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FreeHAL@Home looking good

Started by WikiWill, January 27, 2010, 02:56:05 PM

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WikiWill

I stumbled upon mention of this project while in the AQUA@Home forums.

(http://aqua.dwavesys.com/forum_thread.php?id=433&nowrap=true#5804)
QuoteIf you are looking to boost credits, pop over to Freehal. It can be run in parrallel, in addition to any other Project with minimal to zero cpu hit, in effect something for nothing - not quite, but not far off, cpu use of about 10 seconds or less over a WU crunch time of 1hr 50mins.

Freehal Home Page: http://freehal.net/freehal_at_home/index.php

The Project is about Artificial Intelligence and interaction between an AI and human asking questions. The WUs provide the core material for the AI to munch on.

Practical realities:
- Each machine can run 25 WUs maximum and they run concurrently using between 900Kb and 65mb per WU. Crudely plan on 25 WUs taking up 1Gb of memory as not all peek to 65mb at the same time.
- If you have 4Gb and above RAM, you can also run one virtual machine in addition to each physical machine. You are allowed to run the vertuals where you like, as long as the all up vertual total does not exceed the physical machine total. EG: Got 4 machines, then you can startup 4 vertuals as well.
- Its RAM dependent, not CPU, so you can run it with any old machine, really old ..... and end up with 4,700 credits a day from it.
- Numbers of concurrent WUs per machine are Cruncher selectable from 1 to 25, so you can tailor each Machine to available RAM.

For Example my Phenom 2 (64bit 8Gb RAM) routinely runs Aqua on the four Cores, Collatz on the 9800GTX, 25WUs in main RAM, and three vertual machines of 23 WUs each using 1280Mb RAM per vertual. Aqua credits on a quad you know, Collatz gives me about 20,000+ on the card, and the Freehal 91 WUs gives me about 17,000.

I have two other machines running Projects ( a laptop and an FX60), and on those I also run 25 WUs each. So for three machines & three vertuals, I'll get about 27,000 credits a day for no effort, and miniscule hit on CPU ....

Its known as a "Non CPU Intensive Project" or NCIP, which as a genre uses little or no cpu to run. Its therefore only limited by the ammount of RAM you have spare, or put another way, is a great way to use up any spare RAM without hitting other ongoing Projects.

Slight downside is that it is an Alpha, and there has been a little stop start with some issues over the last 12 months. However, it continues to get better, and last night ran a new setup which is working extremely well, resulting in a reliable supply to the maximum allowed, and a stable server. Its working well, and now my three machines are tripping off a combined total of 141 WUs every 1hr 50mins for 15 credits per WU. Worth a look, if you fancy it, I would suggest you run one machine first for a couple of days to get into it, but after you are in there, assigning the rest is almost a no brainer as cpu hit is vertually zero.

I have no doubts more issues will appear, it is a developing Project, so dont expect everything to be sweetness and light, but the reconfig last night was a huge step forward, and its now at a stage where I would recommend anyone to give it a go. Those with Farms will add 4,700 RAC per machine, 9,400 if paired by a vertual. If anyone has a big farm of circa 10/20 machines ..... thats a chunky addition for almost zero effort and negligible effect on other Projects :)

EDIT:
One querky thing to be aware of, the WUs start up in succession, go to 100% on crunch time, then over a period of about 5 mins collate results ready for upload - during the final 5 min collation the counter is at 100% because its already done its crunching, hang on rofl, its still got collation to do. Once aware of the behaviour, its no problem, it'll just seem odd at first.

Regards
Zy

Well that was enough for me to try it out.  I've been running 10 WUs on four different machines for most of today.

So far, I've had two issues.  The x64 Ubuntu machine ran the first batch of WUs fine but locked up completely part way through the second.  It did this once a while ago but that was fixed by removing and reconnecting the network cable (standard troubleshooting since I usually connect remotely to this box), but that didn't help today.  The second issue was when I rebooted the Win 7 x64 box for a Windows Update, the progress on the WUs was lost and they restarted from scratch.  That's not so bad.

Admittedly an Alpha project but it looks good to me.  We are currently ranked 94th on RAC, 85th on credit, so I am to improve that a bit, and your help would be appreciated!!   biggrin

http://boincstats.com/stats/team_graph.php?pr=freehal&id=92

kashi

Sounds interesting. I have attached and started my first task. Looks like it will take about 100 minutes or so to complete. I adjusted my preferences to do 25 at once but it won't download any more yet. Maybe it will do so when this one is finished.

Thanks for letting me know about this. :)

WikiWill

Yes, after it finishes and uploads that one WU, it will bring down the full batch.

I started slowly, and I'm up to 12 at once which looks like about the sweet point for free memory on my machines.  That should work out at about 11,000 credit per day (5 boxes x 12 WUs every 90 mins x 12 credit per WU) if I'm lucky!!  I'm seeing very little impact on existing CPU-intensive tasks like CPDN and AQUA.

kashi

#3
Yes that's right, thanks.
Ah that's better, now I'm cooking with gas. 25 on the go. Bonzai, go go FreeHAL!

Hmm, that's strange, it says granted credit of 12 but it actually gave me 15. Must be a 25% bonus because I'm such such a fine fellow.  :rofl:

dyeman

Hmm - I'm the first one to take a free lunch, but this sounds too good to be true.  Surely there must be a catch???

Folding Stats

WikiWill

There does not appear to be one - yet.  But you are right to be sceptical!  So far today, 5k credit in exchange for something I don't yet realise I've lost  :shock  biggrin

dyeman

.. and you were user of the day (until veebee usurped you biggrin )

Folding Stats

BF

Quote
Admittedly an Alpha project but it looks good to me.  We are currently ranked 94th on RAC, 85th on credit, so I am to improve that a bit, and your help would be appreciated!!

Ok, I'll give it whirl...

Dingo

#8
You know I have been running this project for some time on and off but I never have I seen it run more than one WU at a time.   It does run independant of the other work though so 2 cores can be running projects and freehal will run as well.




Radioactive@home graph
Have a look at the BOINC@AUSTRALIA Facebook Page and join and also the Twitter Page.

Proud Founder and member of BOINC@AUSTRALIA

My Luck Prime 1,056,356 digits.
Have a look at my  Web Cam of Parliament House Ottawa, CANADA

veebee

@ Dingo - you go into preferences at the project, and select (up to) 25 WU's in "maximal concurrent work units" setting, then click "change".

the of course, you must update freehal in your boinc manager.

Dingo

#10
Yes I see that now, either I didn't see that way back when I attached or it was added after, but I have it selected now.  My laptop is running 25 FreeHal, 2 Ibercivis, and 1 Collatz.  I have 4 GB of RAM and at the moment only using 1750Mb but it is going up as FreeHal runs.  the 25 WU are at about 30% complete.

PS:  My HD4770 came in the mail today, now all I need is for my furniture and PC's to arrive.


Radioactive@home graph
Have a look at the BOINC@AUSTRALIA Facebook Page and join and also the Twitter Page.

Proud Founder and member of BOINC@AUSTRALIA

My Luck Prime 1,056,356 digits.
Have a look at my  Web Cam of Parliament House Ottawa, CANADA

veebee

you got a 4770 ? cool !

great bargain if you can still find someone stocking them.

stick it on collatz for a while mate and get 50K a day out of it - THAT'LL get your RAC back up !

dyeman

Quote from: veebee on January 28, 2010, 04:43:18 PM
you got a 4770 ? cool !

great bargain if you can still find someone stocking them.

stick it on collatz for a while mate and get 50K a day out of it - THAT'LL get your RAC back up !


.. or Milkyway - even more credits than Collatz!

Folding Stats

daveandton

that's incredible.Does 15 WU's at once .Just tried it on my cmp and got 1000 credits in an hour. UNBELIEVABLE
Dave

veebee

#14
Dave, go into preferences at the project and you can set it to do 25 WU's at once !

edit: have just set up a virtual box (win 7 x64) inside one of my other win 7 boxes - used the real install disc without entering a key No - used the loader program I have which inserted a key and activated it for me.. perfect - unlimited installs off one disc !

so now running 50 WU's at once on that machine.