Hi all,

I have a dual core system with a single GPU hanging out in the basement doing nothing but full-time BOINC work. I'd like to split the time between GPUGRID and WCG by assigning 1 core to WCG and the GPU along with the other core to GPUGRID. My settings were previously set to only allow 20% of the processor to be used along with the GPU, but I've changed this to 100% in both the main settings page and the "home" sub-settings page. However, after updating, the work unit for GPUGRID is still reporting only ~20% of the processor core being used along with the GPU.

What's up?

Thanks
G

However, after updating, the work unit for GPUGRID is still reporting only ~20% of the processor core being used along with the GPU.

GPUGRID 8.20 Long runs (8-12 hours on fastest card) (cuda60) I621-NATHAN_KIDc22_full3-9-10-RND7022_0
18.57 (CPU %)

Hi all,

I have a dual core system with a single GPU hanging out in the basement doing nothing but full-time BOINC work. I'd like to split the time between GPUGRID and WCG by assigning 1 core to WCG and the GPU along with the other core to GPUGRID. My settings were previously set to only allow 20% of the processor to be used along with the GPU, but I've changed this to 100% in both the main settings page and the "home" sub-settings page. However, after updating, the work unit for GPUGRID is still reporting only ~20% of the processor core being used along with the GPU.

What's up?

Thanks
G

But I am not sure what CPU settings you are referring to in the main settings page and the "home" sub-settings page. Maybe you mean "Use at most % CPU Time"? That throttles the CPU to reduce power, but won't change the CPU usage percentage as far as I know, since both the CPU and the GPU will be idle at the same time, but I don't use that setting anyway and have not looked into it.

I would recommend you change the 20% back to 100%, on the next line down on the same page, as now your pc will only be using one cpu core to crunch. The 20% number you chose probably does NOT work like you think it does, cpu's are either working or not working. The 20% tells the pc to use 100% of your cpu for 20% of the time, when crunching for Boinc. Think of it as slices of pie, you have 10 slices of pie, at the 20% setting you are eating 2 COMPLETE pieces of pie, while 8 pieces sit untouched. You are NOT eating 20% of the WHOLE pie, nibbling some off of this piece and some off of that piece, constantly nibbling.

I'm not sure if that will give you an equal weighting of CPU tasks or not

So, if you have your projects at equal resource share, and you have even 1 project that can do CPU work, in a system where the GPU can only do GPUGrid work, then what will likely happen is:
- the GPU does GPUGrid work, getting huge REC (Recent Estimated Credit) for that project
- work fetch will ask any other project for CPU work, before ever asking GPUGrid, because GPUGrid's REC is so high
- GPUGrid will never do CPU tasks on that system, because GPUGrid's REC is so high, and the GPU must do GPUGrid work

No.

The logic is correctly as follows: Get as much work done as possible (loading idle GPU Resources before filling idle CPU Resources), and try to honor Resource Share if you can (by maintaining a REC value per project per host).

How would having separate REC values per resource, be better? In this particular scenario, you'd be doing EVEN MORE GPUGrid work as compared to other projects, thus not honoring Resource Share optimally.

So far as I know, there is no easy way to: Have Project A work on GPU tasks, and have Projects A and B work equally on CPU tasks. I've run into the same behavior before, when WCG was running the HCC GPU tasks. WCG REC went way high, and because I had WCG Resource Share set equal to my other CPU tasks, I stopped getting WCG CPU tasks. I expected it, because I believe it is correct behavior. But I wanted to run WCG CPU tasks. So, I countered the behavior by adjusting WCG Resource Share to be way higher, approximately equal to how much additional REC % those WCG HCC GPU tasks were gaining. That was the only way for me to influence BOINC to still request WCG CPU tasks, despite doing WCG HCC GPU tasks.

If you'd like to read over 2 decent design documents, which provide examples and reasons for the logic, they are here:
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/ClientSched
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/ClientSchedOctTen

If you'd like to further explain an approach you think would be better, then you may. I'd listen. Use terms like "Resource Share", "REC", "Project", and "Resource".

Thanks,
Jacob

The bowels of task scheduling and work fetch scheduling... are indeed tunnels where flashlights are required.

BOINC was designed with a "Resource Share per project" concept, and to this day, BOINC honors it as best it can on a given host, even if the host has various types/speeds of resources.

(One can imagine a BOINC project that utilizes "network" as a resource, and you could get credit based off of it... or perhaps "hard disk space" as a resource, and you could get credit based off allowing others to use it. GPUs and CPUs are the primary resources... for now.)