Crunching hardware for Einstein

[vaughan]

You need lots of RAM for BURP and NFS too. EvoAtHome (when it has work) is memory intensive.

[Steve Lux]

Well, apparently I bought the 8 core rather than the 12 core (shrug). Anyhow, I just now got it crunching Einstein. Letting it crunch at reduced capacity for a while, Trying to keep the cores under 60C for a week or so. Still haven't purchased the GPU yet, but they will be the main workhorses compared to the CPUs. Bought 2Gb per core - 4ea 4Gb sticks. Have an older nVidia card installed, but doesn't seem to recognize it, so probably not supported. Running Ubuntu on an SSD, but through a USB port. Need to see if I can get it hooked through the SATA for faster throughput. Presently hooked up to my son's flat screen tv in the living room. Need to get it moved back into my office where the AC and the hub are located. I have an unused KVM hiding around here somewhere, so shouldn't need to buy another monitor, keyboard or mouse.

I understand that within a few months AMD is supposed to be coming out with 16 core CPUs for this board. 32 cores and 4 GPUs (2 cards) could be quite productive, but that will take a monster power supply and I'm not certain the cost of more cores will be worth the expense.

[Steve Lux]

velociraptor;

If you have a window that opens a portable AC unit could be helpful:

http://www1.mscdirect.com/cgi/NNPDFF...1755&PMCTLG=00

I'm sure you have a local supplier with the correct voltages and plug style.

[Dirk Broer]

Hi Steve,

What older nVidia card are you using? It has to be a GeForce8 or higher to be able to do anything, and you might need a more recent video driver (or boinc client) in order to get things working.
Here in the Netherlands I have presently a choice between 4 different 12-core AMD Opterons (6168, 6172, 6174, 6176) ranging between 615 and 1,052 Euro's, the cheapest (6168) needing a mere 80 Watt, and when you have two GT430 cards (that only need 50 Watt a piece) you can run the Einstein-system with an "average" 600 Watt PSU, having power left over for the rest of your system. I hope the 16-cores come at an affordable price and consume power at the same rate as the present 12-cores (per core that is), so will have a good Mips/Watt and Flop/Watt trade-off.

[Steve Lux]

My 8-core system died several days ago. I had bought an nVidia GTX 580 for it and when I went to install the card that's when I found out the the system wasn't running. No video, nothing. Tried installing the new card (in case it was the old video card) - still nothing. Tried three different monitors, still didn't work. The LED's on the board and the fans come up but no video. Anyhow, so tonight I took the no-name OEM GPU out of my old system and put the new GTX 580 in, along with the 750w power supply from the 8-core system. It took a little creative sheet metal work, but I got them squeezed in. It's not pretty, but I also put in an extra fan to help with the cooling.

Let's see how this card works on Einstein. It's a bit late here (midnight) so I'm not going to stay up watching it any longer. My 4 core CPUs runs these work units in just under 6 hours each per core. With only a few completed the GPU seems to be popping them out at about 35 minutes per work unit. Boinc/Einsten seems confident also. About 100 work units were downloaded for the GPU - all due by the 25th. Still downloading new work units....

[Steve Lux]

Dirk, that old nVidia card is a GeForce 7800 GTX.

[Dirk Broer]

7800 GTX is unfortunately useless for BOINC, one generation later (8800 GTX) and you have a good performer...

[Dirk Broer]

You haven't by any chance also replaced the PS/2 mouse with a USB mouse? Did that a couple of weeks ago and the system would not come up either. Switching back to the PS/2 mouse and the system came back to live

[Steve Lux]

Both the mouse and keyboard on the 8-core Linux Ubuntu sysrtem were wireless via the USP port. They had been running that way since the system was first started up.

I stopped monitoring the system after a few weeks as the temps seemed to stay under 50C and Einstein stablized with the work units (sometimes Einstein assigns more than a system can do - so you lose productivity working on units you won't get credit for because they were completed late).

I looked at the Einstein messages this morning before leaving for work and learned that there is apparently a 128 assigned work unit limit per core/GPU. I suppose the reason is to limit the disruption caused by any system that fails or is shut down. Pokey old CPUs never see this limit, even when set to maintain a backlog of 10 days worth of work.

[Steve Lux]

Now both of my systems are down. $$ is tight so don't know when I can get them back up again. Not sure exactly what died in either of them. as I can't get them to boot up even in safe mode. The power supply seems to be OK. Sometimes it seems like a memory or HDD problem, sometimes a video card issue. I'll poke around to see what spare parts I have to work with. I've donated many of the spare components to charity over the years, so I'm not sure what I have left. Alas for the days of BIOS post beep codes...