27 September 2020

27th of September

Farm status
CPU only
Running Rosetta work.

Intel GPUs
Off. Did some Rosetta overnight.

Nvidia GPUs
Running bursts of GPUgrid and Milkyway work.

Raspberry Pis
Three running Einstein and Rosetta work. Ten running Einstein work.

For news on the Raspberry Pis see Marks Rpi Cluster


Updated CUDA
Nvidia released CUDA 11.1 to support the RTX30 cards. Not that anyone can get them at the moment.

There are reports some of the 3rd party cards are having issues due to changes they made to the power delivery sub-system. JayzTwoCents did a video on this where he tears down a number of RTX30 cards where you can see what some of the manufacturers did. The Nvidia Founders Edition cards are not effected.

There are reports the GPUgrid ACEMD3 app fails with unknown arch so hopefully they won't take too long to update it.

Einstein (OpenCL) apps work although may not be as fast as they could be.

So where does that leave me? I tend to buy GPU's that are around the 100-120 watt power level which the current cards are well above. There is a rumored RTX 3060 which might fit my needs. It will be some months until supply is sorted out and we don't have any details of the 3060, which means more waiting.

19 September 2020

19th of September

Farm status
CPU only
Running Einstein gravity wave work overnight

Intel GPUs
Off

Nvidia GPUs
Two running Einstein work overnight and some Milkyway work.

Raspberry Pis
Running Rosetta and Einstein work.

For news on the Raspberry Pis see Marks Rpi Cluster


BOINC 7.16.11 released
The Windows and MacOS versions of the BOINC client were released on the 8th of September. I asked the Linux maintainers to push the 7.16.11 client to buster-backports for Debian. They already had it in buster (the next release of Debian). Gianfranco has a ppa for Ubuntu which you can find here

I have updated all of my machines today, except for the Pi3's which are still on BOINC 7.14.2 due to not pointing to buster-backports.


Other news
I spent last weekend building both the proxy server and submit nodes. I had quite a bit of trouble with the submit node trying to get the hard disk drives in.

The submit node is in a Fractal Designs Meshify C case that can hold an ATX size motherboard. The drive cage doesn't allow enough room at the rear of the cage for power cables. The cage itself is removable and held in by 4 screws from the bottom of the case. I had to move it approximately 1 inch to the right. I ended up having to drill two holes in the bottom of the case and two into the drive cage for the screws.

05 September 2020

5th of September

Farm status
CPU only
Running Rosetta work

Intel GPUs
Off

Nvidia GPUs
Off

Raspberry Pis
Three running Rosetta and Einstein (50/50). Ten running Einstein

For news on the Raspberry Pis see Marks Rpi Cluster


The last week
We had a couple of warm days (it got up to 30 degrees C) where only the Raspberry Pis were running. It is only the start of spring. I have since got the CPU only machines going on Rosetta work.


New additions
I have ordered parts for two new machines, some of which have already arrived. One will be a replacement for the proxy server and the other is intended to be used as a HT Condor submit node.

Proxy server
Case Fractal Design Node 1100 (from old one)
PSU Seasonic (from old one)
Motherboard Asus B550M-K
CPU Ryzen 3300X
Cooler Noctua NH U9S
Memory HyperX Predator DDR4-3200 2 x 8GB (spare)
Network 2.5GbE NIC (spare) 
Storage 512GB Samsung 970Pro (from old one)

Submit node
Case Fractal Design Meshify C
PSU Seasonic G series 360w (spare)
Motherboard Asus X570-P/CSM
CPU Ryzen 3600 (spare)
Cooler Noctua NH U9S
Memory Kingston DDR4-2400 ECC 2 x 16GB
Network 10GbE Asus XG-C100C (spare)
Storage 512GB Samsung 970Pro and 2 x 8TB Toshiba X300 HDD (spare)

The ECC memory seems to be stuck at the courier depot. They say they attempted to deliver yesterday, but with 3 people at home none of us heard anything. They usually leave a card in the letterbox but didn't this time so I suspect they didn't even try.

As you can see I have reused parts where possible to keep the cost down. I might get a Meshify C Mini case for the proxy server rather than reusing the old case. I have 3 Toshiba X300 drives as spares but the case only has two 3.5" HDD bays.


Update: 10 Sep 2020
The ECC memory turned up the following day without me having to do anything. The other parts have arrived. I forgot the X570-P motherboard so had to place another order for it and the Meshify C Mini case. I am now waiting on them to arrive.