I think one should get the bonus anyway whether you finish these behemoth tasks within 24 hours or not...

+1

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I think one should get the bonus anyway whether you finish these behemoth tasks within 24 hours or not.

Well, the posted estimate for long runs is 8-12 hours for the fastest cards. This was a gross overestimate until now, as my 260 would complete most of them in 8 hours, and some of the biggest ones would take 12-15 hours. Now it seems we've gone in the other direction, taking well over half a day to complete on 5xx series cards. If the size of the tasks is putting such a demand even on the most powerful cards, it seems reasonable that the bonus cutoffs would be extended a bit, maybe to 36/72 hours for 50%/25%, or something along those lines. Obviously you don't want to go crazy with bonus points, but it's something to consider if we're going to be modeling larger molecular systems that take considerably longer to complete.

I've had 2 NATHAN_FAX3 tasks complete. Both tasks were run with a dedicated core. One task was run without SWAN_SYNC being set, and the other task was run with SWAN_SYNC=0 (restarted BOINC after the change). The results were the same though.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 (stock clock)
Windows 7 x64
Nvidia driver: 295.73
Core i7 920 @ 3.8Ghz

Dedicated core, no SWAN_SYNC
21 hrs. 8 min.

Dedicated core, SWAN_SYNC=0
21 hrs. 7 min.

So SWAN_SYNC didn't help at all for my setup.

I don't see why the GTX 570 takes 21 hours+ if the GTX 580 takes 12-13 hours. That seems like too large of a difference between the GTX 570 and GTX 580.

there does seem to be some credit disparity for the FAX3 wu in terms of time vs credit rewarded but im not sure. fair enough, so long as the work keeps coming!

anyway, i definitely turned off long work units for my machines running some gtx275 cards. it was hurtin those poor, poor cards. the gtx500 series cards seem to be ok with them albeit they do take a while.

my question is this: i like running the older long wu (i.e. non FAX3 wu) on my gtx275s. they didnt have issues completing those in time. since there's no separation of long wu type on the preferences screen, would it be possible to add something like that so we can select to still run longs without FAX3? for example:

ACEMD standard
ACEMD beta
ACEMD for long runs (8-12 hours on fastest GPU)
ACEMD for long runs (8-12 hours on fastest GPU) & FAX3

or something to that effect? that way the slower cards can still get longs but not struggle with the FAX3s. just thought i'd ask. thanks for the consideration.

bob

Perhaps we need a short, medium and long queues. All the current longs except FAX3 go to the medium queue. We'll need an option to select which type of work to allow as well. Deselect the long queue by default and put a note next to the long queue option to suggest GTX570 or better.

It may also be possible to limit the long queue to certain speed cards by checking the est flops and memory values returned in the scheduler request (assuming it does pass it across).

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BOINC blog

Perhaps we need a short, medium and long queues. All the current longs except FAX3 go to the medium queue. We'll need an option to select which type of work to allow as well. Deselect the long queue by default and put a note next to the long queue option to suggest GTX570 or better.

I proposed something similar. Response: out of the question because maintenaince costs (it seems with the team they have they can only handle 3 queues.

It may also be possible to limit the long queue to certain speed cards by checking the est flops and memory values returned in the scheduler request (assuming it does pass it across).

I agree with this. I proposed it too. I think the program that distributes the task should me smarter. It wouldn't need to look in the Flops, I think the best would be that the server just look the computer configuration and determine if it's slow or fast.

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HOW TO - Full installation Ubuntu 11.10

Also, GPU usage is below 90% again, while the old Nathans finally got up to 97% on a Fermi (GTX 570).

You guys just don't get enough? WUs running for that long on a Fermi, ever thought how long they would run on a CPU? And finally paying these credits or zero if they fail?

I think one reason why this project has lost any measure in fair credits and useful WU sizes is the lack of a CPU app. Why isn't there any? Because it would demonstrate the monstrous demands you are posing on hardware and crunchers...

look over to primegrid and the Genefer World Record tasks.
I finished two tasks on my gtx 580 and both of them took easily over 75 hours.
Thats long and part of why i switched back for a bit gpugrid. (And to get the next batch here ;-))

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Target acquired. FAX3!!

At the current rate of progress, it SHOULD take 37 hours on my GTX 260. We'll see how this estimate evolves as the WU progresses.

41hrs in and still have 21 to go?!?!?!?! gts450, core 980, shader 1960, ram 2050 hooked upto a 9950be with slight overclock. had just switched over to long wu's, regular long wu's ran 1~3hrs longer than short ones till i got this fax3. miffed at the idea that im loseing the 24hr bonus plus losing credits from the wu's i could have ran waiting for this to finish.

34 hours with my GTX275 @633 1134 1521 (shaders slightly over-clocked).

A typical NATHAN was crunched in ~ 8 hours. Other tasks not more than 12 hours.

The GTX 275 was qualified for long queue work units, but is not any more. I'm downgrading to short queue. Unfortunately cobblestones will probably drop from 100K/day to 30K/day.

The drop in cobblestone is a little bit disappointing, but in the other hand the link newly established between our work and scientist's publications is exciting enough to compensate ;-)

Would be nice to build a table of GPU that are qualified for the long queue in it's new configuration.

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Would be nice to build a table of GPU that are qualified for the long queue in it's new configuration.

We don't know their exact model numbers yet :)

SWAN_SYNC doesn't make any effect. In both cases I freed 2 cores out of 8. Linux 3.0.0-16-generic. i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40GHz

SWAN_SYNC=0
31,70 h GTX 560 Ti @1.76 GHz
36,35 h GTX 260 @1.41 GHz
Without SWAN_SYNC
31,64 h GTX 560 Ti @1.76 GHz

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HOW TO - Full installation Ubuntu 11.10

For the new apps I have not tested the benefit of using SWAN_SYNC. I will start now for Windows, but it could do with being tested for Linux as well (especially). Performance differences may fluctuate by task type, so several task types would need to be looked at. Remember to restart for the changes to be applied, and to use capitals for Linux.

Both your comparison tasks ran without SWAN_SYNC=0.

If SWAN_SYNC was in use then the stderr output would include, "SWAN: Using synchronization method 0"
For example.

BTW, Why do you have your GTX260 in PCIE 0 and your GTX560Ti in PCIE 1?

- On WinX64 it looks like SWAN_SYNC is only increasing performance by around 3.5% (though I've only run one CB1 task without SWAN_SYNC on).

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Pff O.o Over 5! times more computingtime but only ~2,8time more credits O.o Kick it over 100k and I´m back happy ^^ Little disapointing, i had fun with the "new" 285 for only 2 days :(

Unfortunaly the Mobile Connection itself needed additional 12 Hours for upload O.o Still in 125% Bonustime with it *lucky*


5094249 3254378 117426 11 Mar 2012 | 15:03:07 UTC 13 Mar 2012 | 8:21:35 UTC Fertig und Bestätigt 136,916.69 29,691.78 95,125.00 Long runs (8-12 hours on fastest card) v6.16 (cuda31)

5092622 3255475 117426 11 Mar 2012 | 8:13:44 UTC 11 Mar 2012 | 19:21:52 UTC Fertig und Bestätigt 24,709.95 1,202.67 35,811.00 Long runs (8-12 hours on fastest card) v6.16 (cuda31)

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DSKAG Austria: http://www.dskag.at

got a FAX4 wu just now. is there any significant difference between this and a FAX3?

im interested to see how long this will take to complete. im still only getting about 75-80% gpu use (for longs) out of my cards with swan_sync set and 1 free hyper threaded core per gpu on all machines with gtx500 series cards. when those machines run the shorts, they seem have higher gpu use but i havent observed carefully enough to say that with 100% conviction. just informational really, its been good enough up to this point.

the FAX series gpu use is about the same as described above for longs. will be interested to see how long this FAX4 wu takes if there is a difference to the FAX3s. anything in particular to look out for?

bob

My GTX260 completed the FAX3 WU in 36.5 hours. The FAX4 it's working on now looks like it will finish in around 22.5 hours. I think upload is still going to put it over the 24h limit, but anyone with a newer card should probably be okay now.

I think upload is still going to put it over the 24h limit, but anyone with a newer card should probably be okay now.

Still figuring out what I did wrong with SWAN_SYNC (it's off now)

Because upload didn't make 24h on GTX 260, but I did on GTX 560
GTX 260 22,7 h FAX4
GTX 560 Ti 19,82 h FAX4

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HOW TO - Full installation Ubuntu 11.10

Hi all,
I have a gtx 560 ti as well.
Damn, these nathan 3 are really huge. Have been working on one for 22 Hours and still have 13.30 to go. My card is neither overclocked nor underclocked. If you can, please try to reduce the size of the WU by 1/2, I am afraid that the reduction with nathan 4 are still going to take us still very long. Also the effective damage of one computational error becomes much greater with such huge wu. Unforuntunately there is no way for me to improve my stats, as my card has a bad manufacturer heatsink IMHO and runs at 80c. Is it normal btw?

Thank you and take care
Francesco

The researchers stated that they will actively review task sizes. If for example they see higher failure rates they will most likely make changes to reduce runtime. In the mean time if any crunchers don't like the duration or experiences failures, crunch some of the normal tasks. While credit will be lower you will get badges for contributing to different research papers ;)

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On my GTX 260 it's looking like it's going to take about 50 hours to complete a NATHAN_FAX WU. Typically long runs would take 20 - 25 hours.