Crunching Rosetta@home workunits in Windows XP Mode-Windows Virtual PC

Message boards : Number crunching : Crunching Rosetta@home workunits in Windows XP Mode-Windows Virtual PC

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Profile joseps

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Message 65691 - Posted: 3 Apr 2010, 0:16:34 UTC
Last modified: 3 Apr 2010, 1:00:16 UTC

I installed/activate the Windows XP Mode in one of my Quad Machine with Windows 7 Prof installed. I tested wether I could install and run Rosetta@home. It did. It only crunch 1 WU. So I checked if the Boinc manager running on the regular Machine to check if it run only 3 WU because the Virtual PC IS CRUNCHING 1 WU. The machine is crunching 4 WU. I can not explain how this work since the Phenom 9750 quad core has only
4 processors.
Now my Machine (MEN78-VM mobo + Amd Phenom 9750 Quad) has 5 WU being crunch at the same time. Can anyone explain this. Just curious. I am just tinkering with the Virtual PC working.
joseps:)
I turned off my 5computers when I went on vacation. When I return today, I can not upload work. Need work units to run computers.
joseps
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mikey
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Message 65692 - Posted: 3 Apr 2010, 10:43:32 UTC - in response to Message 65691.  
Last modified: 3 Apr 2010, 10:55:59 UTC

I installed/activate the Windows XP Mode in one of my Quad Machine with Windows 7 Prof installed. I tested wether I could install and run Rosetta@home. It did. It only crunch 1 WU. So I checked if the Boinc manager running on the regular Machine to check if it run only 3 WU because the Virtual PC IS CRUNCHING 1 WU. The machine is crunching 4 WU. I can not explain how this work since the Phenom 9750 quad core has only
4 processors.
Now my Machine (MEN78-VM mobo + Amd Phenom 9750 Quad) has 5 WU being crunch at the same time. Can anyone explain this. Just curious. I am just tinkering with the Virtual PC working.
joseps:)


Yes but the virtual machine is crunching slower the way you are doing it. You are correct in your thinking you need to save one cpu for the virtual machine but the way it is happening is all in memory and swap space, making it for a slower virtual machine than it should be. Go into Boinc and change it to only use 75% of the available cpu's and it will only use 3 cpu's, in your case. That should speed up your virtual machine quite a bit.

I don't see you running Freehal, it is a memory only Boinc project and if you run it in both the real and virtual machines you can double your output. FreeHal is available here http://freehal.net/freehal_at_home/ FreeHal is looking at the wiki and translating the words in it. From the documentation page "The FreeHAL project"s cause is to develop a computer program which imitates a very close human behavior within conversations." You can run up to 25 FreeHal units at one time, so with a virtual environment you could run 25 in the normal and 25 in the virtual for a total of 50 FreeHal units at the same time. Each unit runs totally in memory but only takes about 8500K per unit. I have 2 gig of memory in most of my pc's and when running 25 units they still has over 1.5 gig free. 8500K times 25 equals only about 212K of memory.
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Mod.Sense
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Message 65694 - Posted: 3 Apr 2010, 17:38:52 UTC
Last modified: 3 Apr 2010, 17:40:01 UTC

BOINC CAN run as many tasks as you like (see ncpus in cc_config.xml). Much the same way that you can fire up more then 4 Windows applications. They just share CPU resource, and the operating system is left to prioritize who actually gets CPU. It just generally doesn't make sense to have BOINC try to run more then the number of CPUs you have (at least for CPU-intensive projects).

As mikey says, if you check the actual CPU time on the tasks (not the elapsed time), you will find that across 5 tasks, you won't see one hour increase per one hour of runtime. If you followed mikey's suggestion and set your non-virtual BOINC to run on 3 CPUs, and had your VM running one task (I suspect your VM is reporting only a single CPU available to BOINC), then 4 tasks should come very close to an hour of CPU time per hour of runtime (assuming the machine isn't doing much else). But you only have 4 tasks running.

What you are observing here is sort of the beauty and purpose of virtualization. The VM runs as though it has resources that aren't really there, and you have to dig fairly deep to realize it isn't ACTUALLY running on a full CPU. There's no free lunch, and in this case the price of the virtualization is performance, but the price is small enough you almost don't notice. VMs are best for combining workloads that do not fully utilize resources, so a CPU-intensive BOINC project like Rosetta is not a typical usage.
Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense
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Message 65698 - Posted: 4 Apr 2010, 15:29:19 UTC

Yes I agree with Mod.Sense.
The Virtual PC is running my old softwares which otherwise will not run in Windows 7 Prof. Its just a toy for tinkering. However it is working. It behaves like a standalone PC within the main machine.
I don't believe the Freehal will work on rosetta projects. I only crunch Rosetta@home and World Community Grid projects, all dedicated to medical research for human diseases cure. But only 6% allowed for WCG, or when Rosetta servers are down and cannot provide WUs. Thanks for all your input.
joseps:)
I turned off my 5computers when I went on vacation. When I return today, I can not upload work. Need work units to run computers.
joseps
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Message boards : Number crunching : Crunching Rosetta@home workunits in Windows XP Mode-Windows Virtual PC



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