Project News - Poem@Home

[JugNut]

Wasn't the last round of POEM GPU work to do with biological nanotube research ???

[kashi]

Could be mistaken but I thought it was for OLED screen research, I remember there was some controversy when that was revealed, some were aghast and upset that it wasn't biology related like all other POEM applications.

@JugNut earlier post: Haha, yeh I also knew nothing about iAtkos & MultiBeast until earlier today, just thought I would mention them to show where the quest for POGS on OSX had led me so far. Plus thought the name MultiBeast sounded excellent so thought I'd share it.

Have downloaded qbitorrent to get iAtkos but haven't installed it yet. Just checking it out a bit more first, never used a torrent program before, if I use one I always imagine heavily armed agents of the Murdoch/Brandis/MPAA alliance will be breaking down the door and bursting into my room the next day with "Stand up, hands on the desk, feet back and spread 'em. We've got you now, you despicable felon, we know you're about to upload copies of "SomeRubbishMovie" to the world." Plus Tooheys hackers will start using my computer as a StuxNet bot to disable Coopers brewing operations.;D
"Electrons in underpants", wow what a wild concept.

As to underpants gnomes, these hot nights with no sleep do sometimes get me raving on a bit more than usual.

Meanwhile, back in the "real" world, well at least relatively real as Buddhists sometimes say, I'll let you know if I ever manage to crunch some POGS on an OSX VM.

[kashi]

Good to point that out to everyone Sean.

Yes it's a bit different to some other BOINC test servers. Currently they only want testers to crunch a few tasks on GPU and CPU and if they complete and validate OK, then suspend the project.  So far they are only testing if it works without error on different GPU models and CPU types. It is not a more exhaustive test with testers running lots of tasks like other projects' testing.

"...The only goal is to determine if the application fails on certain CPUs/GPUs.
So when you have successfully crunched two or three work units, please suspend the project. If any work units fail, please report it..."

The results so far for the available Linux applications look very positive: "Looking at the database it looks astonishing great at the moment :)"

[kashi]

GPU and CPU test applications are now available for Windows if anyone wishes to try a few before the official start of the AA.
from this post

POEM test server to attach to is at: http://int-boinctest.int.kit.edu/poem

Most testers are reporting no problems and reasonable GPU load, although multiple GPUs setups may only work on one GPU.
I am full on POGS now so haven't tried it myself.

[kashi]

Perhaps the test server was having trouble when you were trying to log in. It is down currently as is POEM itself.

As far as I know the stats from the test are not going to be exported so if you have duplicated yourself and couldn't join the test team it doesn't matter.

I forgot the test GPU tasks run for under a minute on a recent GPU, I'll give a few a burl later tonight if the server comes back.

Edit: Aha, because it is a separate server, BOINC considers it a separate project so you need attach as a new user. I couldn't join the test team either because it doesn't exist.;D No need to create it I think as there is no stats export and the test only involves a few tasks each.

I did 5 tasks, they took about 35 seconds each. GPU load was erratic and varied for task duration, mainly low but did spike to 100% for a few seconds. Need longer running tasks to get a better idea but on my HD 7790 running at least 2 tasks concurrently looks likely to be necessary. Running only 1 did not cause the GPU core or GPU memory to rise to full speed from idle speed. In other words, average load for 1 task is low. CPU time of 11 seconds per task for 35 second tasks is moderately high, so throttling issues may occur unless sufficient CPU resources are allocated.

[JugNut]

Yea it's back but not quite like before.  I left POEM open to receive GPU tasks & woke up late this morning with 10 units running at once from my old app_config.  *LOL*  They had been running  over 3 1/2 hrs & had only gone 35% the way through.   

It looks like if you run 2 or 3 at once on modern AMD cards they would take 2 - 2 .5hrs for 6,500 credit. Not sure about Nvidia's yet.
Not much being said yet at POEM other than dual Nvidia's aren't working yet & there seems to be other Nvidia problems as well. 
So far for my rig its at most 2 or 3 at once.  Not what I had expected but I'll test for a while & see what happens.

Crunch on..

[kashi]

Yep, I did 3 tasks and 2 errored. Near the end too, bah.

On my 7790 single task gives erratic GPU load percentage and runs at reduced core clock of 1015 Mhz. Need to run 2 concurrently to get stable high GPU load and force default clock of 1075 MHz, but GPU memory still does not move off idle clock of 150 MHz.

CPU utilisation is much lower than previous application but still about 3% or 25% of a single HT CPU core. Could be better but common problem with OpenCL GPU applications. Still a big improvement as it means CPU tasks can be run at the same time as GPU tasks.

With 6 cores loaded with CPU tasks, 1 GPU task takes 2 hours and 2 tasks take 3 hours. Will try a single GPU task later today with no CPU cores allocated to other projects to see if it speeds up GPU processing at all. Edit: No I won't, no tasks left. ;D

With 2 concurrent tasks, credit rate has reduced by about 85% compared to previous application.

[JugNut]

Hi all,
FYI:  I was surprised today to find a small amount of POEM GPU work on my PC's(6-10 WU's on each).  Not from the test server either but from the proper POEM servers.   Unfortunately I didn't notice them straight away & by the time I did & then tried to snag some more they had already run dry.

The bad news is they haven't changed much since last time, except GPU usage is now lower.  On my HD 7970's, GPU usage is at about 52%.   I then set up an app_config to run 2x at a time which seemed about right for a few tests.
Run time averaged about 2hrs 15mins when running 2x at a time.  So half that for 1 WU of course.

1 x WU  = 1hr 7mins
2 x WU's = 2hrs 15mins
All validated with no errors
Credit = 6,500 per WU

Unless there is a change credit will be poor to say the least.

Also I did try 3x WU's which did not go well at all, not only was there no gain from running 3 at a time, there was a big loss from doing so.   More testing needs to be done on this when adequate work arrives.

So it appears POEM GPU WU's aren't far away...   Good luck & crunch, crunch, crunch

[JugNut]

New POEM GPU WU's are available for those wanting to give them a try.  Come an get em' while they last..

[Dingo]

Make sure you have BOINC configured so you have enough work to last over the outage.

Maintenance on 05/09/2015
The whole IT infrastructure of our institute will be maintained on Saturday, 5 September 2015, 6:00am to 4:00pm UTC. The POEM@HOME BOINC Server will not be reachable within this period.
Please make sure to have enough cached work units, if you want to keep your crunching machines fed.