WCG GPU app for HCC launched

[Dirk Broer]

It's just the sheer mass of WCG applications. But when you're not into doing more than 1 WU per GPU,
you can stick to just having the cc_config.xml stating 'use all coprocessors' and stick in as many cards as your board can handle.
Once saw a Belgian super-computer, FASTRA II, with seven (?!) video cards

[Jason1478963]

That sure would be nice to have a setup like that right about now.

[Dirk Broer]

My advice: rip out the GTX 295s, replace them with GTX 690s and replace the single GTX 275 with a GTX 660 (to make FASTRA III).

And build a competing machine using six HD 7990s and a single HD7950 for comparison! Name it FASTRA IV

A single GTX 295 has a computational power of 1788 GFlop SP and 149 GFlop DP, a GTX 275 does 1011 vs 84
A single GTX 690 has a computational power of 5622 GFlop SP and 234 GFlop DP, a GTX 660 does 1880 vs 78

A single HD7990 has a computational power of 7000 GFlop SP and 1750 GFlop DP, a HD7950 does 2867 vs 717

FASTRA IV wins!

[Jason1478963]

That 7990 looks pretty hard on the pocket book. We did play with the app_info file that was posted at WCG. It seems I have other bottlenecks that make it difficult to keep 3 GPU busy. when running 2 work units per card It didn't seem to help the times that much. I also got to deal with the driver issue again in xp64.

[Ramjet]

If you want to run [x,all] applications you have to include [x,all] executables in the app_info.xml.
If you want to run more WUs at a time you have to fiddle with the 'Count' variable/add more GPUs to your system,
and use a cc_config.xml to include all co-processors.

Any idea where to get the executables for the various projects? I read somewhere you can find them in the sched_reply_www.worldcommunitygrid.org.xml file, but that doesn't look like the right info to me. I'm not sure exactly what I need though.

[Dirk Broer]

The executables are the least of your worries!
If all is right, they are already in the right directory: C:\ProgramData\BOINC\projects\www.worldcommunitygrid.org

[plonk420]

edit: NEVER MIND ... it's working now :D

what drivers/openCL/compute versions are you guys using? seems while my stuff was new enough to crunch Bitcoin last year, it seems they're not new enough to do HCC...

[AMDave]

Using default Catalyst 12.9 driver in Ubuntu 13.04 AMD64 [***], including ia32 libs and OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (1084.4)
with BOINC 7.0.52
BONC event log shows:
Mon 25 Feb 2013 14:36:56 EST | | CAL: ATI GPU 0: AMD Radeon HD 7700 series (Cape Verde) (CAL version 1.4.1741, 1024MB, 559MB available, 3360 GFLOPS peak)
Mon 25 Feb 2013 14:36:56 EST | | OpenCL: AMD/ATI GPU 0: AMD Radeon HD 7700 series (Cape Verde) (driver version 1084.4 (VM), device version OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (1084.4), 1024MB, 559MB available, 3360 GFLOPS peak)
Mon 25 Feb 2013 14:36:56 EST | Collatz Conjecture | Found app_info.xml; using anonymous platform
Mon 25 Feb 2013 14:36:56 EST | World Community Grid | Found app_config.xml
Mon 25 Feb 2013 14:36:56 EST | | Config: use all coprocessors

[***] This is alpha for my testing.
Not recommended for normal use.
If you want to use Ubuntu I recommend 12.04 LTS.
I think default driver in 12.04 is up to 12.4 with OpenCl 1.2 IIRC.
yup. http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?ke...fglrx-amdcccle
Experimental driver is Catalyst 12.11 (see "precise-updates" "restricted")
but if you can get working with the default drivers you are much better off as they are tested and supported.

[AMDave]

edit: NEVER MIND ... it's working now :D

Well done.
...but that is OpenCL 1.1
It looks like you are using Catalyst 10.1
You'd be better using OpenCL 1.2, say Catalyst 12.9 or even the latest and greatest Catalyst 13.1 should work on your Win2K8-R2 server there.
Be sure to read the doco before you install though.

[plonk420]

i'm using an early 2012 driver ... however, wikipedia seems to report that my GPU maxes out at OpenCL 1.1