Posts by Biggles

1) Message boards : Number crunching : program with CUDA (Message 4478) Posted 25 Jul 2008 by Biggles Post: stream processing isn't yet ready for BOINC. Ever heard about gpugrid? ;-) I'm fully aware of it, but Saenger covered part of it - at the moment a CPU task controls the use of the GPU, which means that when that task isn't running the GPU lies idle. Add to that only Linux 64-bit support, requiring specific drivers and many cards not being supported and what you find is that stream processing, whilst now a reality, isn't yet ready for BOINC. I'd love it if it was, because there's huge amounts of untouched computing power out there, but it's not quite ready.
2) Message boards : Number crunching : program with CUDA (Message 4138) Posted 15 Jul 2008 by Biggles Post: I don't think Crunch3r is writing CUDA off too quickly, just trying to inject some realism into the marketing hype. GPUs sacrifice accuracy for speed. This can be fatal for most DC projects. The quoted speed increases are normally burst speeds for single precision floats. Almost all projects need sustained double precision operations. For some projects CUDA and other auxiliary resources will be a big help. Major changes in BOINC's scheduling system will make utilizing these resources easier for the projects. Some will be in the 6.2.x client and the rest in the 6.4.x client. The Radeon HD 4800 series supports double precision, with a few caveats. The other points stand though, stream processing isn't yet ready for BOINC.