22 November 2009

A quiet one

This and the last week have been fairly quiet. I did update the Seti Multibeam science app to a 64 bit version. I does indeed run a bit faster as a result. Unfortunately its the only 64 bit app out there for Windows, so it continues to run 32 bit apps for the rest.


Next upgrade
I was going to upgrade Chekov to the 64 bit version of Windows 7 next, however they guys at Lunatics (they optimise the Seti apps) brought out a hybrid Astropulse application that runs on both the CPU and an ATI graphics card. I was beta testing it. I ran into some issues with earlier drivers needed for the Milkyway science app and the Seti app being built with a later SDK that required newer drivers. After resolving that issue it seems they take around 10.5 hours to run instead of the normal 16 hours on the cpu only.


Heat
Its summer here in Sydney, Australia so we are now into the hot weather. Today is forecast to get to 41 degrees. All the machines have been powered off during the day as the loft they are in gets even hotter. If its forecast to get over 30 I even turn off the file server and router.


Nvidia CUDA 3.0
Nvidia released a 2nd beta driver with cuda 3.0 support. The cuda run-time DLL's are only available for developers at this point and unable to be distributed to the public. It seems that the programs will need to be recompiled with the new cuda compiler, but there appears to be no additional speedup or improvements. The developers who have been looking at it suspect its additional functionality for the upcoming G300 (Fermi) chip.

I did try the 1st beta driver using existing CUDA 2.3 DLL's, however the GPUgrid app failed. It was run on Maul, which has dual GTX260 cards. They last behaved with the 182.50 drivers. I didn't bother with the 2nd beta and will probably wait until there is a "release" version.

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