Cores keep switching

[wjg]

I am using Folding at Home. And some recent work shows the CPU load constantly switching from one core to another. The first WU I did had both cores at full load, now it seems this WU switches the load every 20 seconds or so.

 

[Kendrak]

You are using the standard clinet on a multi core system (atleast that is what it sounds like)
You can install 1 std client for each core (easy but nets less points)
Or you can install the SMP client (can be a touch tricky but nets more points)

 

[Pocatello]

Try the SMP cient.

Are you on a dual core machine? Which one?

 

[wjg]

Thanks for replies.

I am using a e5200 Dual Core (essentially a Core 2 Duo). I am using the uniprocessor version 6.23, I did not download the SMP client.

It is a new computer system I built, and so far, this is the highest load the computer ever got. My first WU I forgot to mention ended early, a GROMACS error, and the data was sent back to Folding at Home. Perhaps, that was the reason both cores were at 100%.

Now, of course, having posted about the cores switching loads, I now see that the CPU load is within one core now (after 4x the amount of time switching cores). I am not familiar with the operation of multi-core CPU's, but found a third person reference to core's intelligently switching its load to another core to optimize cache. The search terms I can think of get too many unrelated hits.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

its your OS that causes it to switch between cores.. its a normal thing though.. if 1 core gets loaded up for another program it will automaticly switch the highest load program to the other core which has a lower load.. if you go into your task manager you can manually set it the WU to use a specific core..