So is a 4m30s TPF on 6900 any good?

fastgeek

[H]ard|DCOTM x4 aka "That Company"
Joined
Jun 6, 2000
Messages
6,520
Just curious since, if there's a database for such things, I don't know about it. :)

So once I pulled my head out of my ass and configured my Ubuntu client properly (D'Oh!) this 4P system grabbed a 6900 bigadv WU (was hoping for something more exotic) and is going at said 4m30 TPF. Have a 2P system going at ~8m20 and a slower 4P system (currently under Windows, will move to Ubuntu for a better idea) that's at 13m. All of these are getting 6900 WU's, but different runs, etc... but hopefully a fair comparison!
 
That may be the fastest time out there. 4P G34 with high OC can do sub-5m but nowhere close to 4.5m.
 
Really? Cool! :) Of course it's not my insanely expensive machine; but still fun to experiment with.

Following is a combined screen shot for those that might care about such things. Just showing the WU, first 10%, last 10% and misc info about load imbalance, performance, etc.

Maybe tomorrow I'll try installing BFS on this system, or the 2P, and see if it works for me this time... is it worth it?

4m30s-6900.jpg
 
Forget BFS. If anything, load The Kraken up....
 
Let's see here. It's May 14th and somebody haz new Xeons to play with.
 
Forget BFS. If anything, load The Kraken up....

Am 99% sure I have The Kraken doing its job; but will get that last 1% tomorrow morning. But unless I'm mistaken I ran 'top' and saw kraken up there with 6350-6400% CPU.

What are the specs on that system?
I'm betting 4P E5-4640...
Let's see here. It's May 14th and somebody haz new Xeons to play with.

NDA. :) Want to share, but like my job! Will provide information once it's allowed. :cool:
 
Am 99% sure I have The Kraken doing its job; but will get that last 1% tomorrow morning. But unless I'm mistaken I ran 'top' and saw kraken up there with 6350-6400% CPU.

NDA. :) Want to share, but like my job! Will provide information once it's allowed. :cool:

6400% = 64 cores at 100% - 4 x 16 core chips.. educated guesses at the ready...! :)
 
6400% = 64 cores at 100% - 4 x 16 core chips.. educated guesses at the ready...! :)

Or 4x8-core Xeons. Heard Bulldozer was bad for Folding, but I don't know how bad. So ATM I'd probably think Xeons were the better bet?

EDIT: Hang on, you can get 8p motherboards with expansion cards, can't you?
 
Interlagos is "OK" at folding, you will get similar points with more power consumption. This does indeed look like 4P 8C 16T Xeons :D. With load imbalances that high, it appears dynamic load balancing did not engage. Do not bother with BFS on the 4P. Check to make sure that the kraken is working properly (if all your worker threads have kraken in them you are good).

That is about 619K PPD 6901 :D (6900 has about the same run time as 6901).

I am going to ball park that the machine has 4 x 8C 16T (32C 64T) Xeon's in the 2.6Ghz(non turbo) range :D
 
Last edited:
Processors were released yesterday, I don't get this conspiracy. *shrug*
 
Actually, the bulldozer cores do quite well on this new bloody bigadv unit (8106?).
My two dual 6274 rigs aren't too far off from my 3 MC 4p rigs.


Interlagos is "OK" at folding, you will get similar points with more power consumption. This does indeed look like 4P 8C 16T Xeons :D. With load imbalances that high, it appears dynanic load balancing did not engage. Do not bother with BFS on the 4P. Check to make sure that the kraken is working properly (if all your worker threads have kraken in them you are good).

That is about 619K PPD 6901 :D (6900 has about the same run time as 6901).

I am going to ball park that the machine has 4 x 8C 16T (32C 64T) Xeon's in the 2.6Ghz(non turbo) range :D
 
dang, my SnB-E 6-core @ 4.8Ghz does a 6900 at ~16:00 frame times. 4-5min is fast!
 
OK, OK. Since Intel has released the processors I guess it's safe to say this box has four E5-4650 processors and 128GB of RAM. Is still holding steady at 4m30-40s since I started running bigadv units yesterday. Was going through regular SMP 6098/6099 units at around 1m30s Friday afternoon until switching.

The other 4P system is running 4x E5-4607's (I think). Am going to try and find the time to move that system to Ubuntu + TK so we can see what the performance difference is between those classes of processors.

The 2P system is 2x E5-2680's, still around 8m20s-40s on BA WU's. It was this system vs. the new 4P system I was most interested in as the processors are the same in terms of Ghz, cache, QPI, etc. A nice apples-to-apples of 2 vs 4 processors. :)
 
Interlagos is "OK" at folding, you will get similar points with more power consumption. This does indeed look like 4P 8C 16T Xeons :D. With load imbalances that high, it appears dynanic load balancing did not engage. Do not bother with BFS on the 4P. Check to make sure that the kraken is working properly (if all your worker threads have kraken in them you are good).

So what, exactly, should I be checking to make sure everything is working properly in order to get the imbalance down? TK certainly seems to be running. Watched 'top' for a little bit and thekraken-FahCo is running around 6380-6400%.

Thanks!
 
For now, checking top's output (thekraken-FahCo...) and making sure that TK has been
installed with -c autorestart=1 (examine contents of thekraken.cfg) is good enough.

Firedfly's been working on even more reliable DLB (Dynamic Load Balancing) engagement
technique and it's looking pretty awesome. There's fair chance test version will be released
within a week or so.
 
OK, OK. Since Intel has released the processors I guess it's safe to say this box has four E5-4650 processors and 128GB of RAM. Is still holding steady at 4m30-40s since I started running bigadv units yesterday. Was going through regular SMP 6098/6099 units at around 1m30s Friday afternoon until switching.

The other 4P system is running 4x E5-4607's (I think). Am going to try and find the time to move that system to Ubuntu + TK so we can see what the performance difference is between those classes of processors.

The 2P system is 2x E5-2680's, still around 8m20s-40s on BA WU's. It was this system vs. the new 4P system I was most interested in as the processors are the same in terms of Ghz, cache, QPI, etc. A nice apples-to-apples of 2 vs 4 processors. :)

I was pretty close on the 4P CPU speed guess of 2.6Ghz haha. E5-4650 is a 2.7Ghz part. Once DLB engages, it should act more like a 2.7Ghz setup than a 2.6ghz one.

Go with Tear's information above. The Kraken with autorestart on will attempt (best effort) to engage DLB. DLB will get you a few % more performace. In this case the extra 100Mhz equivalent cpu performance. (1 - 2.6/2.7) x100 = 3.7% which is the difference between my CPU estimate and your actual CPU speed, and you have 4.1% average wait time due to load imbalance which seems to coincide pretty well with my estimate.
 
Last edited:
I took a look at thekraken.cfg and it has autorestart=1

Know it works on the 2P system and am fairly certain it worked on the other 4P system when it was running Ubuntu. Tried to remove it, seem to have failed. :p Reinstalled it, so to speak, and will see if it does anything. Did say that both cores were already wrapped... so maybe it's just to load balancing that's not kicking in properly? Would be cool to see this box running at its full potential while I still have the chance! :)
 
I'd be interested in what they do on the 8101 and 6903/6904 wu's

What Motherboard do they run on?
 
I took a look at thekraken.cfg and it has autorestart=1

Know it works on the 2P system and am fairly certain it worked on the other 4P system when it was running Ubuntu. Tried to remove it, seem to have failed. :p Reinstalled it, so to speak, and will see if it does anything. Did say that both cores were already wrapped... so maybe it's just to load balancing that's not kicking in properly? Would be cool to see this box running at its full potential while I still have the chance! :)

Dynamic Load Balancing is not garanteed. Firedfly is working on a more reliable way to engage it, however at this time it is the luck of the draw.
 
I'd be interested in what they do on the 8101 and 6903/6904 wu's

What Motherboard do they run on?

If I would venture an estimate, it would be about 9 minutes flat on a 6903, and around 12 minutes on a 6904. 8101 will be a bit quicker than 6903 or about 8:45 for 8101.

It comes very close to 1M PPD on 6903/6904, and about 670K PPD 8101.

Obviously these are estimates, but they should be close to reality.
 
I'd be interested in what they do on the 8101 and 6903/6904 wu's

What Motherboard do they run on?

I would be interested too! And that part is still, AFAIK, under NDA.

You work for Intel I take it??

No, but I've been to many of their fabs in the past.

Dynamic Load Balancing is not garanteed. Firedfly is working on a more reliable way to engage it, however at this time it is the luck of the draw.

Understood. Always seen it engage before on other systems; guess it's just my luck! :p

If I would venture an estimate, it would be about 9 minutes flat on a 6903, and around 12 minutes on a 6904. 8101 will be a bit quicker than 6903 or about 8:45 for 8101.

It comes very close to 1M PPD on 6903/6904, and about 670K PPD 8101.

Obviously these are estimates, but they should be close to reality.

10m00s and 13m30s.

Place your bets!

There's no way of "encouraging" the servers to give you certain classes of WU's, right? Must say the idea of a single box scoring close to 1M PPD is pretty crazy!
 
There is no way to pick work units without breaking the EULA, ie "cherry picking" other than what is provided in the client -smp and -bigadv are about it. Sadly there are not many 6903/6904 left in the wild since they are only assigned to 12 thread machines now.
 
1M ppd!@ droooooools now I wonder how much power WATT that server is consuming! dangit!
 
Fun toys. I bet he works for an oem like HP, Dell, etc.
 
Back
Top