Farm status
CPU only
Off
Nvidia GPU
Two running Einstein work
Raspberry Pis
All running Einstein work
For news on the Raspberry Pis see Marks Rpi Cluster
Other news
Rosetta ran out of work. I've picked up a couple of resends for failed tasks but that is all they've had for the last two weeks. The farm has been running Einstein work.
One of the computer shops I purchase from got hacked last week so I had to cancel my credit card. I've been waiting for a replacement which is super annoying due to the Black Friday sales being a great time to pick up a bargain and I can't buy anything online at the moment.
Ampere Altra
I fired up the Altra for a couple of hours this weekend. Its super noisy being a 2U server so I have to wait until I have the house to myself before using it. It ran 76 Einstein BRP4 work units in an hour. Two of the work units got a download error and I have reserved two CPU cores for the machine to use which is why it didn't do 80 of them.
I found out the front drive bays are SAS by trial and error. I tried an U2 SSD which wasn't found (but the drive bay power LED came on), then a SATA 2.5" HDD which also wasn't found (no LED's) and finally a 300GB SAS 2.5" HDD which was found and I re-partitioned and re-formatted. Given the capacity I won't be using it in there, its much too small. I will have to purchase some larger capacity drives. Seagate make a 960GB SAS SSD which sells for 750 AUD or for about the same price I can get a 2.4TB (10k RPM) HDD. It has an M2 SSD on the motherboard as the boot drive but it will wear out fairly quickly if I use it for number crunching.
I still haven't tried running Rosetta@home as I would need it to run for 8 hours at least. Einstein also has a Gamma Ray search app that the Pi4's are taking 27 hours to complete. The Altra should be able to do them in around 10-12 hours but I can't leave it running that long at home.
27 November 2021
07 November 2021
7th of November
Farm status
CPU only
Off
Nvidia GPUs
Off
Raspberry Pis
Pi3's running Einstein. Pi4's running Einstein and Rosetta.
For news on the Raspberry Pis see Marks Rpi Cluster
Other news
As you can see above most of the farm is off as its been quite warm, although not particularly hot.
The two RTX 3060 Ti's arrived so I need to swap out the remaining GTX 1660 Ti's (and power supplies) when I can find the time.
The 10GbE switch that I ordered months ago arrived. I have swapped the older one out. The old one is going to the other side of the room. The new one has dual 40mm fans and is quite loud when it starts up but reduces speed once booted, however its still annoyingly loud when its around 23-28 degrees.
Alder lake and beyond
Intel now seem to have some faster CPU's that are beginning to compete with the AMD Ryzens. They are rather expensive as they introduce DDR5 and PCIe gen 5 technologies. I don't see any reason to upgrade just yet. DDR5 memory speeds aren't compelling yet and nobody has any PCIe 5 add-in cards or even NVMe SSD's yet. This will of course improve over time.
The i9-12900K and i7-12700K use so much power for the number of cores they provided (up to 230 watts under full load) that I still think the Ryzen's are better at the moment. I generally go for the non-K versions as they aren't as power hungry but Intel haven't announced the rest of the CPU line up.
CPU only
Off
Nvidia GPUs
Off
Raspberry Pis
Pi3's running Einstein. Pi4's running Einstein and Rosetta.
For news on the Raspberry Pis see Marks Rpi Cluster
Other news
As you can see above most of the farm is off as its been quite warm, although not particularly hot.
The two RTX 3060 Ti's arrived so I need to swap out the remaining GTX 1660 Ti's (and power supplies) when I can find the time.
The 10GbE switch that I ordered months ago arrived. I have swapped the older one out. The old one is going to the other side of the room. The new one has dual 40mm fans and is quite loud when it starts up but reduces speed once booted, however its still annoyingly loud when its around 23-28 degrees.
Alder lake and beyond
Intel now seem to have some faster CPU's that are beginning to compete with the AMD Ryzens. They are rather expensive as they introduce DDR5 and PCIe gen 5 technologies. I don't see any reason to upgrade just yet. DDR5 memory speeds aren't compelling yet and nobody has any PCIe 5 add-in cards or even NVMe SSD's yet. This will of course improve over time.
The i9-12900K and i7-12700K use so much power for the number of cores they provided (up to 230 watts under full load) that I still think the Ryzen's are better at the moment. I generally go for the non-K versions as they aren't as power hungry but Intel haven't announced the rest of the CPU line up.
17 October 2021
17th of October
Farm status
CPU only
Off
Nvidia GPUs
Running Einstein and Milkyway
Raspberry Pis
Pi3's running Einstein. Pi4's running Einstein and Rosetta.
For news on the Raspberry Pis see Marks Rpi Cluster
RTX 3060 Ti
In the wake of CPL Online cancelling my order for an EVGA RTX 3060 Ti, I went to check their website today. It seems they now have stock and the price has gone up. I think they cancelled my previous order because it was at a lower price and they didn't want to lose money.
They didn't list any quantity limit like the other online computer stores so I ordered two. If they honour this order then I will be able to replace the remaining GTX 1660 Ti's and all the Nvidia GPU machines will be upgraded to 3060 Ti's. I prefer the machines to have the same configuration where possible.
BOINC certificate issues
The Lets Encrypt certificate that a number of BOINC projects use expired. This effects the Windows client as it has a bundled certificate store. Linux uses an OS-wide one. They are now trying to get an emergency release out with the updated certificate bundle. See the main BOINC message board for work arounds until they get a new version out.
Possible time issue
There is a bug with gpsd versions 3.20 through to 3.22. Gpsd translates the messages from GPS's that many NTP hosts use for an accurate time source. The bug is gpsd is expected to jump back 1024 weeks from the 23rd of October 2021.
I raised a bug report with Debian and they have a patched 3.22-4 in buster-backports and bullseye. Note the -4 in the version number. I don't know the status for other Linux distros.
See gpsd issue 144 for more details.
CPU only
Off
Nvidia GPUs
Running Einstein and Milkyway
Raspberry Pis
Pi3's running Einstein. Pi4's running Einstein and Rosetta.
For news on the Raspberry Pis see Marks Rpi Cluster
RTX 3060 Ti
In the wake of CPL Online cancelling my order for an EVGA RTX 3060 Ti, I went to check their website today. It seems they now have stock and the price has gone up. I think they cancelled my previous order because it was at a lower price and they didn't want to lose money.
They didn't list any quantity limit like the other online computer stores so I ordered two. If they honour this order then I will be able to replace the remaining GTX 1660 Ti's and all the Nvidia GPU machines will be upgraded to 3060 Ti's. I prefer the machines to have the same configuration where possible.
BOINC certificate issues
The Lets Encrypt certificate that a number of BOINC projects use expired. This effects the Windows client as it has a bundled certificate store. Linux uses an OS-wide one. They are now trying to get an emergency release out with the updated certificate bundle. See the main BOINC message board for work arounds until they get a new version out.
Possible time issue
There is a bug with gpsd versions 3.20 through to 3.22. Gpsd translates the messages from GPS's that many NTP hosts use for an accurate time source. The bug is gpsd is expected to jump back 1024 weeks from the 23rd of October 2021.
I raised a bug report with Debian and they have a patched 3.22-4 in buster-backports and bullseye. Note the -4 in the version number. I don't know the status for other Linux distros.
See gpsd issue 144 for more details.
10 October 2021
10th of October
Farm status
CPU only
One running Rosetta.
Nvidia GPU
Off.
Raspberry Pis
Pi3's running Einstein. Pi4's running Einstein and Rosetta.
For news on the Raspberry Pis see Marks Rpi Cluster
RTX 3060 Ti orders
I mentioned in my last blog post that I had another RTX 3060 Ti on order. This week the shop cancelled the order and is meant to be giving a full refund. The other couple of online shops I tried don't have stock of the particular brand/model that I am after.
I went to my usual online computer shop where I got the 3060 Ti's from and it seems they're keeping track of how many you've purchased. While they had stock it wouldn't let me add one to my shopping cart and told me I had reached my limit. I thought about using another email address to place an order but I think they'll be able to tell by the shipping address. They don't ship to post boxes either. I might need to enlist family members to place orders.
Debian point release
Debian did a point release, that is where they save up a bunch of what they consider important fixes and release them. This is their first point release since Bullseye came out. After rebooting my Ryzen 5900X machines the 2.5GbE add-in network card in both machines was no longer detected.
After much messing around with network cables and applying a couple of previous BIOS versions I am back to using the built-in 1GbE network port. Fortunately it didn't effect the Nvidia GPU machines which also have add-in 2.5GbE network cards. The Nvidia GPU machines use Realtek based cards whereas the Ryzen 5900X machines have Intel based cards. The Intel driver is built into the Linux kernel. I raised a bug report.
CPU only
One running Rosetta.
Nvidia GPU
Off.
Raspberry Pis
Pi3's running Einstein. Pi4's running Einstein and Rosetta.
For news on the Raspberry Pis see Marks Rpi Cluster
RTX 3060 Ti orders
I mentioned in my last blog post that I had another RTX 3060 Ti on order. This week the shop cancelled the order and is meant to be giving a full refund. The other couple of online shops I tried don't have stock of the particular brand/model that I am after.
I went to my usual online computer shop where I got the 3060 Ti's from and it seems they're keeping track of how many you've purchased. While they had stock it wouldn't let me add one to my shopping cart and told me I had reached my limit. I thought about using another email address to place an order but I think they'll be able to tell by the shipping address. They don't ship to post boxes either. I might need to enlist family members to place orders.
Debian point release
Debian did a point release, that is where they save up a bunch of what they consider important fixes and release them. This is their first point release since Bullseye came out. After rebooting my Ryzen 5900X machines the 2.5GbE add-in network card in both machines was no longer detected.
After much messing around with network cables and applying a couple of previous BIOS versions I am back to using the built-in 1GbE network port. Fortunately it didn't effect the Nvidia GPU machines which also have add-in 2.5GbE network cards. The Nvidia GPU machines use Realtek based cards whereas the Ryzen 5900X machines have Intel based cards. The Intel driver is built into the Linux kernel. I raised a bug report.
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