 2012 by Profile pragmatic prancing periodic problem child, left
Post:
No... 7.0.8 was only just released yesterday. But since they're released for bug-testing the CERNVM project, I would expect soon, especially since a big bug in one of the new features has been found for the Linux version. They may want to fix that and release new versions all across the platforms. :)
31) Message boards : Problems and Bug Reports : Radeon 7900 thread (Message 111692)
Posted 15 Jan 2012 by Profile pragmatic prancing periodic problem child, left
Post:
Your missing GPU name detection should be solved in BOINC 7.0.9; all the previous ones didn't know the Tahiti's yet. ;-)
32) Message boards : Problems and Bug Reports : Gpu tasks never start: status 'Scheduler wait' Windows 7 64 bit (Message 111689)
Posted 14 Jan 2012 by Profile pragmatic prancing periodic problem child, left
Post:
7.0.8 had been released for testing for Windows, Linux and Mac. See change log and download links here.
33) Message boards : Problems and Bug Reports : The system cannot open the file. (0x4) - exit code 4 (0x4) (Message 111685)
Posted 14 Jan 2012 by Profile pragmatic prancing periodic problem child, left
Post:
Looks like they run for more than 6 seconds now. :-)
34) Message boards : Problems and Bug Reports : The system cannot open the file. (0x4) - exit code 4 (0x4) (Message 111668)
Posted 9 Jan 2012 by Profile pragmatic prancing periodic problem child, left
Post:
And a next 44 tasks blown to the wind. Which is weird in itself, since when I checked earlier today, BOINC could get 2 tasks maximum per day. How can it have gotten 44 then?

Really on NNT now. I see that all of them err on other ATIOpenCL computers as well, but not necessarily on CUDA. Like http://albert.phys.uwm.edu/workunit.php?wuid=30375.
35) Message boards : Problems and Bug Reports : The system cannot open the file. (0x4) - exit code 4 (0x4) (Message 111666)
Posted 8 Jan 2012 by Profile pragmatic prancing periodic problem child, left
Post:
Oh and thanks:
08/01/2012 05:24:13 | Albert@Home | [sched_op] Starting scheduler request
08/01/2012 05:24:13 | Albert@Home | Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
08/01/2012 05:24:13 | Albert@Home | Requesting new tasks for ATI
08/01/2012 05:24:13 | Albert@Home | [sched_op] CPU work request: 0.00 seconds; 0.00 CPUs
08/01/2012 05:24:13 | Albert@Home | [sched_op] ATI work request: 51840.00 seconds; 1.00 CPUs
08/01/2012 05:24:15 | Albert@Home | Scheduler request completed: got 0 new tasks
08/01/2012 05:24:15 | Albert@Home | [sched_op] Server version 613
08/01/2012 05:24:15 | Albert@Home | No tasks sent
08/01/2012 05:24:15 | Albert@Home | Tasks for CPU are available, but your preferences are set to not accept them
08/01/2012 05:24:15 | Albert@Home | This computer has finished a daily quota of 1 tasks
08/01/2012 05:24:15 | Albert@Home | Project requested delay of 60 seconds
08/01/2012 05:24:15 | Albert@Home | [sched_op] Deferring communication for 1 min 0 sec
08/01/2012 05:24:15 | Albert@Home | [sched_op] Reason: requested by project


:D
36) Message boards : Problems and Bug Reports : The system cannot open the file. (0x4) - exit code 4 (0x4) (Message 111665)
Posted 8 Jan 2012 by Profile pragmatic prancing periodic problem child, left
Post:
So this project sent me 40 tasks for the ATI, all scheduled to run for ~28 minutes, however they all run for 6 seconds and err. I have tried the obligatory exit & restart of BOINC already and I just did a reboot to make sure it cleared the video RAM. Doesn't matter.

Example task: http://albert.phys.uwm.edu/result.php?resultid=86788

<core_client_version>7.0.7</core_client_version>
<![CDATA[
<message>
The system cannot open the file. (0x4) - exit code 4 (0x4)
</message>
<stderr_txt>
Activated exception handling...
[05:08:19][3000][INFO ] Starting data processing...
[05:08:19][3000][INFO ] Using OpenCL platform provided by: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
[05:08:19][3000][INFO ] Using OpenCL device "Barts" by: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
[05:08:20][3000][INFO ] Checkpoint file unavailable: status.cpt (No such file or directory).
------> Starting from scratch...
[05:08:20][3000][INFO ] Header contents:
------> Original WAPP file: ./p2030.20100921.G45.74+00.86.C.b4s0g0.00000_DM869.60
------> Sample time in microseconds: 65.4762
------> Observation time in seconds: 274.62705
------> Time stamp (MJD): 55461.010376408252
------> Number of samples/record: 0
------> Center freq in MHz: 1214.289551
------> Channel band in MHz: 0.33605957
------> Number of channels/record: 960
------> Nifs: 1
------> RA (J2000): 191200.5438
------> DEC (J2000): 114117.223499
------> Galactic l: 0
------> Galactic b: 0
------> Name: G45.74+00.86.C
------> Lagformat: 0
------> Sum: 1
------> Level: 3
------> AZ at start: 0
------> ZA at start: 0
------> AST at start: 0
------> LST at start: 0
------> Project ID: --
------> Observers: --
------> File size (bytes): 0
------> Data size (bytes): 0
------> Number of samples: 4194304
------> Trial dispersion measure: 869.6 cm^-3 pc
------> Scale factor: 0.101172
[05:08:22][3000][INFO ] Seed for random number generator is -1013693646.
[05:08:23][3000][ERROR] The padded time series length 12582912 isn't a power of 2 (required by OpenCL FFT)!
[05:08:23][3000][ERROR] Demodulation failed (error: 4)!
05:08:23 (3000): called boinc_finish

</stderr_txt>
]]>


I've set the project to NNT for the time being.
37) Message boards : Problems and Bug Reports : Running on ATI (Message 111664)
Posted 8 Jan 2012 by Profile pragmatic prancing periodic problem child, left
Post:
Ok, there's a very weird thing going on here.
When I run work on my HD6850, and do not touch BOINC, don't suspend it or worse, exit it and later restart it, then most all tasks will run and finish in between 5,000 and 6,400 seconds.

Do I suspend BOINC and resume it, or exit it and restart it, then work will become very slow and sluggish, running for multiple hours, up to 20K seconds.

Before the GPU load will be sustained at around 70%, all the way through.
After the GPU load is sporadic, coming and going but mostly zero. Like this:
Date , GPU Core Clock [MHz] , GPU Memory Clock [MHz] , GPU Temperature [°C] , Fan Speed (%) [%] , Fan Speed (RPM) [RPM] , GPU Load [%] , GPU Temp. #1 [°C] , GPU Temp. #2 [°C] , GPU Temp. #3 [°C] , Memory Usage (Dedicated) [MB] , Memory Usage (Dynamic) [MB] , VDDC [V]
2012-01-08 02:17:58 , 625.0 , 1000.0 , 51.0 , 33 , 1131 , 0 , 52.0 , 53.0 , 53.5 , 495 , 71 , 0.000 ,

2012-01-08 02:17:59 , 500.0 , 700.0 , 51.0 , 33 , 1133 , 23 , 51.5 , 52.0 , 52.5 , 495 , 71 , 0.000 ,

2012-01-08 02:18:00 , 625.0 , 1000.0 , 51.0 , 33 , 1133 , 0 , 51.5 , 52.0 , 52.5 , 495 , 71 , 0.000 ,

2012-01-08 02:18:01 , 625.0 , 1000.0 , 51.0 , 33 , 1130 , 0 , 51.5 , 52.5 , 53.0 , 495 , 71 , 0.000 ,

2012-01-08 02:18:11 , 500.0 , 700.0 , 51.0 , 33 , 1139 , 10 , 51.0 , 51.0 , 52.0 , 495 , 71 , 0.000 ,

2012-01-08 02:18:12 , 625.0 , 1000.0 , 51.0 , 33 , 1133 , 0 , 51.5 , 52.0 , 53.0 , 495 , 71 , 0.000 ,

.... all zero GPU load here ...

2012-01-08 02:19:04 , 625.0 , 1000.0 , 52.0 , 33 , 1130 , 26 , 52.0 , 53.0 , 53.5 , 495 , 70 , 0.000 ,

2012-01-08 02:19:05 , 625.0 , 1000.0 , 52.0 , 33 , 1131 , 27 , 52.0 , 52.0 , 53.0 , 495 , 71 , 0.000 ,

2012-01-08 02:19:06 , 625.0 , 1000.0 , 52.0 , 33 , 1132 , 25 , 52.0 , 52.5 , 53.0 , 495 , 70 , 0.000 ,

2012-01-08 02:19:07 , 625.0 , 1000.0 , 51.0 , 33 , 1129 , 26 , 51.5 , 52.0 , 52.5 , 495 , 71 , 0.000 ,

2012-01-08 02:19:08 , 625.0 , 1000.0 , 51.0 , 33 , 1129 , 25 , 51.5 , 51.5 , 52.5 , 495 , 71 , 0.000 ,

2012-01-08 02:19:09 , 625.0 , 1000.0 , 52.0 , 33 , 1131 , 23 , 51.5 , 52.5 , 53.0 , 495 , 71 , 0.000 ,

2012-01-08 02:19:10 , 500.0 , 700.0 , 51.0 , 33 , 1135 , 0 , 51.0 , 51.0 , 51.5 , 495 , 71 , 0.000 ,

2012-01-08 02:19:11 , 625.0 , 1000.0 , 51.0 , 33 , 1130 , 0 , 51.5 , 52.0 , 52.5 , 495 , 71 , 0.000 ,

2012-01-08 02:19:12 , 625.0 , 1000.0 , 52.0 , 33 , 1128 , 0 , 52.0 , 52.5 , 53.0 , 495 , 71 , 0.000 ,

Then when I do a full exit & restart of BOINC, it'll go into full overdrive again to catch up.
Back to the sustained ~70%.

Date , GPU Core Clock [MHz] , GPU Memory Clock [MHz] , GPU Temperature [°C] , Fan Speed (%) [%] , Fan Speed (RPM) [RPM] , GPU Load [%] , GPU Temp. #1 [°C] , GPU Temp. #2 [°C] , GPU Temp. #3 [°C] , Memory Usage (Dedicated) [MB] , Memory Usage (Dynamic) [MB] , VDDC [V]

2012-01-08 02:25:42 , 625.0 , 1000.0 , 51.0 , 33 , 1127 , 68 , 51.5 , 52.5 , 53.0 , 495 , 70 , 0.000 ,

2012-01-08 02:25:42 , 625.0 , 1000.0 , 51.0 , 33 , 1126 , 69 , 51.5 , 53.0 , 53.5 , 495 , 70 , 0.000 ,

2012-01-08 02:25:43 , 625.0 , 1000.0 , 52.0 , 33 , 1125 , 70 , 51.5 , 53.0 , 53.5 , 495 , 70 , 0.000 ,

2012-01-08 02:25:44 , 625.0 , 1000.0 , 51.0 , 33 , 1125 , 72 , 52.0 , 52.5 , 53.0 , 495 , 71 , 0.000 ,

2012-01-08 02:25:46 , 625.0 , 1000.0 , 52.0 , 33 , 1126 , 73 , 52.0 , 53.0 , 54.0 , 495 , 103 , 0.000 ,

2012-01-08 02:25:46 , 625.0 , 1000.0 , 52.0 , 33 , 1127 , 74 , 52.0 , 53.0 , 53.5 , 495 , 71 , 0.000 ,

2012-01-08 02:25:47 , 625.0 , 1000.0 , 51.0 , 33 , 1125 , 76 , 52.0 , 53.0 , 53.5 , 495 , 71 , 0.000 ,

2012-01-08 02:25:49 , 625.0 , 1000.0 , 52.0 , 33 , 1123 , 76 , 52.0 , 53.5 , 54.0 , 495 , 71 , 0.000 ,
38) Message boards : News : New App S6LV1 (Message 111663)
Posted 7 Jan 2012 by Profile pragmatic prancing periodic problem child, left
Post:
The first one ended in 77K seconds run time, 70K CPU time.
http://albert.phys.uwm.edu/result.php?resultid=72454
39) Message boards : News : New App S6LV1 (Message 111655)
Posted 4 Jan 2012 by Profile pragmatic prancing periodic problem child, left
Post:
Actually we hope to get the App to live up to the speed / runtime we designed the workunits for. An important optimization that is in the S6Bucket App still doesn't work with code changes we had to make for S6LV1. We're working on that. The new server & client code should be able to adjust the runtime estimates with time, though.

OK, that's fair.

In the mean time, it sped up a little. 20.562% for the one at 5h 20m 35s and 16.863% for the other at 4h 41m 38s. Hopefully they survive the trip as they have been suspended and resumed multiple times now.
40) Message boards : Problems and Bug Reports : AMD ATI Radeon HD 4700/4800 (RV740/RV770) (Message 111653)
Posted 4 Jan 2012 by Profile pragmatic prancing periodic problem child, left
Post:
T4T already runs a Virtual Box wrapper application, but even though they are a Beta project they do not want to go test all the adjustments and bug fixes that the BOINC developers added to the Vboxwrapper app (which begs the question why they run as a beta project then, but heck ;-)), to Virtual Box (in coop with Oracle devs) and to the BOINC client. Hence the CERNVM/Vboxwrapper Test Project set up and administrated by the BOINC developers, where we test all that.

There's no validator running over there, so there's no credits even though we do real work through the hypervisor. The project will be deleted when we're done testing.

Eventually, when we're done testing the crap out of all that, hopefully T4T will take over the vboxwrapper app and run it at their project.


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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