| Subject: Re: How do I tell if BOINC is using CUDA? |
| From: Skywise |
| Date: 09/04/2009, 05:48 |
After reading the existing posts I thought I'd chime in with
my experience. First, I am not a S@H expert even though next
month is my 10 year anniversary with the program.
Anyway, I have a working CUDA system.
Hardware:
Core2Quad 3Ghz Q9650 CPU on Supermicro X38 based mobo w/4 gigs
EVGA Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ with 512meg
I am running BOINC 6.6.2 which is a beta I downloaded some time
ago. Beta is up to 6.6.20 now. You can find them here:
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php
Now, a word about the work units. CUDA WU's are different than
the other Seti WU's and different than Astropulse. CUDA WU's
only run on CUDA on the GPU, all other WU's run on the CPU.
Early versions of CUDA _only_ ran the GPU (no CPU work) and it
took more trickery than I was willing to muster to get both
CUDA and CPU at the same time. However, 6.6.2 (and I imagine
later as well) can do both CUDA and CPU simultaneously. (talk
about cooling needs!!) I don't know about the current recommended
release.
Now, I do have to babysit the system a bit to keep it fed with
the right work units.
You will have to go into your seti settings in your BOINC
account online where you will find check boxes to permit or
deny which type of work units you want done.
When I need more CUDA workunits I have to select that and
then update the project. It will then download some CUDA
work.
When I need more Seti workunits I deselect CUDA in my settings
and update the project. It will then download some regular
workunits.
I currently do not D/L astropulse even though my system chugs
through them pretty quick, in about 36 hours. (x4 as I have
four cores)
I find my NVidia card with one GPU can burn through as many
CUDA workunits as all four cores of the CPU (or faster). So
I have to keep the number of CUDA vs CPU workunits balanced.
My biggest problem is keeping the beasty fed. I'm living in
the dark ages and still on dialup. I have to often leave the
system on overnight downloading workunits to keep this thing
loaded with enough workunits. I like to keep several days
of work on the machine for those inevitable server downtimes
when I can't get more work. Sometimes, by the time I am done
downloading 20 workunits, it's already finished 4 or 5!!
The dialup issue is why I don't do astropulse. They take too
long to download one WU. I also seem to get less credits on
astropulse
Hope this helps.
Brian