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Aaron Finney

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Message 39779 - Posted: 17 May 2010, 16:34:09 UTC
Last modified: 17 May 2010, 16:39:58 UTC

Today's Milestone is bittersweet.

Today, Milkyway@Home crossed the barrier by completing more 'work' on a singular PC than I have crunched on several PC's for over 17 years.

It's bittersweet because I attained this goal in less than 1 week of actual work with one single GPU.

I want to also say, that I was one of the *ORIGINAL* proponents for GPU processing. I pushed this on multiple forums, and even shouted down a few naysayers here and there who probably don't like me now XD.

Anyone remember the arguments on whether or not the 'results' from GPU processing wouldn't be accurate enough? - because "normally graphics processing doesn't have to be 100% accurate blah blah blah..."

My how times have changed!

A nice suprise to see so many GPU applications after fighting so hard so long ago to get people to look in this direction!

Still.. even 'sadder'... all that time lost.. all the energy spent over 17 years... completely blown away in less than a week from one, single, solitary GPU.

IO Triumphè, GPU Applications!

Aaron Finney

P.S. --- Last person to post here wins! *Ninja Vanish!*
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Thamir Ghaslan

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Message 39782 - Posted: 17 May 2010, 18:02:25 UTC - in response to Message 39779.  


Still.. even 'sadder'... all that time lost.. all the energy spent over 17 years... completely blown away in less than a week from one, single, solitary GPU.


Congrats.

Question is, where do we go from here? Whats the next step in the future?

Quantum computing in your home after all the algorithms and production costs gets ironed out?

Biological computing, having your own brain in a box and feed it nutrients instead of electricity? :P

No doubt GPU is king for cheap, green, fast computing, wonder whats next!
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Profile Paul D. Buck

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Message 39783 - Posted: 17 May 2010, 18:56:40 UTC
Last modified: 17 May 2010, 18:57:14 UTC

Like the Cray super-computers of days gone past the GPU is king only for some specific classes of problems ... for others, not so much, for others, not at all ... look at the difficulties EaH is having getting the GPU to give them a significant increase in speed ... or SaH with VLAR tasks running at 1/10 to 1/100th the speed of the more "common"/"normal" tasks...

I too was a long time advocate of the GPUs as a candidate to improve our ability to solve problems ... and it has ... if we can continue to use the GPU where it helps, that frees the CPUs to be used on other problems where you cannot get the speed increases because the problem is not amenable to vectorizing ...

Sadly we are still being held back by the primitive nature of the support tools ... for all the improvements we are still in very early days ... it has been only 2 years I think before we really saw the first applications ...

But I do know how you feel, I just had my second 1M+ day of production ... something that took years before I am now doing in a single day (productivity-wise), though it is still only for a limited palate of projects ... :(
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Profile The Gas Giant
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Message 39793 - Posted: 18 May 2010, 1:31:00 UTC

I think my first million took 2 yrs. With the new 5970 and the 4870 it takes around 4 days all being well...what a blast, but I'd prefer to be doing something a little more 'real' than finding the structure of our galaxy, finding a crack for an encryption format or a solution to some esoteric maths conjecture.

My preferred project of Malaria Control doesn't have a GPU app rarely has work these days and gives some of the lowest credit going, so my CPUs are being kept busy with other better paying work in between times. Still my GPUs give the same amount as my CPUs do in a day in about 5 minutes.

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Profile Paul D. Buck

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Message 39800 - Posted: 18 May 2010, 15:19:39 UTC - in response to Message 39793.  

My preferred project of Malaria Control doesn't have a GPU app rarely has work these days and gives some of the lowest credit going, so my CPUs are being kept busy with other better paying work in between times. Still my GPUs give the same amount as my CPUs do in a day in about 5 minutes.

My 5 computers have a total of 36 processing elements and they do all combined about 20K per day on the various projects (24,012 yesterday 803,508-188,293-82,746-18,735-489,722). So I feel your pain ...

THough it takes me longer to do the equivalent ... as I work it out, it takes me about 45 minutes of work by my GPUs to equal all of my CPUs ...

779,486 stones / 86,400 seconds a day = 9.02194 CS/second
24,012 / 9.02194 CS/sec = 2661.5118 seconds
2661.5118 sec / 60 = 44 min 21 seconds

Of course, all this proves is that someone has WAY too much time on his hands ... :)

I think I had reached about 3M total when I got my first GPU application going ... and that was for about 4 years worth of work on up to a total of 10 computers ... now I do that much (and more) in a week... A couple more upgrades and I am likely to be doing 1M a day on a regular basis ...
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Zydor
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Message 39826 - Posted: 19 May 2010, 10:50:05 UTC

Talking about too much time on my hands ..... in between debt collectors with attendent not-so-tame rottviellers ringing the doorbell .... I mulled over our successor's dilemae in 50 years time with the then latest Aqua Quantum driven WU .... queue angry poster:

"About time this project got the damn credits sorted out - even SETI is giving 14 Pentillian credits per millisecond .... I know, I know, I gotta get the PC sorted out - I do realise the QuantiGamebox has severe limitations, lets not start that again .... but enough is enough"

*Sigh* The abacus was such a wonderful beast in its day ....

Told you I had too much time on my hands :)

Regards
Zy
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Profile Paul D. Buck

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Message 39830 - Posted: 19 May 2010, 11:59:03 UTC - in response to Message 39826.  

*Sigh* The abacus was such a wonderful beast in its day ....

It still is ... :)

In the early days of computers there was a "race" between one of the early machines and it lost to a room full of abaci ... I can't find the right reference in Google and am too lazy to search my file cabinets ...

But I do get your point about the future ... heck, I never imagined that I would be on the verge of 1M a day production on a regular basis ... I mean, that was years worth of work before ... years ...

Now, were my wife to win the lottery ... i7 980s all around and a 16 CPU Power Mac (or whatever they are calling them this week) ... a few more 5870s and ... hooo boy ... :)
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Odd-Rod

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Message 39839 - Posted: 19 May 2010, 19:10:10 UTC - in response to Message 39830.  

In the early days of computers there was a "race" between one of the early machines and it lost to a room full of abaci

But that wasn't a fair contest. A single processor against a multicore...

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Profile Paul D. Buck

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Message 39840 - Posted: 19 May 2010, 19:12:34 UTC - in response to Message 39839.  

In the early days of computers there was a "race" between one of the early machines and it lost to a room full of abaci

But that wasn't a fair contest. A single processor against a multicore...

I am surprised you did not note that they were also multi-threaded ... :)
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Zydor
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Message 39842 - Posted: 19 May 2010, 19:40:25 UTC

all that knitting ....
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Odd-Rod

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Message 39843 - Posted: 19 May 2010, 20:09:25 UTC - in response to Message 39840.  

In the early days of computers there was a "race" between one of the early machines and it lost to a room full of abaci

But that wasn't a fair contest. A single processor against a multicore...

I am surprised you did not note that they were also multi-threaded ... :)

LOL!
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John G

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Message 39861 - Posted: 20 May 2010, 15:38:40 UTC

Hey I have been crunching wu's since 2001 and have not really seen the fruits of my labor until recently. TG for GPU's
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Message 39905 - Posted: 23 May 2010, 20:11:25 UTC

Hi.

I know the feeling at one point had 4 machines crunching 24/7 for a few years at times and in a month i've just doubled my credit score

all that electricity :(

Ian
....Please Join team Scotland HERE
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