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Number crunching :
Report deadline: not enough time for low-end processors?
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Send message Joined: 5 Dec 07 Posts: 4 Credit: 1,456,708 RAC: 0 |
Hi! On my laptop (CPU: intel L7100 ) I am getting very long computation times - arround 30h's. The WU has to be done in 3 days. This means that my computer has to be turned on for 10h's a day. This seems a lot of time each day. My computer is normaly turned on for no more than 8h's a day. My point is: "normal" users with "normal" computers cant report WU's in time, and the result becomes invalid and useless. Is this the way things are ment to be? It would be nice if the report deadline was increased, so you would have more time to complete WU's. |
Send message Joined: 4 Feb 08 Posts: 116 Credit: 17,263,566 RAC: 0 |
Regular 'computers' are meant to be on 24/7. Laptops are not meant for that unless they are a very high end laptop. Also I have heard and experienced far too many issues with overheating when running Boinc on a laptop. Also most 'normal' computer users use a desktop for a majority of their heavy computing. |
Send message Joined: 24 Dec 07 Posts: 1947 Credit: 240,884,648 RAC: 0 |
Hi! I recommend you install an optimised application that can be found here. |
Send message Joined: 5 Dec 07 Posts: 4 Credit: 1,456,708 RAC: 0 |
Regular 'computers' are meant to be on 24/7. So what you are saying is that to run Milkyway applications, an average PC needs to be turned on day and night? This sounds quite undesirable as most people (apart from those who dedicate their whole computer to distributed computing) won't be able to contribute to this project. I personally have a q9450 @ 3,2 GHz wich sometimes run 24/7. This goes hand in hand with long wu's and short delivery times. But it would be nice if it was possible also to use my laptop too, even though it is not running 24/7 (I am not allways on work you see :D ) Concerning overheating of a laptop, they are designed to run at full load from now until forever. So unless you place them on your thighs/bed or similar, overheating shouldn't be a problem at all, though it gets quite hot under such loads. I have tried several laptops in the past few years, and they all did very well running 24/7 with no breakdowns or faults at all. |
Send message Joined: 4 Feb 08 Posts: 116 Credit: 17,263,566 RAC: 0 |
It does not need to be on 24/7 to run the project work units. However it does help. Having the correct application to run the work units also helps greatly. Modern electronics for the most part will not suffer any being left on 24/7. I have seen several laptops take issue with this. My wife's HP she got in 05/06 did not want to be on 24/7, it would overheat running boinc about every 4th day it would shutdown. Even one that I had Linux installed on that was from '02/'03 did not want to be on 24/7 running boinc, it took would shut itself down every 2-3 days from being too hot. Boinc is not a 'normal' cpu/gpu load program, it runs both at 99+% 99+% of the time. About the only other programs that come close to that load for extended periods are encoding/transcoding programs which are very CPU intensive. Towers are a completely different story. A decent fan is all they require, minus the semi annual cleaning. I do not dedicate my main rig to boinc. Yes I run it on it, but I also do far more on than simply crunching. I dedicate my lower rigs to that, a 3800 dual and a 5000 dual, though the 5000 has not been running in some time now. |
Send message Joined: 21 Aug 08 Posts: 625 Credit: 558,425 RAC: 0 |
As to the OP's query, due to the fact that new tasks are dependent upon tasks currently being processed, increasing the deadline causes drift in the results, possibly causing the search to go down the wrong path. Deadlines are actually 3 times longer than the project actually wanted (1 day), so an increase in deadline is unlikely and it is better that they do not, for the sake of scientific accuracy. That said, I knew that when the tasks were lengthened for all users, this kind of issue would crop up. I'm thankful that GPU users are now at least a bit less...vocal...however a good thing to probably do is route these larger tasks exclusively to GPU users, if at all possible. CPU users could then run any 1 or 2-stream tasks, and, most likely, caches could be increased for everyone. This was the general concept that I was proposing for all these past months... |
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