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jotun263

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Message 31656 - Posted: 28 Sep 2009, 7:54:45 UTC

Hi!

Only a suggestion, but how about 1 or 2 checkpoints in the GPU-apps?!?!

I use the BOINC-Client 6.10.4 (dev. edition) 'cause the 6.6.38 made some troubles. Now I have the problem that every time the client gets new WUs, the active GPU-unit break up the calculation and the last new downloaded one starts. So a lot of precious calc time and energy (GPUs aren't energy savers!) get lost and some units restart up to 15 times until they get finished. Calc time up to 1 hour!!!

Or is there a workaround to prevent this behaviour?!

Greetz!
jotun263
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Profile Paul D. Buck

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Message 31657 - Posted: 28 Sep 2009, 8:52:48 UTC - in response to Message 31656.  

Hi!

Only a suggestion, but how about 1 or 2 checkpoints in the GPU-apps?!?!

I use the BOINC-Client 6.10.4 (dev. edition) 'cause the 6.6.38 made some troubles. Now I have the problem that every time the client gets new WUs, the active GPU-unit break up the calculation and the last new downloaded one starts. So a lot of precious calc time and energy (GPUs aren't energy savers!) get lost and some units restart up to 15 times until they get finished. Calc time up to 1 hour!!!

Or is there a workaround to prevent this behaviour?!

Greetz!
jotun263

Move to 6.10.7 which fixes most of the issues with 6.10.4/.5/.6 ...
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Cluster Physik

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Message 31662 - Posted: 28 Sep 2009, 15:01:00 UTC
Last modified: 28 Sep 2009, 15:01:11 UTC

As Paul said, updating to a newer client solves this problem.

It doesn't make sense to checkpoint during the current WUs. Even a HD3870 completes the longest WUs in just over 2 minutes. A lot of people have set their preferences to 5 minutes as the minimum time between checkpoints, so there wouldn't be one written either way. Even a setting of only 60 seconds would be already too high for the HD4800 line, as they complete the WUs usually faster. And I'm not going to write checkpoints more often then set by the user (generally, checkpointing is done at discretion of the app and cannot be enforced by the BOINC client).
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jotun263

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Message 31682 - Posted: 29 Sep 2009, 11:32:22 UTC - in response to Message 31662.  

Many thanks for the fast replies!

I will update to 6.10.7 when I come home and see what will happen.

Even a HD3870 completes the longest WUs in just over 2 minutes.
2 minutes?! I own a GTX280 and the calculation time of most WUs is around 6 minutes...
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Emanuel

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Message 31684 - Posted: 29 Sep 2009, 12:29:44 UTC
Last modified: 29 Sep 2009, 12:30:24 UTC

The latest version is 6.10.10 (6.10.9 on Linux); get it here. And yeah, AMD/ATI have been working on double precision cards for longer than nvidia.. upcoming cards will probably be a lot faster, especially considering nvidia's public statements that say they want to focus on GPGPU.
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jotun263

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Message 31805 - Posted: 1 Oct 2009, 12:51:35 UTC - in response to Message 31684.  

I updated the client to 6.10.11 and everything work fine now. Even the calculation errors, which happen after WU restart, are gone. Thanks a lot!

upcoming cards will probably be a lot faster, especially considering nvidia's public statements that say they want to focus on GPGPU.
I'm waiting impatiently for the new NVIDIA-series. Extremly curious about the performance and the new features this series can provide for us... ;)
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Message boards : Application Code Discussion : Checkpoints for the GPU-applications

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