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I'm back!

M

mjannusch

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 19, 2003
Messages
141
After a long absence, I noticed that I fell off the top 100 for the [H] and I'm kicking it back into overdrive to try to gain some ground back. I think at one point I was #2 or #3 for the team behind MidnightFreak[H] when he was cranking out workunits. I changed jobs a while back, and the new companies haven't been as friendly towards folding as the old one was. The old place had a standby datacenter where they let me run folding on a whole rack of 2U 4-way SMP boxes for quite a while (power was free, so why not?).

To pick up a little slack after that, I bought a PS3 and that's been folding since the day I got it - producing around 1000 PPD. Now I've got a few boxes around the house folding again, with a couple GPUs, a 4-core Hackintosh, a 2-core Vista box, and an 8-core VMWare server running an SMP client with the spare cycles.

The "supplemental" heat in the house is nice during the winter up here in Wisconsin. :D

Anyways - fold on!
 
Welcome back!

How much power does the 8 core system have?

You might be able to run -bigadv units and crank crazy ppd (my i7 is pushing 20k ppd just on the cpu)

Fold on!

 
The 8-way box is a dual Xeon with 2.5ghz per core. I'm running VMWare ESXi, and I'm limited to 4 virtual CPUs per VM. I've got a Linux 4-SMP running, and a single core client on one of the other Linux instances so at least using 5 of the 8 cores for now. If the box doesn't run too crazy hot maybe I'll just switch to running a second 4-SMP instance.
 
The new free VMWare Player will support 8 cores. I know almost nothing about VMs outside of folding, don't know if that would be an option or would open up possibilities.

That is what I (and many others) are running on our 8 thread boxen to crunch the -bigadv units.
 
Hmmm... VMWare Player won't really cut it for me with what I need to do. ESXi is working well for what I need, but won't do more than 4 cores per VM, with the licensing I have. I work for a VMWare certified partner, so maybe I can get some sort of NFR license to use all 8 cores in a single VM. I'll look in to that....
 
Welcome back to the fold! :cool:

It's very unfortunate that you can't run Player 3.0. With a 8 cores running at ~2.5 GHz that should get you about ~40 minutes per frame with a -bigadv SMP client. The production would be faster than two of the fastest single GPU cards. Native Linux would definitely be better, though.
 
Glad to have back here

We need all the help we can get :)
 
I did get a 60-day eval key, and it is now allowing me to throw all 8 cores at the Linux VM. I'm letting it finish the workunits it already had when it was running on 4 cores, and for the other VM that was running a non-SMP Linux FAH I set that one to stop after it finishes the current WU.

Should be running a -bigadv before morning, so it'll be interesting to see how long frames take on this rig.

I wouldn't mind just running native Linux, but this box runs a bunch of other test VMs that don't use much CPU. Even if it is a little slower than it could be, it should still get the job done. :)
 
mjannusch said:
I did get a 60-day eval key, and it is now allowing me to throw all 8 cores at the Linux VM. I'm letting it finish the workunits it already had when it was running on 4 cores, and for the other VM that was running a non-SMP Linux FAH I set that one to stop after it finishes the current WU.

Should be running a -bigadv before morning, so it'll be interesting to see how long frames take on this rig.

I wouldn't mind just running native Linux, but this box runs a bunch of other test VMs that don't use much CPU. Even if it is a little slower than it could be, it should still get the job done. :)
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Wow, that's fantastic news, and we can have another -bigadv client running for the team. I am anxiously awaiting the results.

BTW, how much memory do you have in this system? You needs tons of RAM, especially if you're running in a VM. I tried with my systems and I just don't have enough memory for -bigadv VM duty. Only with native Linux might it be possible. You will likely need to allocate at least 4GB of memory to the VM, and some people claim even more. :eek:
 
One other hurdle is the passkey for bigadv. You have to turn in 10 WUs with the passkey before it will give you any bonus for bigadv. If you haven't had one previously you may want to leave it on regular SMP -8 until you get 10 units done.

I think 4.6 GB roughly is the minimum required RAM for a bigadv.
 
flogge said:
One other hurdle is the passkey for bigadv. You have to turn in 10 WUs with the passkey before it will give you any bonus for bigadv. If you haven't had one previously you may want to leave it on regular SMP -8 until you get 10 units done.
Click to expand...
There's a way around that limitation.

I think 4.6 GB roughly is the minimum required RAM for a bigadv.
Click to expand...
Perhaps in a VM. I have one native Linux installation with 4GB of RAM and it's performing well since October.
 
I've had passkeys on my CPU/GPU stuff over the last week so hopefully that'll help me out and get bigadv units right away.

I already threw 8GB at the VM running FAH and reconfigured FAH's advanced options with it all, so should be set. There's 36GB of RAM in this box with less than half currently allocated, so no problems there.
 
mjannusch said:
I've had passkeys on my CPU/GPU stuff over the last week so hopefully that'll help me out and get bigadv units right away.
Click to expand...
Yep, that's the way to circumvent the waiting period. This should be posted in the -bigadv guide if it isn't included already. I did it late but only had to wait for 6 WUs before I read that you can accumulate the 10 WUs on any client, LOL. ;)

I already threw 8GB at the VM running FAH and reconfigured FAH's advanced options with it all, so should be set. There's 36GB of RAM in this box with less than half currently allocated, so no problems there.
Click to expand...
Excellent! Even more eager to await the times you post for this config. All in all, awesome work! :cool:
 
APOLLO said:
Excellent! Even more eager to await the times you post for this config. All in all, awesome work! :cool:
Click to expand...
Looks like frames are taking 38:50 with this rig. VMWare ESXi is loading the cores at about 98%, which is pretty good considering that I've got my domain controller running on here as well. I shut down my other VMs for now so that I get reasonably consistent numbers to start.

That's 19870 PPD once I start getting the bonus. Not sure how many SMP units I've completed with my passkey. I may have done a bunch a while back on my 4-core Hackintosh, but I don't recall if I had the passkey then. Probably. Otherwise I think the Hackintosh has probably cranked out several SMP units already this week.
 
welcome.gif
back to the Fold dude. More of us old farts showing back to defend #1.
wisdom.gif
 
Welcome back, glad to see a old timer in action ;)
 
Wow, the first bigadv smp unit finished finally this morning. BOMB! Now I see how so many people were able to pass me up so quickly!

If only I had a few more 8-way boxen.....
 
Don't we all wish LOL
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
 
Added a couple more GTX-260s, and my Core i7 parts are showing up from the Egg tomorrow, so should have another bigadv machine soon. W00t! ;)

Oh, for anyone running a VM under ESXi, the latest version of Linuxrouter's image (1.0) dropped my frame times from 38:50 to 38:15. Not a ton, but something. And the Langouste decoupler deal helps out a lot too. My WU uploads are taking somewhere around 1.5 hours. Good stuff!
 
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