GPU clients

[Bender10]

I'm in the process of building another *nix box just for testing (waiting for a MB). As I am a 1 *nix farm so far. Then I will crank up a spare 8800 I have and see how that works with RC5 (so i can get back to PS3grid full time...).

[AMDave]

Uh oh. Then I am toast!
As far as I know the 8800 still beats the 9600GT.

Hey, speaking of toast, thanks for the coffee.
My turn next time ;)

[AMDave]

Maybe if I close my eyes and wish really hard, I will get one of those for Christmas/

On second thoughts, I'd better not push that too far with the cashier.
I did get a new ATI card last month that I haven't got around to fully stress-testing yet, although it has already given a good fps in Cube2.

[Bender10]

Don't worry, It (8800) would not be for full time production, just to test and maybe run on the weekends. I have to curtail my energy usage a bit for a little while until I win the lotto...

It just started to snow. So i guess I should go outside and do some pm's on our vehicle radios...

[Brucifer]

Brucifer,

I am using Gnome Ubuntu 8.10 on a Phenom 9750 with a 9600GT and the 177.x version of the NVIDIA driver,
which your Ibex should load for you under
System > Administration > Hardware Drivers

I had a quick chat on IRC #distributed and per the note under the client download we "should" be installing the CUDA library first.
That is the correct way.

But then I found this interesting trail (plus others that were similar):
http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion...hp?t81442.html

So, I cheated on the libraries :P
I copied the cudaart library from the BOINC GPUGRID client into my dnetc-cuda folder

(my thinking was "Hey this is an ELF version", and this ".so" file is kind of like the ".so" files for eOn and they live in the same folder, so I'll just try that...)

cp ~/BOINC/projects/www.ps3grid.net/libcudart.so.2 ~/dnetcuda/

and it "just worked"
Awesome.
heh heh heh

I just cleared my GPUGRID cache.
I see Bender10 flying up behind me
Time to get rolling, rolling rolling, RAW HIDE!

(Just because I got away with it this time does not mean that it will work with the next version of the client. We will see what happens then)

PS - Gnome is better :P

Still trying to wrap the brain around this whole process here. It's like a bunch of things/geeks trying to make this more complicated than it needs to be. Assuming that the only purpose that the 9800 would be in the system for would be for the sole pleasure of the dnetc cuda client, why would one need to install the video driver for the card as it would not be utilized for video. It would seem that the only things that should be needed would be the cuda libraries and the nvida client, and the 9800 card. So what am I missing here???

IRT to your thread above, I downloaded the NVIDA driver and the .run file for OpenSuse 10.3. Where do the libraries come from? Am I supposed to do something to use the .run file? If so, then what? I did now see anywhere that I could download the ~.so library files...

I would prefer to just keep using the plane jane PCI card (non pci-express) for video that I'm using now. sigh.....

[Brucifer]

So is anyone up on the status of the upcoming ATI card (double precision) and ATI's version of cuda? Any projects going to run with it right off the bat?

[vaughan]

Folding@Home.

"A new ATI core (v1.22) has been released. It includes optimizations made by AMD (Mike Houston) on both the CPU and GPU side. Several bug fixes are also included."

Sorry Brucifer - Windows only.

I haven't tried it yet due to the PrimeGrid Summer/Winter Solstice Challenge. The strongest ATI card in this household is the 4870 in my son's gaming machine so I doubt I'll be allowed near it.

In other news, I'd like to know when Seti are going to fix their beta site so that it can accept all the GPU tasks I've crunched for them and my boxen keep trying to upload the completed work. Very frustrating.

[Brucifer]

Ah Mr. Vaughan......................... Gimme a break Windows?????? Windoze???

LOL Yep, on the serious side, it looks that way for the time being anyway. I'm sure though that there will soon be linux variant out there, primarily because of the double precision which will allow the possibilities for the GPU to be used in math related projects. And if it doesn't happen, then I guess things will just have to progress along seperate paths. I would honestly believe that double precision is in work for the nvida side of things in view of their efforts in behalf of the scientific community. And that is also what helps me believe that ATI et al will get a linux package out too. Getting back to a few basic things, while windows runs rampant in the business world, there is still a lot of linux there too, and one must not forget that in the university and scientific world there is still heavy Unix utilization.

I do have a windoze box here.... infact I have two of them now. One the spouse uses, and I have one for compatibility issues. Who knows, at some point in this game I might just have to try an ATI card in that system...................

LOL

Yea, it's unfortunate indeed that you are having problems getting your crunched work uploaded to the Seti Beta site. Of course being beta that's the bummer part of the deal, but that stuff has to be done in order for the overall effort to move forward.

This is really an interesting time in the DC world as we are witnessing a major change occurring in crunching. And while I'm not a nowdays participating fan of F@H, Dr. Pande deserves a large degree of recognition for his efforts in pushing forward use of the cell and GPU for DC crunching by the "man in the street" (that includes the ladies too) that would not have come along as fast as it has. On the commercial business side of the street Sony/IBM with their contributions with the cell really got things rocking along. And Nvida's release of the CUDA toolkit was a major boost. For some time AMD has been working in the direction of offloading tasks from the CPU, so it surprised me really that after their acquisition of ATI that Nvida beat them to the punch with the development kit on the street for their GPU first.

The other thing that is interesting to me is the bang for the buck perspective in all this. While the higher end GPU's are not cheap, they are still within reach for most of us, and their performance is well worth the cost. Yesiree Bob, this is really an interesting and fun period in DC computing!!

[Brucifer]

When you get bored, go take a long read on the distributed.net site in the comments stuff on the cuda client bugs thread. Pretty interesting really. Sounds like there should be the rc5 cuda client out for windows before much longer along with the updated linux one also.

[vaughan]

OK, Doomeva and I have been trying to get the RC5 DNetc app to install and run under Ubuntu64 on my Opteron 165. We get this error:

RC5 cuda: CUDA CORE ERROR: setting the device when a process is active is not allowed

We have d/l and installed Nvidia Cuda 180.06 (although the site calls it 180.60 just to confuse us).

We installed Dnetc and configured it with the e-mail addy and it d/l 24 work units. However, it still gives the CUDA CORE ERROR.

Doomeva has stormed off in a huff saying the Dnet programmers are lazy and haven't configured it to look in the directory where Nvidia has put the CUDA files.

Any help appreciated.