The experiment begins.

I have sucessfully attached my PS3 to both PS3GRID and SIMAP and have work from both projects.

This will be interesting to see what happens. I hope things run normally and switching between apps causes no problems.

1 SIMAP just downloaded and started krunchin.

I have my resource shares set at 4096 and 1, so after this first work unit finishes my PS3 will go mostly back to PS3GRID work, unless there is none and SIMAP will only be used to fill in any dry spells, if they have work.
____________
Alpha Tester ~~ BOINCin since 10-Apr-2004 (2.28) ~~~ Join team USA

I also have SIMAP attached. So far, I have downloaded two results (both SIMAP so far), and returned one. It took about 99 minutes to crunch. The second result is still crunching as of now. The returned result is still waiting for its wingman to return to see if it validates. You can watch the results here:

http://boinc.bio.wzw.tum.de/boincsimap/results.php?hostid=76483

I have set SIMAP to No New Work until some HMMER results get released, and I can validate that the HMMER application works too. After all, I have other machines that are much faster at crunching SIMAP. My PS3 is primarily for projects that take advantage of its unique qualities. However, it sure would be nice if SIMAP had work all the time, so I could use it to fill in the gaps for when there is no work available here. SETI could do that, if it worked...

____________
Reno, NV
Team: SETI.USA

I also have SIMAP attached. ..snip.. , so I could use it to fill in the gaps for when there is no work available here.

SIMAP has released some HMMER results, and I was able to download one first try. I should have it returned by the end of the day.
____________
Reno, NV
Team: SETI.USA

Exactly, but I don\'t use NNW, I have both active and set my resource share high for PS3GRID to 4096 and 1 for SIMAP, so 4096:1 gives 99.98% to PS3 and 0.02% to SIMAP. It will only run 1 SIMAP task, which will put that project over budget and will not run another for a long time, unless PS3GRID runs dry of work and my PS3 runs dry of PS3GRID work.

I need someone to get the SETI app working, in order to have a real backup plan.

Maybe the previous results were noisy, or maybe it is the magical reboot, but in any case, I now have a S@H application running for 2 hours and 20% complete. Fingers crossed.
____________
Reno, NV
Team: SETI.USA

Maybe the previous results were noisy, or maybe it is the magical reboot, but in any case, I now have a S@H application running for 2 hours and 20% complete. Fingers crossed.

There is a fundamental difference between the Cell processor and a normal processor: The spes are not sharable nor are accounted in the boinc CPU time.

If you start a PPE+SPE program and then the PS3GRID application (also PPE+SPE), it would look that it is running but instead it is just polling to see when the 6 SPEs are free. When the first ends then PS3GRID app really starts the calculation, but it may be to late to get credits because the BOINC client saw the PPE at work and summed up CPU time.

This may be the cause of some very long run that you have experienced in the past.

Yep, it took the full 22 hours, so it started all over again. I guess the checkpointing didn\'t work. That makes the run time over 52 hours. Ugh.
____________
Reno, NV
Team: SETI.USA

OK, My SIMAP work unit finished. With a low resource share heres what happened. Resumed SIMAP and got one task from SIMAP, The PS3 task paused and the SIMAP task ran 59:49, paused, went back to running PS3GRID task which finished ok in the 22 hours. That was July 31st. I got several more PS3GRID tasks over the next few days. Then it got near deadline so the SIMAP finished, another 45 minutes. It completed OK and validated. Then my PS3 went back to finishing the PS3GRID task, which also finished in 22 hours and validated. So at least with the SIMAP app which is PowerPC only it does not interrupt PS3GRID work. All mine over the last 10 have completed in about the same time in the range of 79,700 to 80,200 minutes. I do not get any taking 30 hours.

Of course SIMAP only had work for 1 day and is now out until September 1st, so it does not make a good backup project for when PS3GRID runs out.

This weekend I will try the seti app again.

As a further note I saw ResielSieve has a PowerPC app, but I could not figure out how to manually download it and the references in the forum are outdated with non working links. I did not have time to fully pursue or ask anyone on the forum.

Docking at home has a PowerPC app, of course they have no work until they move.

I haven\'t checked many other projects.

I haven\'t seen anything on any other projects about anyone developing specific PS3 apps (PPC+SPE) except for the one on the Seti forum (outside of PS3GRID that is).

@zombie,
Which seti app were you running, regular, enhanced or the one optimized to use SPE\'s mentioned somewhere in the forum ?
Were did you download it from ?
I would like to try the same one and see what happens for me.

I also did not have any problems with the 3 SIMAP results I crunched.

Docking at home has a PowerPC app, of course they have no work until they move.

@zombie,
Which seti app were you running, regular, enhanced or the one optimized to use SPE\'s mentioned somewhere in the forum ?
Were did you download it from ?
I would like to try the same one and see what happens for me.

I also did not have any problems with the 3 SIMAP results I crunched.

That PPC Docking app is for Mac/PPC, not Linux/PPC (assuming we are looking at the same thing).

I used the one referenced in the thread over on S@H:

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=39910

As a further note I saw ResielSieve has a PowerPC app, but I could not figure out how to manually download it and the references in the forum are outdated with non working links. I did not have time to fully pursue or ask anyone on the forum.

I haven\'t checked many other projects.

I haven\'t seen anything on any other projects about anyone developing specific PS3 apps (PPC+SPE) except for the one on the Seti forum (outside of PS3GRID that is).

There is a fundamental difference between the Cell processor and a normal processor: The spes are not sharable nor are accounted in the boinc CPU time.

If you start a PPE+SPE program and then the PS3GRID application (also PPE+SPE), it would look that it is running but instead it is just polling to see when the 6 SPEs are free. When the first ends then PS3GRID app really starts the calculation, but it may be to late to get credits because the BOINC client saw the PPE at work and summed up CPU time.

This may be the cause of some very long run that you have experienced in the past.

Continued from another thread where we got off topic...

I\'m actually running at PS3GRID = 136.61 and Yoyo = 24 and SIMAP = 1.
I need the 24 for my other computers, but on the PS3 this gave me about 6 tasks a week for PS3GRID (until they got a little longer) and then 19 hours a week for Yoyo. I have not had any problems in the past 2 or 3 weeks running this way. Generally it will run PS3GRID and Yoyo and only fall back to some SIMAP if there is not work available from the others.

I will watch closely, but since my last restart I have 2 completed PS3GRID and the 3rd task running with a 4th ready to go, so it should only be a couple of more days before some yoyo has to run.

I\'ve been running these several months in combination, without any problem.

Do you have, in your general preferences for the venue the PS3 runs under,
Leave applications in memory while suspended?
(suspended applications will consume swap space if \'yes\')
set to NO or unchecked

if NO, this should remove the app from memory when switching occurs and that would have to release the SPE\'s.

Several of the users had this problem until changing above setting, then it went away.

---
Todays findings:

With my current preferences I should get 19 hours of Yoyo per week and the rest PS3GRID. SIMAP is so low that the ones that recently have run should have put its debt over and they should not run again for a long time, unless the other two run out of work.

Since my last restart heres what has happened so far:

• 1st PS3GRID task begins
  
• 2nd PS3GRID on Ready to Run
  
• 1st PS3GRID Completed, 2nd PS3GRID Began
  
• 3rd PS3GRID on Ready to Run
  
• 2nd PS3GRID Completed, 3rd PS3GRID Began
  
• 4th PS3GRID on Ready to Run and 1st Yoyo on Ready to Run
  
• 3rd PS3GRID Completed, 4th PS3GRID Began
  
• After 1:03:03 hours The 4th PS3GRID task suspended and the 1st Yoyo began, this would be correct for a switch applications setting of 60 minutes as I have, as it is the next checkpoint after 60 minutes.
  
• 1st Yoyo completed after 3:11:56 hours, it does not checkpoint as it is a wrapper application, so there would not be a switch until it finished, no percent completed shows. Checking yoyo shows completed status and credit granted.
  
• 4th PS3GRID restarted.
  
• 5th PS3GRID on Ready to Run
  

Now to see if it finishes, 10:39 hours gone shown on screen, checking log shows it started at 1:10:00 AM and it is now 10:39 AM, so that is correctish 1:03 hour s previously plus 9:39 hours now. The last three took 24:5X hours.

This leaves me 15:49 hours this period, 7 days since restart, of yoyo to run and after the current PS3GRID finishes about 2 more of those unless the long term debt has changed those, I should have reset all those to zero.

Now I\'m confused, that percentage comes out wrong. I can not figure out where I came up with these numbers of 136.61/24/1 gives me 142.01/24.94/1.03 hours per project per week which is not what I wanted as that will not give me 6 PS3GRID tasks a week. I changed something somewhere, or forgot to. Oh it should have been 186 not 136, Can\'t read my own writing I guess or it was late one night.

Recomputing now for current length gives me this combination 205.38/24/1 which gives me 149.76/17.5/0.72 hours per project per week. I\'m trying to complete 6 PS3GRID tasks a week for PS3GRID but need to keep the 24 and 1 shares for the other projects as those are shared with other computers running different combinations of projects, that is why the weird setting for the resource share on PS3GRID.

Check back tomorrow for an update.

Continued...

• 4th PS3GRID Resumed.
  
• 5th PS3GRID Ready to run.
  
• 4th PS3GRID Completed. Note 1.
  
• 5th PS3GRID started.
  
• 2nd Yoyo downloaded and Ready to Run.
  
• 6th PS3GRID downloaded and Ready to Run.
  
• 5th PS3GRID stopped, ran from 12:55:51 AM to 1:57:03 AM, again just over 1 hour.
  
• 2nd Yoyo started and ran to completion of 1:16:41 hours.
  
• 5th PS3GRID resumed and still running, now at 06:38:00 hours CPU time.
  

Note 1: So the 4th PS3GRID completed successfully. This was run 1 hour, then removed from memory to run the 1st yoyo, then resumed where it ran in full to completion. The completion time was in the normal range 1 day 00:50:46 hours which is within a dozen seconds of the previous ones time completed.

Checking results logs on yoyo, shows no errors, but they just cleared November off and I missed recording it. When I viewed it a few days ago, I saw no errors. I have about 70 yoyo recorded for October, all success.

In this time of two months, there has been no hung work, every task switch is normal, with one exception but that was when I was moving from Harddrive to USB drive to flash card and back to USB drive. I attributed that to my fooling around.

Total run so far PS3GRID 4 completed at 99:30:50 hours(out of 6 for a week) and 4:28:37 hours of yoyo (out of 17.5 hours estimated for a week). This equates to 103:59:27 hours total so far. Percentage PS3GRID 95.69%, Yoyo 4.31%. BOINC shows my current shares at PS3GRID 89.14% and Yoyo 10.42%. So PS3GRID is a little high and yoyo needs to catch up. There are 64:00:33 hours left in the week (since restart). It looks correct to me, the long term debt is coming into effect some, hence the higher percent on PS3GRID. I also changed my share during this, so that may have thrown it off a little, but that only took 7 hours off of yoyo\'s share and gave it to PS3GRID.

I have not had any problems with the applications of either project \'hanging\' (that is running and showing no progress) as others have reported. Mine seems to be running and switching between the two without problem and at the correct interval per scheduler and checkpointing rules.

Continued...

• 5th PS3GRID Completed 1day 00:50:25 hours, again this was a split run.
  
• 6th PS3GRID started, ran 01:01:07 hours then suspended.
  
• 3rd Yoyo stated and ran to completeion at 2:46:20 hours.
  
• 6th PS3GRID restarted and now running.
  
• 7th PS3GRID downloaded and Ready to Run.
  

Still switching and running smoothly.

Total for period:
PS3GRID 5 completed at 124:21:15 hours (out of 6 for a week) 95.94%
and
Yoyo is at 7:14:57 hours (out of 17.5 hours estimated for a week) 5.59%
---
Total 129:36:12 out of 168 for a week.

PS3GRID is still over percentage, but Yoyo has caught up some from 4.31% to 5.59% (should be at 10.42%).

So by my estimate after this 6th PS3GRID finishes, Yoyo should run for about 10 hours of work. Now I\'m guessing that since I already have 1 PS3GRID ready to go, the same thing that happened on the last two will happen, and that it will start, I will get some work from yoyo that will be ready to run, and then after 1 hour the PS3GRID will suspend and yoyo will run. The question will be will it only run 1 yoyo or will it run more to catch up ?

Now since I didn\'t really reset the LTD to zero when I started, according to BOINC it may already be within range.

Stay tuned, PS3GRID task #6 ends in 12 hours.

(This is presented as a sample to new users on how BOINC works with multiple projects and resource shares).

Thanks KK. All these notes are with \"leave in memory\" set to no? Can you please confirm?
____________
Reno, NV
Team: SETI.USA

Thanks KK. All these notes are with \"leave in memory\" set to no? Can you please confirm?

Continued...

All still running smoothly.

• 6th PS3GRID finished.
  
• 4th Yoyo run and finished 00:24:13 hours.
  
• --- New period begins
  
• 1st PS3GRID finished.
  
• 2nd PS3GRID running and 1 Yoyo at Ready to run.
  

Total for period:
PS3GRID 6 completed at 149:12:11 hours (out of 6 for a week) 95.12%
and
Yoyo is at 7:39:10 hours (out of 17.5 hours estimated for a week) 4.87%
---
Total 156:51:22 out of 168 for a week.

Close enough for me to my resources share, since I did not manually result all the LTD to zero, this has thrown it off a little. I will try that some day soon.

Basically for a week I have run 6 PS3GRID tasks and 4 yoyo tasks, all switched from one to the other without problems. The important part is to make sure your preferences are set to remove applications from memory, that is the \'Leave applications in memory while suspended\' is unchecked.

Thanks for running the experiment, and documenting the results!


____________
Reno, NV
Team: SETI.USA

Thanks for running the experiment, and documenting the results!

I\'m about to start this test to see how this behaves.

I reset manually all project long terms debts to 0.000000 and re-started PS3GRID-BOINC.

The effect this has is now each project, of the three has downloaded 1 task ready to run.

I set all projects to no new work and suspended the waiting tasks. As soon as the one task for PS3GRID finishes in about 5-1/2 hours and uploads, I will reset the long terms debts again to zero, restart BOINC and release the work waiting and resume new work, that way I can start from zero with fresh un-started work.

I\'ll report back next week-end the results of test, and see how close the run times come out to resource shares.

The effect this has is now each project, of the three has downloaded 1 task ready to run.

Very interesting !
Btw. what happens, if a no SPE application would started ? - Would the SPEs been released from the previos SPE work ?

Heres the results of a 1 week test.

Due to some complications I was not able to monitor this closely, my results came out slightly off because I was not able to check the times of work in progress at the 168 hour mark and the interruption of work availability while the server was migrating. But it is close. I\'ll try again sometime.

Point is it does work with multiple project including those that use SPE\'s (PS3GRID,yoyo) and those that do not (SIMAP).

I reset these 3 projects manually to 0 LTD and STD and restarted all.

yoyo is not a project, it\'s a wrapper for projects but you don\'t get credit for the work, the yoyo@home account does. /bangs head

You can run DNET OGR or DNET RC5 and SIMAP at the same time natively.
I use the command line version of Boinc and access the PS3 via an ssh session.
The PS3 40gb model shows 114 watts on the Kill-a-watt meter when running DNET which uses 7 cores automatically and generates 20T OGR or 3,300 blocks in RC5 per day, per PS3.

I have documented how to achieve this here: http://www.free-dc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=12726

YMMV ;)

Some news from SETI@home :
Gaurav has build a Astropuse binary for the PS3 which make a good usage of the SPEs....