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Posts by Jean-David Beyer

Posts by Jean-David Beyer

1) Message boards : Number crunching : Weather At Home 2 (wah2) (region independent) v8.29 - very short deadline & mismatch for total time calculation (Message 70864)
Posted 2 days ago by Jean-David Beyer
Post:
However, the recent batches of Windows WU have a really tight deadline and need much more time that shown.


I do not have this problem even though I have a pipsqueak computer running Windows(10).
Computer 1512658
CPU type 	GenuineIntel
11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1165G7 @ 2.80GHz [Family 6 Model 140 Stepping 1]
Number of processors 	8
Operating System 	Microsoft Windows 10
Core x64 Edition, (10.00.19045.00)
BOINC version 	7.24.1
Memory 	15.64 GB
Cache 	256 KB

My machine does run 24/7 running CPDN, Denis,WCG,Rosetta, and Einstein. I allow 7 cores to run Boinc tasks. It has been running two CPDN 1015 tasks at the moment. It originally predicted it would take about 17 1/2 days to complete each one, but they are running faster, so now it says it is has run 9 days and is 75% done with a little over 4 days to go. The deadline is June 24. I expect them to be done by the end of April with almost two months to spare.
2) Message boards : Number crunching : processors, memory, performance and heat. (Message 70861)
Posted 3 days ago by Jean-David Beyer
Post:
The CPDN tasks seem to really hammer on memory, so I'd expect, if it's sufficient to run the task quantities your chip can reasonably support, "less faster memory" would be better than "more slower memory."

I think 64GB for an 8 core CPU is probably sufficient. Some tasks in testing have gone up above 9GB peak per task recently but they have the BOINC debugging code enabled which adds a lot to the overhead. If at some point the demand goes up even more, I can either go up to the max on the motherboard of 128GB or run fewer tasks. Currently I am running one of the memory intensive tasks and six WAH2ri tasks and free tells me that swap is unused. I do wonder if once I double my RAM I could get rid of swap altogether?

In the very old days, it was recommended to have twice as much disk space for swap as the machine had RAM. Later, as RAM cost less and people put more and more RAM in their machines, this recommended amount was reduced to the same amount of swap as RAM. But RAM has gotten so large that I run my current machine with the same amount od swap as it had when I bought it. It had 32 GBytes of RAM when I bought it. though it has 128 GBytes now. It runs Linux. It has been running 24/7 for about a week and has used about 15 Megabytes of RAM: not much. It is running 11 Boinc processes at the moment.

$ free -hw
              total        used        free      shared     buffers       cache   available
Mem:          125Gi       6.1Gi       1.7Gi       1.5Gi       764Mi       116Gi       116Gi
Swap:          15Gi        15Mi        15Gi
3) Message boards : Number crunching : processors, memory, performance and heat. (Message 70857)
Posted 4 days ago by Jean-David Beyer
Post:
My guess is that it really depends on how many cores your processor has and therefore how many tasks it can run at any one time. I am not sure that having differeent speed memory chips makes much difference to perforamnce.


It also depends on how big the cache on the processor chip(s) is.
4) Message boards : Number crunching : Batch 1015 Discussion/problems (Message 70853)
Posted 6 days ago by Jean-David Beyer
Post:
I guess since most people use the default install of boinc so it ends up on the C: drive. If that gets busy due to other activities a boinc process drive access might time out. Particularly because the boinc processes run at a lower priority.


I am not having problems with the two 1015 tasks on my Windows-10 machine. They have now uploaded 10 trickles each.
You will see that It has a small amount of RAM. It has only one drive and it is solid state (machine was too small to put a spinning hard drive in it).

The machine is set up to run up to 7 Boinc tasks at a time. And it is currently doing that. I only bought the machine to run TaxAct once a year, and I finished that about March 15. Four times a year I run Garmin Express to update the maps in the GPS for my car. So rather that waste the machine the rest of the year, I run Boinc on it. According to my UPS, it costs me $0.93/day for the electricity to run it.

It is another story for my big Linux machine, but I have not gotten any CPDN work for it since last June.

Computer 1512658
Computer information

CPU type 	GenuineIntel
11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1165G7 @ 2.80GHz [Family 6 Model 140 Stepping 1]
Number of processors 	8

Operating System 	Microsoft Windows 10
Core x64 Edition, (10.00.19045.00)
BOINC version 	7.24.1
Memory 	15.64 GB
Cache 	256 KB
5) Message boards : Number crunching : Batch 1015 Discussion/problems (Message 70848)
Posted 6 days ago by Jean-David Beyer
Post:
And now each of those two tasks has delivered four trickles.


And now eight trickles.
6) Message boards : Number crunching : Batch 1015 Discussion/problems (Message 70835)
Posted 9 days ago by Jean-David Beyer
Post:
One of the two 1015 tasks on my pipsqueak machine has accomplished its first trickle, Another potential obstacle overcome.


And now each of those two tasks has delivered four trickles.
7) Message boards : Number crunching : OpenIFS Discussion (Message 70832)
Posted 10 days ago by Jean-David Beyer
Post:
The production version of OpenIFS in the T159 configuration doesn't use anywhere near 9Gb.

Does not bother me either way since I upped my RAM on my Linux machine to 128 GBytes late last year.
It has the 32-bit compatibility libraries on it, though they are not needed for OIFS programs.

Computer 1511241

CPU type 	GenuineIntel
Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-2245 CPU @ 3.90GHz [Family 6 Model 85 Stepping 7]
Number of processors 	16

Operating System 	Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.9 (Ootpa) [4.18.0-513.24.1.el8_9.x86_64|libc 2.28]
BOINC version 	7.20.2
Memory 	125.07 GB
Cache 	16896 KB
8) Message boards : Number crunching : Batch 1015 Discussion/problems (Message 70828)
Posted 10 days ago by Jean-David Beyer
Post:
One of the two 1015 tasks on my pipsqueak machine has accomplished its first trickle, Another potential obstacle overcome.
9) Message boards : Number crunching : Batch 1015 Discussion/problems (Message 70824)
Posted 11 days ago by Jean-David Beyer
Post:
I now have two on my pipsqueak Windows10 machine. ID: 1512658 They both seem to be running OK. Predicted to take about 16 days but by eyeball it looks like they will be a little faster than that.
10) Message boards : Number crunching : Batch 1015 Discussion/problems (Message 70822)
Posted 11 days ago by Jean-David Beyer
Post:
Batch 1015 is being released now. This is the next batch in the East Asia 25km configuration (eas25).


I just got one of these on my little machine (Computer 1512658). It has a little over 1/2 hour on it now, So it did not crash on start-up. It predicts about 16 days to go.
11) Message boards : Number crunching : OpenIFS Discussion (Message 70811)
Posted 14 days ago by Jean-David Beyer
Post:
There are some new OpenIFS BL app batches coming once code development & testing is complete (some time yet).


Hurray! I have not gotten any work on my main (Linux) machine since last June (IIRC).
12) Message boards : Number crunching : Batch 1008, and test batches 1009 to 1014 for Windows - issues (Message 70737)
Posted 21 days ago by Jean-David Beyer
Post:
My pipsqueak computer, that crashed my latest four CPDN tasks has a CPU chip with these features.
Computer 1512658

CPU type 	GenuineIntel
11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1165G7 @ 2.80GHz [Family 6 Model 140 Stepping 1]
Number of processors 	8
Coprocessors 	---
Virtualization 	None
Operating System Microsoft Windows 10
                 Core x64 Edition, (10.00.19045.00)
BOINC version 	7.24.1
Memory 	15.64 GB
Cache 	256 KB


Instruction Set Extensions Intel® SSE4.1, Intel® SSE4.2, Intel® AVX2, Intel® AVX-512
13) Message boards : Number crunching : Batch 1008, and test batches 1009 to 1014 for Windows - issues (Message 70712)
Posted 23 days ago by Jean-David Beyer
Post:
I got four tasks yesterday, separatd by an hour each. Machine is running Windows 10 with Intel processor.

Computer 1512658
Computer information

CPU type 	GenuineIntel
11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1165G7 @ 2.80GHz [Family 6 Model 140 Stepping 1]
Number of processors 	8
Coprocessors 	---
Virtualization 	None
Operating System 	Microsoft Windows 10
Core x64 Edition, (10.00.19045.00)
BOINC version 	7.24.1
Memory 	15.64 GB
Cache 	256 KB
Swap space 	18.02 GB
Total disk space 	460.73 GB
Free Disk Space 	366.06 GB
Measured floating point speed 	3.91 billion ops/sec
Measured integer speed 	21.76 billion ops/sec
Average upload rate 	113.53 KB/sec
Average download rate 	7120.42 KB/sec
Average turnaround time 	12.32 days


Tasks were 22418337 22417523 22415964 22419311

They all died after running about 12 1/2 hours. -- 45000 seconds.
14) Message boards : Number crunching : New Work Announcements 2024 (Message 70694)
Posted 24 days ago by Jean-David Beyer
Post:
Next Weather@Home batches going out today. Same region, EAS25, as previous 1006 & 1007, so expect the same runtimes etc.


My pipsqueak Windows 10 machine got one, Batch 1008. Predicting about 17 1/2 days, but it will probably finish in about half that time. It has about a half hour on it now. McAfee had no trouble with it.
15) Message boards : Number crunching : Should full credit be given for time on non successful tasks? (Message 70692)
Posted 24 days ago by Jean-David Beyer
Post:
Note besides: Glenn, when will the announced RAM heavy CPDN WUs really come? 2024? 2025? I increased RAM for these WUs in October last year and still have not seen any… ;-)


My big Linux box came with 32 GBytes of RAM with two memory modules. There are 8 memory slots in my box. As RAM prices came down, I bought two more memory modules and put them in, raising the RAM to 64 GBytes. Then I started getting a few 8GByte CPDN tasks with more to come. So when RAM prices dropped again, I got four more memory modules so I have 128GBytes in there now. DDR4 modules.

My machine wouild take up to 512 GBytes of RAM were I to replace all the modules with the largest size. my processor chip has only 16896 KBytes of processor cache, so I do not think it would make sense to enable running more tasks like this at the same time. 16896 KBytes is fairly large for this kind of processor chip, but I run only 13 Boinc tasks at a time in winter and 8-12 in the summer. I have no AC.

Actually, I have gotten no new work for CPDN since last June. ;=(

Computer 1511241

CPU type 	GenuineIntel
Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-2245 CPU @ 3.90GHz [Family 6 Model 85 Stepping 7]
Number of processors 	16

Operating System 	Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.9 (Ootpa) [4.18.0-513.18.1.el8_9.x86_64|libc 2.28]
BOINC version 	7.20.2
Memory 	125.07 GB
Cache 	16896 KB
16) Message boards : News : BOINC Needs Votes at a UN Upcoming Forum (Message 70673)
Posted 27 Mar 2024 by Jean-David Beyer
Post:
Done.
Of course, my main Linux machine has gotten no CPDN work since last June, IIRC.
17) Message boards : Number crunching : Weather At Home 2 (wah2) (region independent) v8.29 crashed (Message 70654)
Posted 16 Mar 2024 by Jean-David Beyer
Post:
One reason I like Linux better than Microsoft Windows is that when my Linux system has updates, there is a little pop-up informing me of that fact.
It does not install the updates. I can get a list of the updates it wants to download and install.

I can tell ahead of time if installing the updates will require a reboot or not.
If not, i just install them. The main reason to do a reboot is if a new kernel needs to be installed. (Even if I install it, I can defer rebooting until a more opportune time.)

So what I do is when I am going to reboot I stop fetching new work. I then suspend all the tasks that are ready to start.
I wait until all running tasks have completed, reboot the system, resume the suspended processes, and resume the fetching new work. This keeps the problems down, but does not solve them completely.
18) Message boards : Number crunching : Weather At Home 2 (wah2) (region independent) v8.29 crashed (Message 70652)
Posted 13 Mar 2024 by Jean-David Beyer
Post:
My Windows machine crashed this task (and two others. What happened is an update sneaked in and rebooted the computerl The other two tasks were v8.24 tasks, so that is what I would have expected, but it appears that v8.29 are not immune to this either.

Task 22414291
Name wah2_eas25_a3wb_201012_24_1007_012269907_1
Workunit 12269907
Computer ID 1512658
Application version Weather At Home 2 (wah2) (region independent) v8.29
windows_intelx86

The beginning of the stderr is like this.

Stderr

<core_client_version>7.24.1</core_client_version>
<![CDATA[
<message>
The storage control block address is invalid.
(0x9) - exit code 9 (0x9)</message>
19) Message boards : Number crunching : processors, memory, performance and heat. (Message 70622)
Posted 6 Mar 2024 by Jean-David Beyer
Post:
Do Linux users know about this interesting tool?

#
 perf stat -e cache-references,cache-misses,cycles,instructions,branches,faults
^C
 Performance counter stats for 'system wide':

     4,751,265,017      cache-references                                            
     1,957,008,106      cache-misses              #   41.189 % of all cache refs    
 1,416,865,456,289      cycles                                                      
 1,984,715,137,591      instructions              #    1.40  insn per cycle         
   273,726,331,297      branches                                                    
            50,751      faults                                                      

      25.357650625 seconds time elapsed

You start the perf program with the first line. When you think it has run long enough, you hit Control C. It then prints the results.
The machine was doing this; i.e., mostly Boinc work -- 13 boinc tasks
top - 17:56:27 up 11 days,  4:21,  2 users,  load average: 13.58, 13.52, 13.51
Tasks: 483 total,  14 running, 469 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  0.4 us,  0.1 sy, 80.6 ni, 18.6 id,  0.0 wa,  0.2 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
MiB Mem : 128074.1 total,   2100.0 free,   6385.8 used, 119588.3 buff/cache
MiB Swap:  15992.0 total,  15947.2 free,     44.8 used. 118485.6 avail Mem 


My actual results here are probably of no interest to readers here because none of the Boinc tasks were running any CPDN tasks. But if I ever get more, I will be able to see how they do.

With that work load on my machine, a little over half the memory references were satisfied by the cache.
20) Message boards : Number crunching : processors, memory, performance and heat. (Message 70620)
Posted 6 Mar 2024 by Jean-David Beyer
Post:
I do wonder if faster RAM might help. Potentially I might need more than 32GB for some testing with OIFS even if on main site they are rationed to avoid problems with machines that don't have enough for multiple tasks.


My machine has this memory at the moment.
CPU type Genuine Intel - Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-2245 CPU @ 3.90GHz [Family 6 Model 85 Stepping 7]
Number of processors 	16
Operating System    Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.9 (Ootpa) [4.18.0-513.18.1.el8_9.x86_64|libc 2.28]
BOINC version 	7.20.2
Memory 	125.07 GB [2933MHz DDR4]
Cache 	 16896 KB

It came with 32 GBytes but I doubled it a couple of times as prices for RAM came down.
I guess it is no longer state-of-the-art (if it ever was), but it is several years old now, so there must surely be faster machines out there now.
I cannot put faster RAM in there, but I could run it up to 512 GBytes if someone would send me the money to do it. I doubt there is much point to doing that, since my L3 cache is 16384 Kbytes, which is pretty good for that kind of processor chip, I got all that RAM to run all those OIFS tasks that I have not received since last June, IIRC.


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