Project News - Collatz Conjecture

[BF]

From the Collatz Conjecture news feed:

And now, for something completely different....

Monday July 27, 2009, 20:48 CST

Version 1.10 of the app has been released for Win32, Win64, Linux and CUDA. ATI (CAL) apps are also available for Win32 and Win64. Any results submitted from previous versions will NOT be granted credit as the output of the new version is no longer compatible with the previous version. So, if you have any workunits from prior to v1.10, you can go ahead and abort them.

[Dataman]

A moment of silence please...
September 4, 19:25 CST
After a long, difficult life, we had to say goodbye to an old faithful friend. Mr. Micron, also known as IPCOP_1 had a fatal breakdown this afternoon. After several efforts to revive him, we had to call it at 14:33 CST. We will miss him dearly as he had been part of the family for almost 15 years. He is survived by his three 3c905 NIC cards, VGA controller, and KVM cable. Let us pray that the new replacement will continue on in his tradition of service.

Unfortunately, Comcast gave the new replacement a new IP address which has been known to cause problems with BOINC having cached the old address, so you may need to restart your BOINC client in order to report your results.

***
It was a long outage and I lost a lot of crunch time.   :cry2:

[LoneWolf_53]

I awoke to a bunch of completed work units and nothing left to work on.

I see a message that says "server error - feeder not running".   ???

[Dataman]

Yes, I have ~80K trapped on my servers. They had a server failure two days ago and have not been able to configure the new one to work. They've come up a couple of times only to have it fail in just a few minutes.  :hbang: Even their web site is down.

[Mysteron347]

So this thread would be Collatz collapse conjecture?

[Dataman]

So this thread would be Collatz collapse conjecture?

They are back up and seem to be stable. Yep, they are a wee bit technology challenged. I think their Cheif Scientist is also their Chief Information Officer.  biggrin

[kashi]

From the Collatz Conjecture news feed:

New applications released, credit adjustment coming soon

September 17, 13:57 CST

Collatz applicaton version 2.0 is being released. Credits will be adjusted within the next day or so. When that happens, any results submitted with the v1.10 applications will receive reduced credit. In the mean time, you may either continue to process the existing workunits knowing you will receive reduced credit or abort them and start new ones using the new application version. Any aborted WUs will be resent using the new application version.


CUDA Application Update

September 17, 13:04 CST

The v2.0 applications require CUDA 2.3 compatible drivers, so make sure you have the nVidia 190.38 or higher drivers installed. Also, if you ran CUDA apps using Collatz v1.10, you will need to reset or detach and reattach before you will be able to complete a CUDA workunit. This is required in order for the BOINC client to download the new cudartl.dll file. If it thinks you already have one (from v1.10 which is CUDA 2.1) it will not download it and, as a result, all CUDA workinits will fail.



New app goes very nicely on my ATI, tasks are 32 times longer than before but take me about the same time. So although credit for tasks has been reduced by about 10 times, effective credit/hour at the currently granted rate has increased by 3.2 times for me. Not quite as much credit as MilkyWay double precision work but about 70-75% of it for single precision work is still quite good. Runs much cooler than MilkyWay too. Like any project with a quorum you have to wait for some slow wingmen, but at least the server has been more stable recently (touch wood). :)

[LoneWolf_53]

Server is down again.   :hbang:

Really wish those guys would get a better service provider. 

[BF]

Ah well, back to MilkyWay..  biggrin

[AusTerror]

So is this project up and down all the time?

I have a BUNCH of ATI hardware that I could put to use, but I want a project that is consistant.  So I have stuck with Nvidia and GPUGrid.

Do you guys think its worth changing my hardware out yet?

[BF]

Collatz has more more stable as of late, but when it does go down it can stay out for ages..  It's back up atm.

Whether it's worth it, hmmmm..  My 4890 can squeeze out about 60k credits per day at Collatz, compared with about 100k at MilkyWay.  So yes, it's a nice little earner!

[Dataman]

I would recomend GPUGrid. Collatz should be hosted by YoYo because they are up and down like one.  Great project but small and challenged. Or you could try Milkyway if you have double presision cards (GTX260 or above) but they sometimes run out of work. GPULand is still the Wild Wild West. 

Good luck!

[kashi]

Depends on your patience and if you are able to attend to your computer at a suitable time or are prepared to use an hourly update script. The internet connection of the server often goes down and isn't reset until the admin wakes up which is late at night here, seeing as Americans mostly live in yesterday. So basically it usually goes alright from late at night to mid afternoon, but may be uncontactable during the late afternoon and early evening. It has been relatively good for the last week until just recently though. What happens more often is that the validator goes down and isn't restarted until the admin wakes up. That just delays some of your pending a little bit longer, but you can still download and upload work and view the website if only the validator is down.

Pending is a lot less than previously now that the report deadline has been reduced from 1 month to 2 weeks. Sometimes after MilkyWay has been down the amount of pending can increase when some go back to MilkyWay and don't finish the Collatz tasks in their cache. Credit rate is quite good, on my HD 4890 it is 60-70% of MilkyWay.

The new application works very well on my card and runs relatively cool compared to MilkyWay. It allows the use of some single precision cards, not just double precison cards as at MilkyWay. You can download a fair few tasks at a time (120?) which is usually more than enough to last until the server comes back online around midnight.

[AusTerror]

that sounds good.

Anyone know if quadfire works with it?  I have a stack of 3870x2 cards on my desk doing nothing.  The quad sli I currently have running only works with 3 GPUs. I have 2 9800GX2 in my PC at this time.  BOINC refuses to see more than 3 GPUs.  So if I can get 4 GPUs out of ATI then that would be great!  Plus the 9800GX2 is not that fast.

[kashi]

The original ATI application would not run on ATI X2 cards. The new version of the ATI application was coded by by Gipsel/Cluster Physik, the same person who wrote the MilkyWay ATI application. MilkyWay ATI works for HD3870X2 and HD 4870X2, but some have problems with HD 4850X2. So Collatz ATI should work on most X2 ATI cards. Not sure about quadfire but PoorBoy, OxyOne and possibly others are using 4 ATI cores in one box so I don't see why not. Can't tell from the host details whether someone is running 2 X2 cards or 4 individual cards.

You could try an ATI aware BOINC 6.10.x version first to see how it works for you. If you have problems then you may wish to download the application manually and configure the app_info.xml file yourself rather than using a BOINC 6.10.x which does everything automatically. Some have work fetch problems with BOINC 6.10.x versions. I am currently using BOINC 6.10.7 for MilkyWay ATI and WCG on the CPU and it is working fine. However I download WCG tasks manually in batches so auto work fetch for CPU projects is not necessary for me. This still uses an app_info.xml file whereas the Collatz server is able to send the Collatz ATI application files automatically to a computer running BOINC 6.10.x without the need for an app_info.xml file.

If you use the manually downloaded version of Collatz ATI you can use it with your choice of BOINC versions. Probably would need to be a version that supports fractional CPU allocation though.

If you wish to try the manually downloaded Collatz ATI version with an ATI aware BOINC 6.10.x version you have to add the <coproc></coproc> section to the app_info.xml file. It is the same as the coproc section found in the MilkyWay ATI app_info.xml file.

If you don't have both connectors connected to a monitor, you may need a dummy plug or have to extend your primary desktop to the second desktop. Not sure if you need to have crossfire enabled or not, I think it may work either way with the possible exception of certain HD 4850X2 models.

Unlike MilkyWay ATI, Collatz ATI runs most efficiently running only 1 task at a time on a GPU core. There is very little CPU used and running 2 tasks concurrently does not result in any time saving instead each task takes slightly longer than when running one at a time.

The admin Slicker is often around on the forums and willing to help people out. I think he prefers everyone to run the auto BOINC version where possible but he still made the manually downloaded version available when I asked for it. Gipsel is also there now and again when he has some time available after his research work on helium droplets and such like at university.