[SciFrog]

A dual 1.25 G4 should do around 550 a day?

How about a 500mhz G4? 100?

Tks

[Bad to the bone]

Originally Posted by beadman 

Hey, Bad...Congrats on making #1!!!
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/top_hosts.php

beadman

Thanks!

If the trend continues, the other MacPros will pass the 16 CPU box as well.

Again a BIG TAHNK YOU to Alex!

[zombie67]

Originally Posted by zombie67 

Just broke 1700!!!

Now past 1800!! This thing won't stop climbing!

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_...hostid=2827527

[alexkan]

More goodies for you all (the MacNN forums will always have the jump on the main SETI forums by however long it takes me to write these posts)...

v7.2-coreduo-nographics
v7.2-core2-nographics

Note that there are finally Core2-specific binaries. Unlike the G5-optimized binaries that I've released in the past (note the wording), these binaries will possibly crash on anything except a Core2- or Xeon-based Mac, because of the instructions added for the new architecture. (I don't use them yet myself, but the Intel compiler might.)

[njmaugbill]

Alex, links are not working...

Bll

Originally Posted by alexkan 

More goodies for you all (the MacNN forums will always have the jump on the main SETI forums by however long it takes me to write these posts)...

v7.2-coreduo-nographics
v7.2-core2-nographics

Note that there are finally Core2-specific binaries. Unlike the G5-optimized binaries that I've released in the past (note the wording), these binaries will possibly crash on anything except a Core2- or Xeon-based Mac, because of the instructions added for the new architecture. (I don't use them yet myself, but the Intel compiler might.)

[Bad to the bone]

Originally Posted by njmaugbill 

Alex, links are not working...

Bll

http://tbp.berkeley.edu/~alexkan/set...nographics.zip

http://tbp.berkeley.edu/~alexkan/set...nographics.zip

Or simply start from here

http://tbp.berkeley.edu/~alexkan/seti/

[adream]

Thanks alex again for another fine client

i have installed it on an imac and a frankenmac and all is well so far, we'll see what it does for RAC...

no errors so far

I cant believe we are lucky enogh to get these clients straight form the source :-)

cheers!

adream

[zombie67]

Originally Posted by alexkan 

More goodies for you all (the MacNN forums will always have the jump on the main SETI forums by however long it takes me to write these posts)...

Woot!! Thanks! Frankly, you're the reason I originally joined this team. I figured that if I am going to (try to) lay the smack down using your app, I should at least have the courtesy to be on your team.

Feature request for future releases: The folks who do the lunatics.at apps (you help on those too right?), add something to the app_info.xml so that it automatically plays nice with SETI beta. Without it, SETI (regular) jobs don't work if you are running both. I now know how to modify it myself, but it would sure be nice to have it pre-configured.

Thanks again!

[zombie67]

Originally Posted by zombie67 

Now past 1800!! This thing won't stop climbing!

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_...hostid=2827527

Up to 1956 and still climbing! And this is using the old alexkan app. I won't have an opportunity to install the new one until tomorrow.

[Gecko_r7]

Originally Posted by alexkan 

More goodies for you all (the MacNN forums will always have the jump on the main SETI forums by however long it takes me to write these posts)...

X-mas came early. Thanks Santa Alex!

[Gecko_r7]

Originally Posted by zombie67 

Up to 1956 and still climbing! And this is using the old alexkan app. I won't have an opportunity to install the new one until tomorrow.

Dang Zombie67, What are you feeding that thing?
Wow!

On a serious note, have you done anything "special"? How much memory?

[zombie67]

Originally Posted by Gecko_r7 

Dang Zombie67, What are you feeding that thing?
Wow!

On a serious note, have you done anything "special"? How much memory?

Completely stock. It has 2gb of RAM. Way overkill for SETI, but since it is used as a daily work machine (!!) 5 days a week, I figured it might be occasionally needed.

Is it even possible to OC intel Macs? Serious question here!

[Gecko_r7]

Originally Posted by zombie67 

Completely stock. It has 2gb of RAM. Way overkill for SETI, but since it is used as a daily work machine (!!) 5 days a week, I figured it might be occasionally needed.

Is it even possible to OC intel Macs? Serious question here!

Mac Pros (Xeons), yes. The tape on pin trick. I think there's a couple of posts on the main forum re: details. There's several articles on google. For iMacs, none that I've seen.....not even decent memory options w/ lower latency than the stock CL5 our have since iMac uses 200pin DDR2 meant for use w/ notebook mobo chipsets.
You have both slots already occupied.
As they say...it is what it is.

[alexkan]

Links in my original post are now corrected--thanks to njmaugbill and Bad to the bone for pointing it out and offering corrections, respectively.

adream, that Frankenmac of yours is turning in some impressive times! What are its specs?

Please help me with computing the real-world improvement over v7 on your machines if you have time! It looks to me like v7.2 isn't helping Mac Pros nearly as much as I would have liked--perhaps we're running into memory bandwidth/latency-related walls on that hardware. On the other hand, we're doing quite well compared to other machines which aren't hobbled by using FB-DIMMs...

[adream]

Hi Alex

Frankenmac is a normal cheap asrock lga 775 motherboard with a e6600 c2d overclocked to 2.89ghz with some fastish matched ram.. running 10.4.8 (modified). if you have a good method of testing relative speeds of clients let me know and i will do the comparison between 7 and 7.2, my c2d imac is doing pretty well too thanks to your wonder client :-) theyre allways gonna be faster in some ways than the mac pro as its runnnig ddr2 ram not ecc...

cheers

adream

Originally Posted by alexkan 

Links in my original post are now corrected--thanks to njmaugbill and Bad to the bone for pointing it out and offering corrections, respectively.

adream, that Frankenmac of yours is turning in some impressive times! What are its specs?

Please help me with computing the real-world improvement over v7 on your machines if you have time! It looks to me like v7.2 isn't helping Mac Pros nearly as much as I would have liked--perhaps we're running into memory bandwidth/latency-related walls on that hardware. On the other hand, we're doing quite well compared to other machines which aren't hobbled by using FB-DIMMs...

[beadman]

Originally Posted by alexkan 

More goodies for you all (the MacNN forums will always have the jump on the main SETI forums by however long it takes me to write these posts)...

v7.2-coreduo-nographics
v7.2-core2-nographics

Note that there are finally Core2-specific binaries. Unlike the G5-optimized binaries that I've released in the past (note the wording), these binaries will possibly crash on anything except a Core2- or Xeon-based Mac, because of the instructions added for the new architecture. (I don't use them yet myself, but the Intel compiler might.)

Alex: Installed the Core Duo version in my MBP. Average CPU time dropped from around 7100 cpusec to 6380 cpusec - a 10% decrease!! Thanks for all your work on the optimization!!

beadman

[zombie67]

Originally Posted by zombie67 

Up to 1956 and still climbing! And this is using the old alexkan app. I won't have an opportunity to install the new one until tomorrow.

The new app was installed Monday. RAC is now 2008 and still going!

[bobpalmer]

My Quad is 1 year old today. One of the first things done after bringing it home was to install SAH. It has racked up 1,046,383.52 in Total Credits, and at one point was the #1 top computer based on RAC. RAC is still good at 3,210.74, but that only ranks as #17 today. It's still the top PowerMac11,2, but it is the only one in the top 20 right now.

Thanks to Alex for the super workers.

-- bob

[zombie67]

Originally Posted by zombie67 

The new app was installed Monday. RAC is now 2008 and still going!

2114!

[jimm]

Hi Everyone,

I'm new to the forums here but have been crunching for MacNN for quite some time... I'm currently at position # 110 on the Team MacNN SETI stats page.

I'd like to try an enhanced/optimized version of setiathome but do not want to bother with starting/stopping it with the command line. I currently use the BOINCManager application and wish to continue to do so.

My Mac is a PowerMac Dual 1.42 GHz G4.

I've downloaded the file "seti_enhanced-ppc-v7.1-g4-nographics.zip" under the assumption it is what I need. Is that correct? If so, what do I next to install it and get it running under BOINCManager?

(I have no aversion to using the command line for installing the enhanced/optimized setathome. I just don't want to bother with the command line once it is installed.)

I took a quick look and didn't see any directions for my situation. Can someone help, please?

Thanks!

Jim

[beadman]

Originally Posted by jimm 

Hi Everyone,
...
I've downloaded the file "seti_enhanced-ppc-v7.1-g4-nographics.zip" under the assumption it is what I need. Is that correct? If so, what do I next to install it and get it running under BOINCManager?

(I have no aversion to using the command line for installing the enhanced/optimized setathome. I just don't want to bother with the command line once it is installed.)
...

Welcome to the forum!

You're almost done. Yes, the file you downloaded is the correct one. First, unzip the file you downloaded. You'll get a folder with several files in it. Now, Quit BOINC Manager. Then, go to your /Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/BOINC Data/projects/setiathome.berkeley.edu/ folder. Drag all the files from the folder that was zipped into the seti folder. If the pop-up comes up that wants to know if you want to replace a file, click yes. Close everything, and restart BOINC Manager. The work units you have already downloaded, but that have not finished yet, will continue to use the "old" seti app; new files that download in the future will run under the new enhanced seti app. Don't bother trying to remove any of the "old" files from the seti folder - this will be done automatically.

That's all there is to it...

beadman

[jimm]

Thanks, beadman. That was almost too easy!

You noted that

The work units you have already downloaded, but that have not finished yet, will continue to use the "old" seti app...

but after I restarted BOINCManager it immediately reported it was using "setathome_enhanced 5.13 on the two work units that were being processed.

So the new version was used to process the already started work units. I hope that was OK as one work unit was already at 99% and I'd hate to have it rejected!

Cheers,

Jim

[TiloProbst]

hi,
I've got my iMac C2D for maybe a week now. I am not really impressed by it's seconds per WU times. for example, for a ~59 credit WU -> ~5900 seconds. my friend's Windows computer does a ~62 credit WU in ~4200 seconds.

I use the v7.2 Core Duo worker, and the default BOINC from the Seti website, should be v5.4.9 CLI.
Yes, I do some renderings on it and Seti does not run when playing games in Windows.

What am I doing wrong?
This is iMac in question: Computer summary

My friend's computer (overclocked C2D): Computer summary

[zombie67]

Originally Posted by TiloProbst 

What am I doing wrong?

Maybe it was just a typo, but you say you have a C2D, but installed the CD application. You should be using the C2D application.

Also, I believe there a lot of very noisy WUs being sent out now, in batches. So maybe you just got a bunch of slow WUs.

[alexkan]

Originally Posted by TiloProbst 

hi,
I've got my iMac C2D for maybe a week now. I am not really impressed by it's seconds per WU times. for example, for a ~59 credit WU -> ~5900 seconds. my friend's Windows computer does a ~62 credit WU in ~4200 seconds.

I use the v7.2 Core Duo worker, and the default BOINC from the Seti website, should be v5.4.9 CLI.
Yes, I do some renderings on it and Seti does not run when playing games in Windows.

What am I doing wrong?
This is iMac in question: Computer summary

My friend's computer (overclocked C2D): Computer summary

You're not doing anything wrong--the WUs worth 58.69 credits take disproportionately long. You'll find that most other WUs in that credit range take less time to crunch.

Also, I noticed that you're comparing your times with a machine that's overclocked to 3.6 GHz. Which iMac did you get, and what clock speed is it running at?

[beadman]

Originally Posted by TiloProbst 

...

What am I doing wrong?
This is iMac in question: Computer summary

My friend's computer (overclocked C2D): Computer summary

As Alex says, you're doing nothing wrong. This thread over at the SETI forums discusses the issue: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum...d=36273#484842

Your comparison time for a "normal" 62.4 credit WU is around 4400 which compares favorably with your buddy's times.

beadman

[arkayn]

I just upgraded my dell Dimension B110 to a P4 3.0 GHz processor with hyperthreading and then added a 1 Gig memory card to take it up to 1.2 Gigs of memory. Now I have to see how much better it will be,

[ritzl]

Thanks again, Alex. You do great work.

Larry

[Todd Madson]

I updated my buddy's dual 2.0 G5 (dual core, not dual processor model) and
that thing is producing amazing RAC - currently 1245 - he's stumped as to why
it's doing so good but I believe the larger caches on the DC G5 chips is what
is giving him such good performance. He's doing actually slightly better than
my 2.5 dual right now (around 1235 rac currently - I'm using it for some cpu
intensive stuff that is sort of pushing the rac downwards now).

I remember Alex said the DC 2.3 models did fantastic as well.

[TiloProbst]

Originally Posted by alexkan 

You're not doing anything wrong--the WUs worth 58.69 credits take disproportionately long. You'll find that most other WUs in that credit range take less time to crunch.

Also, I noticed that you're comparing your times with a machine that's overclocked to 3.6 GHz. Which iMac did you get, and what clock speed is it running at?

ok, I asked him and you are right, he overclocked this machine to an insane 3,6. I was aware that he overclocked his machine, but I thought it would maybe 2,8 somewhat.
this of course explaines why he does way better then my 2,13 GHz iMac. I was just disappointed that a PC would need maybe two third of my time for a WU of similar credit.

[alexkan]

Hopefully I'm not more than a couple days late, but I wanted to mark the occasion of the PowerMac G5 Quad leaving the first page of the Top Computers list on SETI for the last time. It was a good run while it lasted, but there's clearly better hardware out there now, and at this point, no amount of optimization magic will make up for that difference.

Now all we have to do is reclaim the top spot.

[zombie67]

Originally Posted by alexkan 

Now all we have to do is reclaim the top spot.

I keep waiting for Apple to launch a dual quad Mac Pro. I'd be all over that like white on rice.

[Gecko_r7]

Just an update on iMactel w/ Alex's latest for those interested:

iMac 2GHz C2D Alex v7.2
RAC: 2008

We'll see where this levels out.

Pretty amazing!

[zombie67]

Originally Posted by Gecko_r7 

Pretty amazing!

Truth! Like I said, his work got me to join this team. Best decision I ever made (aside from switching (back) to a Mac).

Soooooo.....

alexkan....what's next? Any further improvements on the roadmap?

Also, any work being done for the S@H Beta stuff? I'm kinda concerned that S@H will roll out 5.18 (or whatever) and then what?

[Jeadhob]

I'm new to the site, but I have spent the better half of 3 hours looking for the "newest" and "fastest" seti client to run on my macs. In 15 pages of responses I see tons and tons of links to this file and that file... Is there a chance that I missed a link to the "latest and greatest?"

It is just a thought but could one of the admins or other coders put up a new sticky post with links to the most up to date stuff? It would be really cool if whom ever put up the post locked it... so that only admins / coders working on the clients could post the "newest" files only.

The current systems I have that can run seti are a G4, 2 G5 Imacs, and 1 Intel Imac. I guess i'm looking for files for all of them.

Any ideas?

I also see link after link on the teams website about joining your team... but all the links appear to be broken. I have used seti for years and years and thought it would be great to join a team. Could someone point me to a link to actually join the MacNN seti team?

[arkayn]

Here is the direct link to alex' workers.

Index of /~alexkan/seti

[Knightrider]

Originally Posted by Jeadhob 

Could someone point me to a link to actually join the MacNN seti team?

If you go to Team MacNN

You will see "Join this team Join" in the team info panel. Follow the link through to the account log in page and follow from there.

There is no special joining procedure for this Team Mac Team Page. Just participate as you wish to.

K.

[Knightrider]

Originally Posted by zombie67 

I'm kinda concerned that S@H will roll out 5.18 (or whatever) and then what?

Which reminds me, I am currently testing BOINC 5.8.0 which has a new, optional, simple gui interface. It's not working properly yet, on multi cpu macs.

Also, Seti worker version info is a bit thin on the SAH web site, it must be said.

K.

[zombie67]

Originally Posted by zombie67 

2114!

After a temporary setback due to those ugly low-credit WUs , I finally made my way back up and broke 2200! No let's see how much further. 2300?!

[alexkan]

Originally Posted by zombie67 

Soooooo.....

alexkan....what's next? Any further improvements on the roadmap?

Also, any work being done for the S@H Beta stuff? I'm kinda concerned that S@H will roll out 5.18 (or whatever) and then what?

I don't have any high-level tweaks that I want to test right now, but I may still be able to tune the x86 assembly I've written, since the current Intel chips are more out-of-order processors than the G4 and G5 and run best with a different style of code. There ought to be some single-digit percentage gains to be had there.

As for 5.18, I was of the understanding that it doesn't change the analysis code, so my current thinking is that I'll simply port multibeam support to my current codebase, rather than merging my changes into top-of-tree CVS. I know there's also an infrastructure in place in 5.17 and on to benchmark functions and pick the best ones, but I still feel like real-world testing prior to release is better at characterizing performance, especially if you're targeting a relatively narrow range of hardware like I am.

Originally Posted by Jeadhob 

It is just a thought but could one of the admins or other coders put up a new sticky post with links to the most up to date stuff? It would be really cool if whom ever put up the post locked it... so that only admins / coders working on the clients could post the "newest" files only.

The current systems I have that can run seti are a G4, 2 G5 Imacs, and 1 Intel Imac. I guess i'm looking for files for all of them.

There's actually a thread on the official SETI forums that does exactly this. Since that thread lists releases without interspersing them in pages of discussion like this thread, it may be easier for you to find what you're looking for there instead of here. It doesn't prune releases when they're obsoleted by newer ones, though. What you want is v7.1 for your G4 and G5s, and v7.2 for your Intel iMac.

[Karl Schimanek]

Is there any chances to get another optimized client for G5 Macs?

Thanks
Karl

Edit: And any possibilities to get a CELL/PS3 optimized client? :-)

[alexkan]

Originally Posted by Karl Schimanek 

Is there any chances to get another optimized client for G5 Macs?

Actually, there might be. The PPC and x86 versions of the app tend to leapfrog each other in terms of optimization, so there are some things in v7.2 for x86 that weren't in v7.1 for PPC. I'm hesitant to give a timeframe for that, though.

Edit: And any possibilities to get a CELL/PS3 optimized client? :-)

A PS3 optimized app does sound like an interesting challenge, and might be more straightforward than a proper GPU port of SETI (but still a lot of work). However, I wasn't planning on getting a PS3 any time in the foreseeable future.

[arkayn]

It is nice to have optimized clients running on all my machines that are either made by or worked on by Alex Kan. He makes a very sweet client.

[Gecko_r7]

Originally Posted by zombie67 

After a temporary setback due to those ugly low-credit WUs , I finally made my way back up and broke 2200! No let's see how much further. 2300?!

Hi Zombie,

My iMac 2.0GHz just hit 2124 & #92 on Top list.
It continues to amaze.

[zombie67]

Originally Posted by Gecko_r7 

Hi Zombie,

My iMac 2.0GHz just hit 2124 & #92 on Top list.
It continues to amaze.

That annoying downtime hit my RAC, and I'm back down to 2083. Now it will probably take another week or more before I recover, and am able to see the true ceiling.

[gerardrj]

In Alex's 7.2 no graphics for i386 Mac systems I've been seeing a high number of "compute error" results. The work units themselves are good, there are three or four other returned results for each.

An example is WU 107388507
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/worku...wuid=107388507

This is the result at Seti for my work unit:
<core_client_version>5.4.9</core_client_version>
<message>
Couldn't start or resume: -144
</message>

This is a client stderr from the other systems' results for that same work unit I erred on:
<core_client_version>5.4.9</core_client_version>
<stderr_txt>
OS X optimized S@H Enhanced application by Alex Kan
Version info: OS X SSSE3 (Intel, Core 2-optimized v7.2-nographics) V5.13 by Alex Kan

Work Unit Info:
...............
WU true angle range is : 2.473532
SETI@Home Informational message -9 result_overflow
NOTE: The number of results detected exceeds the storage space allocated.

This only seems to be happening on work units that others are getting errors on, but report as valid results. Usually they have little to no credit value and my system doesn't seem to spend any time working on them.


Then there are WUs that others complete for about 12-14 credits that fail on my system. Such as WU 107171321. I return the same -144 error while others had no issue.
I've noticed other Mac Pro systems showing these anomolies in their results.
I run the same client on an iMac 24" an its results don't show the errors. I know the machine is stable and has no RAM issues and it sits idle most all day.

ID of affected system: 2968828


Any ideas?

[alexkan]

Originally Posted by gerardrj 

In Alex's 7.2 no graphics for i386 Mac systems I've been seeing a high number of "compute error" results. The work units themselves are good, there are three or four other returned results for each.

<snip>

This only seems to be happening on work units that others are getting errors on, but report as valid results. Usually they have little to no credit value and my system doesn't seem to spend any time working on them.

Then there are WUs that others complete for about 12-14 credits that fail on my system. Such as WU 107171321. I return the same -144 error while others had no issue.
I've noticed other Mac Pro systems showing these anomolies in their results.
I run the same client on an iMac 24" an its results don't show the errors. I know the machine is stable and has no RAM issues and it sits idle most all day.

ID of affected system: 2968828

Any ideas?

It looks like you're having issues with shared memory, which are most likely to pop up when a lot of instances of the SETI cruncher are starting and stopping. The WUs that result in -9 result_overflow errors, as well as the 12- and 13-credit WUs, tend to cause this to happen.

The solution appears to be to configure your shared memory to make more available to the system (and therefore BOINC).

[Knightrider]

Originally Posted by gerardrj 

Any ideas?

You might also like to read my experience of playing with Mac OSX shared memory problem.

It only occurred, for me, when running multiple projects on my Quad.

K.

[beadman]

Originally Posted by Knightrider 

You might also like to read my experience of playing with Mac OSX shared memory problem.

It only occurred, for me, when running multiple projects on my Quad.

K.

Can you cut and paste it here for us? The Pirates site apparently won't let us view unless we have an account, as all I get is a login screen...
Thanks,
beadman

[arkayn]

Actually all it wants is your boinc login.