Posts by Nightlord

1) Message boards : Number crunching : Sudden mass of WU's finishing with Computation Error (Message 34269) Posted 5 Dec 2009 by Nightlord Post: Not sure if this is related or otherwise, but immediately following the increase in WU size, most of my ATI GPU's failed on most WU's. Work commitments meant I only had a short time to investigate before deciding to set no new tasks. However, what I observed was that WU's would run to completion, but then the next WU would fail. More specifically, I had two or three WU's running - after the end of the first of those, the 3rd or 4th WU and all subsequent WU's would fail. Having had time yesterday to investigate, I recalled I had seen something similar in the past on standard WU's on an old slow Pentium 4 based machine. It had something to do with the CPU utilisation at the start of a new WU, combined with the response time the starting up new WU. On that old machine, I had to set the app_info to run 2 WU's and set w1.05 in the command line tag. Without those tweaks I couldn't reliably run MW, let alone any CPU projects at the same time. My guess is there is a timeout that requires serviced withing a specific time frame and if not serviced, the WU fails. With that in mind, I experimented a bit yesterday. I dropped the boxes down to running 1 WU at a time (n1)and set w1.01 (w1.15 on the old P4). Hey presto, they have all been running happy and smooth. So a long story, and I know that specific solution is not available to Nvidia users through the app_info, but if you have a busy machine on CPU projects, try reducing the load a little. It might also give some pointers to the project staff to look into the CPU utilization and timings at WU start up.
2) Message boards : Number crunching : Why No Work? (Message 32965) Posted 3 Nov 2009 by Nightlord Post: Down 100k here when I looked earlier, but it seems to be recovering faster than I'm crunching......
3) Message boards : Number crunching : Problem ATI v0.2 and Win7? (Message 30868) Posted 14 Sep 2009 by Nightlord Post: I just upgraded to Cat9.9 and hey presto it sprung into life! Most excellent result, thanks very much for your hard work!
4) Message boards : Number crunching : Problem ATI v0.2 and Win7? (Message 30864) Posted 14 Sep 2009 by Nightlord Post: OK, downloading new driver now......will post back with findings shortly.
5) Message boards : Number crunching : Problem ATI v0.2 and Win7? (Message 30856) Posted 14 Sep 2009 by Nightlord Post: FWIW, my stderrr for these is as follows: <core_client_version>6.6.36</core_client_version> <![CDATA[ <message> Incorrect function. (0x1) - exit code 1 (0x1) </message> <stderr_txt> Running Milkyway@home ATI GPU application version 0.20 (Win32, SSE2) by Gipsel setting minimum kernel frequency to 10 Hz scaling the wait times with 0.8 CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6700 @ 2.66GHz (2 cores/threads) 2.6605 GHz (396ms) CAL Runtime: 1.4.283 Found 1 CAL device Device 0: ATI Radeon HD 4800 (RV770) 512 MB local RAM (remote 831 MB cached + 831 MB uncached) GPU core clock: 750 MHz, memory clock: 900 MHz 800 shader units organized in 10 SIMDs with 16 VLIW units (5-issue), wavefront size 64 threads supporting double precision 3 WUs already running on GPU 0 No free GPU! Waiting ... 0.03125 seconds. Starting WU on GPU 0 main integral, 320 iterations predicted runtime per iteration is 104 ms (100 ms are allowed), dividing each iteration in 2 parts borders of the domains at 0 800 1600 0, integration, Kernel Execution : Failed to create Program </stderr_txt> ]]> Notice the same error message in the last line.
6) Message boards : Number crunching : Problem ATI v0.2 and Win7? (Message 30835) Posted 14 Sep 2009 by Nightlord Post: Yes, all six dll's in place. It's very repeatable, so something systematic. I also double checked that I have MSCV++ 2005 SP1 installed too. Just been playing with permissions and tweaks in the app_info but still no joy. The error says that the output file for task xyz is missing. I'm not entirely sure which file that is referring to. It might be the OUT file in the slot directory, but in anycase, it's too fast for me to check. Boinc whizzes down the cache in a couple of seconds trashing each WU 0.19 ATI runs fine; 0.20 ATI barfs, but only on that machine - the other two boxes are running sweet under XP SP3.
7) Message boards : Number crunching : Problem ATI v0.2 and Win7? (Message 30803) Posted 14 Sep 2009 by Nightlord Post: Strange problem with the new v0.2 ATI app on one of my boxes. Two out of three are fine after updating to v0.2, the third craps out with a failed to create program error. The error message from boincmanager is 14/09/2009 12:22:54 Milkyway@home Output file gs_constrainted_82_2s_4_2346758_1252927308_0_0 for task gs_constrainted_82_2s_4_2346758_1252927308_0 absent This happens on all WU under 0.2: reverting back to v0.19 the box runs fine. Specs: Boinc 6.6.36, HD4780, 32bit Win7 RC1. This box Tried running Boinc as Admin: same error. Any thoughts?
8) Message boards : Number crunching : Donating to Milkyway@Home (Message 29320) Posted 13 Aug 2009 by Nightlord Post: With all those sticky buns on offer, I just couldn't help myself. Yum, tasty too! ;-)
9) Message boards : Number crunching : Conflict MW (ATI) & Aqua CPU (Message 29295) Posted 13 Aug 2009 by Nightlord Post: It is also possible to overcome many of these problems by running a virtual machine with VMWare, Virtual Box or even Virtual PC. Then you have to independant Boinc installations that know nothing about eachother and will happily crunch one project on each. MW on the native OS with ATI, second project under VM. The result is two or more projects from the single physical host reported of course as two hosts in your accounts and stats. You need to accept a small overhead loss due to the VM, but personally I've found this better than having to micromanage Boinc.
10) Message boards : Number crunching : Not receiving any work from Milkyway!! (Message 28332) Posted 24 Jul 2009 by Nightlord Post: just got 6 WU's :-) .....then nothing more :-(
11) Message boards : Number crunching : boinc 6.6.36 version (Message 27760) Posted 14 Jul 2009 by Nightlord Post: You should be able to overcome the 3 standard WU's on a quad problem by setting the ncpus parameter in the cc_config.xml file. Setting ncpus = 5 for a quad will fool Boinc into thinking you have 5 cores so it should load 4 cores plus the GPU. Here's an example: <options> <ncpus> 5 </ncpus> </options> Disclaimer: I'm not sure how that will interact with the app_info file that drives the ATI GPU.
12) Message boards : Number crunching : boinc 6.6.36 version (Message 27537) Posted 11 Jul 2009 by Nightlord Post: Official download site here: Berkely Download site