Posts by Gerry Rough

21) Message boards : Number crunching : Quad Core Intel Price Drops (Message 44849)
Posted 10 Aug 2007 by Profile Gerry Rough
Post:
I was able to nab of couple of these babies the other day; no doubt they will chew up some WUs pretty quick. I suppose the question now becomes whether they should be loaded with XP, Vista Basic, or Vista Premium. They come with Basic, but others have mentioned on the links below this post that if you call Dell they will upgrade to Premiuim for free. But on the same page it is mentioned that XP is a better environment for multi-tasking and stuff that uses more than one core. So, which should I put into these puppies for boinc? This is a bit beyond my pay grade.


If you don't need Vista Premium (don't do anything but crunch on them), don't bother upgrading from Basic.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/choose.mspx

Keep Vista.
XP from the days of single cores/dual processors and patched up to run better on multiprocessors/cores... Vista's get better managment techs etc in it.

P.S. Which link below (above for me )


Thanks for the advice, fluffy. Here's the link, but I think I may have either misread the XP part or followed the link somewhere else for that idea about XP being better.


click here
22) Message boards : Number crunching : Quad Core Intel Price Drops (Message 44693)
Posted 5 Aug 2007 by Profile Gerry Rough
Post:
I was able to nab of couple of these babies the other day; no doubt they will chew up some WUs pretty quick. I suppose the question now becomes whether they should be loaded with XP, Vista Basic, or Vista Premium. They come with Basic, but others have mentioned on the links below this post that if you call Dell they will upgrade to Premiuim for free. But on the same page it is mentioned that XP is a better environment for multi-tasking and stuff that uses more than one core. So, which should I put into these puppies for boinc? This is a bit beyond my pay grade.
23) Message boards : Number crunching : Quad Core Intel Price Drops (Message 44602)
Posted 1 Aug 2007 by Profile Gerry Rough
Post:
Yo Paydirt,

can you contact me by email? I'm at gerryr @ floodlight.org. I need to contact you regarding the system we talked about earlier in this thread.
24) Message boards : Rosetta@home Science : Windows 64 (Message 41777)
Posted 2 Jun 2007 by Profile Gerry Rough
Post:
No. In most cases the difference is negligable, that is why the developers have not felt too much pressure to make a 64bit version. The FPU (Floating Point Unit) is virtually unchanged in the two types of CPU, since most projects use the FPU almost exclusively there is often no performance gain. As mentioned before simap has a fairly large gain, because that project spends less time using the FPU than most projects. Programs really gain from the 64bit CPUs if they need large blocks of memory, or if they do a large proportion of integer operations.


How large are the blocks that you mention? Predictor uses lots of memory (750 mb+ if memory serves, then 1 - 1.5mb for the last 20% of the WU), and I got a response from one of my posts here many moons ago on these boards that there are talks of a memory pig WU from Rosetta that would take advantage of hosts with lots of memory like mine. Would these WUs benefit greatly from the 64 bit version?
25) Message boards : Number crunching : Quad Core Intel Price Drops (Message 41620)
Posted 29 May 2007 by Profile Gerry Rough
Post:
Hey Gerry, I've been pricing out systems recently to get a gauge for the total cost of a new system... I didn't see your system "below", did you forget to attach. Anyhow, this is what I would do for you.

snip


Actually, it was the one mentioned in Who?s post a few down from here. In any case, your suggestion sounds interesting. Contact me at gerryratfloodlight.org.
26) Message boards : Number crunching : Quad Core Intel Price Drops (Message 41558)
Posted 28 May 2007 by Profile Gerry Rough
Post:
In the past couple of weeks I've sort of decided it is nearing time to upgrade again, probably before the end of summer. So, now comes the hard part. What is the best cruncher combo to buy since the prices are dropping? Is the one below the best?

Also, I don't need anything more than a standard video card since I don't crunch with the screensaver; this machine will be a cruncher made to crunch, and double as my desktop. Should I order the parts online and then give them to my computer store to assemble (this combo will not be their standard offering), or should I get someone else for that? Never tried to put together my own cruncher before, so help is definitely needed.

27) Message boards : Number crunching : TFlops (Message 40624)
Posted 10 May 2007 by Profile Gerry Rough
Post:
There is probably a few Predictor@home crunchers looking for a protein folding home as well, though IMHO the Seti thing is probably the main reason. Not sure how long the P@h project will be semi-beta while they run some testing on a windows version of a linux/mac compiled program that is difficult to transition.
28) Message boards : Number crunching : TFlops (Message 40447)
Posted 6 May 2007 by Profile Gerry Rough
Post:
Maybe I'm missing something: BOINCstats has Rosy at about 52+ TFlops. Are you getting your numbers from somewhere else? Perhaps the projected Spiderman gross this weekend?

Please remember when posting to the message boards that TerraDollars are different than TeraFlops. :-)
29) Message boards : Rosetta@home Science : Windows 64 (Message 40370)
Posted 5 May 2007 by Profile Gerry Rough
Post:
Since I am not a computer buff, I have a question. Since windows 64 is getting information twice as fast to crunch as windows 32, will there be a significant increase in performance, or am I missing something?
30) Message boards : Number crunching : TFlops (Message 40279)
Posted 3 May 2007 by Profile Gerry Rough
Post:
52 TFlops... WOW...

I've mever seen this before, I wanted to post a screenshot, but since it's at that level for a few hours now, i didn't.

I'm not sure where I read this, but a while ago someone posted that only at 50 Tflops Rosetta could unfold it's real potential.


Actually, I thought I read that it was more like 150 TFlops, but that was ages ago. Perhaps I might be wrong on this. I have many times thought that if BOINC could get maybe 1 to 1.5 million crunchers consistently crunching, I think the idea could really realize its potential for all of the projects. I have many times wondered how to get from here to there though.
31) Message boards : Rosetta@home Science : How can we bring more users to the Rosetta project? (Message 40022)
Posted 29 Apr 2007 by Profile Gerry Rough
Post:
I think it would be a great idea as well, though I could not help the way I would like. There are a couple of ideas that myself and others have discussed in the past many moons and many suns ago that might help, especially the Rosetta Banner that was talked about to spruce things up on the home page. The Rosetta Banner was discussed here, and the Rosetta Desktop image idea was discussed here. Hope this helps
32) Message boards : Number crunching : Anyone could give more details about RAC? (Message 39992)
Posted 28 Apr 2007 by Profile Gerry Rough
Post:
Newbie Q&A thread gives some general infomations about RAC. An URL "http://boinc-wiki.ath.cx/index.php?title=RAC" is given at the end of the post. But I cannot visit that page. Anyone could help?


I just copied and pasted your URL into my browser. Seems to be okay now.
33) Message boards : Number crunching : Quad Core Intel Price Drops (Message 39955)
Posted 27 Apr 2007 by Profile Gerry Rough
Post:
Actually, why even dream of a quad-core anyway, when the buzz will soon be toward GPUs. Or are you implying GPU machines for crunching and gaming, and quad-core tech for the home PC for everything else?
34) Message boards : Number crunching : Recent Average Credit Drop-off (Message 39952)
Posted 27 Apr 2007 by Profile Gerry Rough
Post:
So far as things you might do... Set General Preference to leave applications in memory while preempted. Use the current recommended BOINC release. Set your General Preference for connect to network every... days to at least 1. Allow BOINC to use at least 150MB per active Rosetta thread (General Preference for both active and idle % of memory). Avoid ending BOINC and turning off your computer. And rest assured that the Project Team has improved checkpointing being tested on Ralph right now (although if you are crunching 24/7 you won't likely see any improvement from that change). Turn off the screensaver, Rosetta does not need this to do the calculations. Close (not "exit") the BOINC Manager window when you are not looking at it. Get a friend to crunch Rosetta too, on your account ;) ...there's a quick double right there!


You know, it just occured to me that your post should be modified with bullet points and put on the FAQ or somewhere for others access who want to optimize their crunching power with their general preferences. Perhaps this has already been done, but you covered all or most of the bases.
35) Message boards : Number crunching : Recent Average Credit Drop-off (Message 39950)
Posted 27 Apr 2007 by Profile Gerry Rough
Post:
[snip]....Get a friend to crunch Rosetta too, on your account ;) ...there's a quick double right there!



Dirty cruncher! Dirty cruncher! :-)
36) Message boards : Number crunching : TFlops (Message 39747)
Posted 23 Apr 2007 by Profile Gerry Rough
Post:
Any ideas why there is an increase lately in the TFlops the last few days? The only thing I can think of off hand is that there are a bunch more new users to boinc in the same period. Not sure why though.
37) Message boards : Number crunching : 80 cores, not science fiction ... it is real! 1.2 TERA! (Message 39619)
Posted 19 Apr 2007 by Profile Gerry Rough
Post:
Quad-Core Processors to Go Mainstream by 2009

By the end of 2009, today's high-end quad-core processors will eventually appear in close to half of all mainstream desktop systems, according to new data released by market research firm iSuppli on Tuesday.

[snip]

But applications like rosetta will benefit heavily from the growing numbers of multicores, not a bad thing :)



For awhile now I've wondered when the chip makers will eventually hit the performance/sale wall for the home or small business PC. In other words, when will the chips become so powerful that it will become a waste to market more powerful chips to this market, since the added power will become a non-issue? I wonder if the quad-core chips might just hit that performance wall; it seems to be pretty difficult to ask too much from even a dual-core nowadays. Other than video editing, few need the extra power these days. Any thoughts on this?
38) Message boards : Number crunching : 80 cores, not science fiction ... it is real! 1.2 TERA! (Message 39552)
Posted 18 Apr 2007 by Profile Gerry Rough
Post:
Slightly OT, but... Go Rosetta!!!

Intel says new chips about 40 pct faster

Intel Corp. said a new line of computer processors due out later this year will be about 40 percent faster than current chips when running computer games, videos and other heavy workloads.

"In high-performance computing and bandwidth intensive applications ... there will be up to a whopping 45 percent performance increase," said Patrick Gelsinger, the general manager for Intel's digital enterprise group.

In a prototype Penryn chip with four processing cores, that translated into 40 percent faster performance in computer games and video processing, while more mundane tasks such as image processing ran about 15 percent faster, Gelsinger said.

The successor to Penryn, a family of chips known as Nehalem, will make their debut in 2008 with an overhauled design and featuring up to eight processing cores, double that of current top-of-the-line chips, he said.


So should I upgrade next year, or wait until 2009 when the multi-cores will be much more than eight-core processors. Ughhhh!
39) Message boards : Number crunching : 80 cores, not science fiction ... it is real! 1.2 TERA! (Message 38810)
Posted 1 Apr 2007 by Profile Gerry Rough
Post:
Doh!

I was thinking recently about the memory requirements of multi-core processors. I don't know if this has been discussed or not, but if multi-core processors are all the rage in a few years, as it seems they will be, will not the motherboard makers also have to respond with motherboards that have a major increase in memory capacity? Think about it; 8-core or 16-core processors in a few years: how much memory will these hogs have to take to run 8 or 16 cores of BOINC? Or am I missing something basic here? It seems to me that the memory requirements might add substantially to the cost of an upgrade to these CPUs. What's the scoop on future memory for multi-cores?
40) Message boards : Number crunching : Raytheon Develops World's First Polymorphic Computer (Message 38418)
Posted 26 Mar 2007 by Profile Gerry Rough
Post:
"In laboratory testing MONARCH outperformed the Intel quad-core Xeon chip by a factor of 10,"

"The MONARCH micro-architecture is unique in its ability to reconfigure itself to optimize processing on the fly. MONARCH provides exceptional compute capacity and highly flexible data bandwidth capability with beyond state-of-the-art power efficiency, and it's fully programmable."

"MONARCH, containing six microprocessors and a highly interconnected reconfigurable computing array, provides 64 gigaflops (floating point operations per second) with more than 60 gigabytes per second of memory bandwidth and more than 43 gigabytes per second of off-chip data bandwidth."


You should not have posted this: the envy factor rises in proportion to the news of better technology. Is envy not a sin? ;-)


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