>>> if you do not see output being appendend to the stdout file for over an hour,

A Rosetta CPU hour, it is quite possible if the project quota is low, that the output files may not change. I expect everyone who understands DK's comment knows this, but you never know!

---

Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.

When I increased the memory on my wifes system the time used was almost cut in half.

The Pentium 4 that I use has 512 megs of ram and takes almost 2 hours more than her Celeron with 764 Megs, benchmarks for the two are close to the same. Increasing the memory in hers made little diferance on other programs, but Rosetta needed it.

Times for the Celeron are at Click here

Cheers
Ray Brown

---

Pizza@Home Rays Place Rays place Forums

When I increased the memory on my wifes system the time used was almost cut in half

That's interesting - do you think it's because the system was swapping, therefore decreasing I/O speeds?

Personally I'm not complaining about Rosetta's memory usage... FAH takes 230meg per CPU on big WU - so far my Rosetta's WU average 30meg to 80meg when reaching the end.

---

Team CFVault.com
http://www.cfvault.com

When I increased the memory on my wifes system the time used was almost cut in half

That's interesting - do you think it's because the system was swapping, therefore decreasing I/O speeds?

Personally I'm not complaining about Rosetta's memory usage... FAH takes 230meg per CPU on big WU - so far my Rosetta's WU average 30meg to 80meg when reaching the end.

Those times are for it swapping every 2 hours. Tried it running along also before and after, still have about a 2 hour speed up.
Bought the memory for other things done on the computer, but Rosetta got a big boust from it so I can't complaine.

---

Pizza@Home Rays Place Rays place Forums

Well, can someone explain why there is so huge memory req?
I just run the project on my linux machine, and it showed me 100M virtual RAM and 56 real RAM accupied (for each CPU :( ).
1. other projects (including folding.stanford.edu) don;t have so huge mem usage
2. It's suppose to be usage of free resources of machine (I can't say 100M RAM is resource easy to spare).

I know, nobody forces me to runR@H. Just wander what developers would say about the fact, that R@H is in fact the main application(memory usage) on my box, while it was suppose to use idle resources?

Well, can someone explain why there is so huge memory req?

Well, I don't know why it takes the ammount of memory it does, but
your question raises a few good points:
1) Huge, compared to what? For example, Folding @ home takes a cool 200 meg per CPU on large WU on my box - and if you fold 'competively' you have no choice but to accept the new 'QMD' WUs that weight in at 512Meg per CPU. They even are talking about ONE GIG per CPU WUs in the future - yes you read well - and if you don't believe me (I don't blame you), read this page: http://folding.stanford.edu/QMD.html

2) Say rosetta takes 100meg per CPU at peak usage - well that means you won't be crunching when playing Quake 4 but then again the cpu usage should have discouraged you from doing so in the first place, leading to my next point...

3) If you think about it even the 'only using idle CPU time' argument itself is a bit of a strawman, sure the service is on low prio and won't affect your word documents but it DOES impact the box - a) It gets incredibly hot, which reduce the life of your CPU, and b) it raises your power consumption and therefore your electricity bill

... so yes, overally, those 'free CPU cycles' definitely aren't as free as they sound... and as you accurately noted 'anything @ home' is not necessarily something that should be installed 'just anywhere'.

Personally, I derive a great deal of entertainment from the stats and the 'competition' aspect - which more than makes up for the downsides of any DC project, such as one of my HT laptops smelling a bit of burnt plastic now and then ;-)

---

Team CFVault.com
http://www.cfvault.com

I know, nobody forces me to runR@H. Just wander what developers would say about the fact, that R@H is in fact the main application(memory usage) on my box, while it was suppose to use idle resources?

It does use just idle resources. If you are not doing anything, the application runs. If you are, it doesn't.

If you are doing something, the application is paged out to Virtural Memory and removed from Physical Memory until needed again. If there is some left in Physical Memory while you are working, well, the OS does not have other use for the PM used.

And, from the tone of the question, I sure have to wonder why you run Rosetta@Home. Each of the DC projects take and use what they take and use because that is the "cost" of running the application.

---

> It does use just idle resources. If you are not doing anything, the application runs. If you are, it doesn't.
Not really, this applies only to CPU. Over 100M virtual memory and over 56M real arent idle resources (even if most of it is swaaped out - it takes time, and user asks me why He can't open the start menu).

> 1) Huge, compared to what?
Mostly to 256M desktop mem, where people are working. Belive me, it visibly affects the normal work(swapping).

> 3) If you think about it even the 'only using idle CPU time' argument itself is a bit of a strawman
Well, we all agree, that Windows takes CPU busy whatever. Yes, it increases the power bill, but not too much, as the computer is running anyway. The faster utilization is not a concern, unless it couse it to break the parts before 3 years.
And You may thing of me I'm straw, but belive me, I'm more concern of easy working with my computer, than money. On the other hand - I am - couse I will not buy a computer only to compute some distributed project.

And that's my point - on the machine somebody is already working. I have permission to run *@H only if it will not affect normal work. 56M does.

And I guess that's should be developers responsibility to short the mem usage as much as possible, and even lower. Mem is cheap, but will not buy more memory just becouse Rosetta wants it.

That would be EOT from my side.

---

.......to run *@H only if it will not affect normal work. 56M does.

And I guess that's should be developers responsibility to short the mem usage as much as possible, and even lower. Mem is cheap, but will not buy more memory just becouse Rosetta wants it.

That would be EOT from my side.
[/quote]
>I'm confused....56M won't bother anything if BOINC is set as your screen saver or more properly set to run only when the screen saver starts (thus insuring no one is using the box). I think it is your responsibility to set up your box and BOINC to run together to minimize any conflicts. There is enough flexibility in the BOINC setup to meet almost all requirements. You can't blame the Developers for everything....ie. don't run the R@H in the background all the time if that is the problem.....use the screen saver option.

---

Or, don't run Rosetta@Home... there are plenty of other projects.

But, I will freely admit that I only run on *MY* own personal computers. All bought with my money, usually with a primary or secondary purpose to run DC ... I use one PowerMac and one dual Xeon as workstations, the rest are pure DC hosts. All run 24/7 ...

But, on MOST modern computers, BOINC and the science applications will not make a noticable impact. If they do, well, use the run during preference to not run them when people are working.

---

With the old seti classic I frequently had to stop it to do other resource-intensive tasks, but I have noticed that I rarely have to do this with BOINC in charge. When I get sluggish response and have checked task manager, it is invariably some other app hogging resources, not BOINC or the project apps. Example: doing a background full antivirus scan will bring my box to its knees. I set the av client to do those scans at night so I don't see it.

I don't necessarily think the devs should always aim at the lowest commom denominator with their apps. It's always a juggling act to get the science done by the largest population of computers. Since hardware is getting more robust, it seems inevitable that some platforms will get squeezed out of certain projects over time, but there are other projects with smaller requirements. Good luck in your quest for a dc project you can live with!

---

"Be all that you can be...considering." Harold Green

I have boinc running on my work desktop and I don't notice any performance degradation either.

I believe it's b/c the boinc client starts the project clients (processes) with the lowest priority possible, so all other processes can take over when needed.

---