Farm status
Intel GPUs
Running Seti overnight. Three running off CPDN tasks
Nvidia GPUs
Running Seti overnight on two machines.
Raspberry Pis
Running Einstein BRP4 work
Other farm news
The two machines with the mATX motherboards have now been transplanted from mATX cases into ATX cases which allows for a 2nd GPU to be installed later. If the rumours are correct Nvidia is expected to announce availability of the GTX 1050 in September.
The weather has warmed up so I am now running machines overnight even though winter hasn't officially ended.
Some of the Intel GPU machines have been running Weather at Home 2 climate models which have been taking as long as 220 hours depending on the region that the work unit covers. I still have a few left to complete before I can apply updates to the machines. CPDN work units usually don't like being interrupted so I try and finish off any that are running before applying updates.
Einstein Intel OpenCL testing
Einstein got some information from Intel regarding their OpenCL not working and have adjusted some tolerances in their validator. Intel were saying that their implementation of fused multiply-add instructions were more accurate than before.
I ran a batch of OpenCL tasks on two machines using the Intel GPU with mixed results. Some work unit types (BRP4) mostly validated and some (BRP6) all failed to validate. The BRP6's were taking around 8 hours each work unit to process. One of the machines fetched way too much work which I ended up having to abort after a few days of running in high priority mode.
Farm configuration
The Intel GPU part of the farm consist of 8 machines with i7-6700 CPU's and HD Graphics 530 built-in.
There are 4 Nvidia GPU machines. Two of them have i7-5820K CPU's with a pair of GTX750Ti cards. The other two have i3-6100T CPU's with a single GTX970 each.
There are 9 Raspberry Pi3's.
30 August 2016
20 August 2016
20th of August
Farm status
Intel GPUs
Half running Seti and the other half running both CPDN and Seti
Nvidia GPUs
Two off at the shop
Raspberry Pis
All running Einstein BRP4 work
Farm updates
The two new dedicated GPU crunchers are in the shop. They are going from a Fractal Designs ARC Mini (mATX) case to an ARC Midi (ATX) case. That should allow me to use the bottom PCIe slot in them without hitting the power supply. I looked at getting the Asus Z170 Pro motherboard but only the gaming version seems to be available so I took the cheaper option and went with moving the existing mATX motherboards into a bigger case.
While dropping the two GPU crunchers off at the shop this morning I picked up the remaining i7-6700 which has now been setup. Its running a bit of each project to get some numbers up. I will switch it over to Seti once it finishes off its Einstein work. This brings the Intel GPU part of the cluster up to 8 machines.
While this is going on there are a bunch of updates for the Raspberry Pi's so I am backing them up and then updating. The updates don't take too long but backing up the SD card takes a while.
Future upgrades
As I mentioned in my last post I am awaiting some movement in the GPU crunching space and for AMD to see what they've got available, A couple of interesting messages threads I've been reading lately regarding a 40 core CPU cruncher using dual Xeon v4 processors. It looks like it could be a replacement for my two i7-5860K machines. All I can do at the moment is wait.
One thing I am looking at doing is replacing the disks in the various crunchers. Some of them have an Intel SSD plus a hard disk and the remainder have hard disks of varying sizes. I prefer to have things standardised. The hard disks that went into the dedicated GPU crunchers are 320Gb drives manufactured in 2008 that I have reused from previous machines. They work fine but are rather slow.
Intel GPUs
Half running Seti and the other half running both CPDN and Seti
Nvidia GPUs
Two off at the shop
Raspberry Pis
All running Einstein BRP4 work
Farm updates
The two new dedicated GPU crunchers are in the shop. They are going from a Fractal Designs ARC Mini (mATX) case to an ARC Midi (ATX) case. That should allow me to use the bottom PCIe slot in them without hitting the power supply. I looked at getting the Asus Z170 Pro motherboard but only the gaming version seems to be available so I took the cheaper option and went with moving the existing mATX motherboards into a bigger case.
While dropping the two GPU crunchers off at the shop this morning I picked up the remaining i7-6700 which has now been setup. Its running a bit of each project to get some numbers up. I will switch it over to Seti once it finishes off its Einstein work. This brings the Intel GPU part of the cluster up to 8 machines.
While this is going on there are a bunch of updates for the Raspberry Pi's so I am backing them up and then updating. The updates don't take too long but backing up the SD card takes a while.
Future upgrades
As I mentioned in my last post I am awaiting some movement in the GPU crunching space and for AMD to see what they've got available, A couple of interesting messages threads I've been reading lately regarding a 40 core CPU cruncher using dual Xeon v4 processors. It looks like it could be a replacement for my two i7-5860K machines. All I can do at the moment is wait.
One thing I am looking at doing is replacing the disks in the various crunchers. Some of them have an Intel SSD plus a hard disk and the remainder have hard disks of varying sizes. I prefer to have things standardised. The hard disks that went into the dedicated GPU crunchers are 320Gb drives manufactured in 2008 that I have reused from previous machines. They work fine but are rather slow.
14 August 2016
14th of August
Farm Status
Intel GPUs
Half (3) running Seti and the other half running CPDN plus Seti
Nvidia GPUs
One running GPUgrid overnight.
Raspberry Pis
All running Einstein BRP4 work
Project update - Einstein
They were off for the week while upgrading their web site. Its still got a few issues but its running and the backend BOINC components are also running. In fact the Raspberry Pi's didn't run out of work so I have reduced their cache settings back to a more reasonable level.
Hardware upgrades
I got the two GPU crunchers last weekend. They are both i3 based systems who's purpose is to run a graphics card or two. I'm not happy with them. Sure they work okay, well one does. One has a faulty case fan so until its replaced I can't run the GPU in it. The problem is they are mATX boards in a Fractal Designs ARC Mini case and there isn't enough room to put a 2nd GPU in. Its designed for motherboards up to the mATX size. The motherboard has a 2nd PCIe slot, but its so close to the edge of the board a double-slot card won't fit because the power supply is in the way.
I have ordered a couple more ARC Midi cases and Z170 Pro motherboards (they're ATX size) and will cannibalise the mATX machines for parts.
I picked up one of the two i7-6700's on the weekend. Its up and running. It did some Einstein and some Asteroids work to get a burn-in and is now running Seti work. This brings the Intel GPU part of the farm up to 7 machines.
Wish list
I am waiting on a Pascal-based replacement for the GTX750Ti to be announced by Nvidia. I have no idea if they'll call it a GTX1050Ti or not or if they'll be as good as the 750Ti.
I am also waiting for AMD Zen to be released. They sound like they'll make good multi-core CPU crunchers, but we'll have to wait and see. The teasers we've been given by AMD indicate they'll have a 8 core/16 thread CPU that uses a maximum of 95 watts. What their performance is like we don't know yet.
Intel GPUs
Half (3) running Seti and the other half running CPDN plus Seti
Nvidia GPUs
One running GPUgrid overnight.
Raspberry Pis
All running Einstein BRP4 work
Project update - Einstein
They were off for the week while upgrading their web site. Its still got a few issues but its running and the backend BOINC components are also running. In fact the Raspberry Pi's didn't run out of work so I have reduced their cache settings back to a more reasonable level.
Hardware upgrades
I got the two GPU crunchers last weekend. They are both i3 based systems who's purpose is to run a graphics card or two. I'm not happy with them. Sure they work okay, well one does. One has a faulty case fan so until its replaced I can't run the GPU in it. The problem is they are mATX boards in a Fractal Designs ARC Mini case and there isn't enough room to put a 2nd GPU in. Its designed for motherboards up to the mATX size. The motherboard has a 2nd PCIe slot, but its so close to the edge of the board a double-slot card won't fit because the power supply is in the way.
I have ordered a couple more ARC Midi cases and Z170 Pro motherboards (they're ATX size) and will cannibalise the mATX machines for parts.
I picked up one of the two i7-6700's on the weekend. Its up and running. It did some Einstein and some Asteroids work to get a burn-in and is now running Seti work. This brings the Intel GPU part of the farm up to 7 machines.
Wish list
I am waiting on a Pascal-based replacement for the GTX750Ti to be announced by Nvidia. I have no idea if they'll call it a GTX1050Ti or not or if they'll be as good as the 750Ti.
I am also waiting for AMD Zen to be released. They sound like they'll make good multi-core CPU crunchers, but we'll have to wait and see. The teasers we've been given by AMD indicate they'll have a 8 core/16 thread CPU that uses a maximum of 95 watts. What their performance is like we don't know yet.
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