CPU info has changed

[jgillett]

Looking at 'Your computers' from BOINC I'm seeing a change in the info for CPU on this iMac. It's barely 2 months old and one of the first things I did was set up seti. Looked then and it was showing 8 processors, which is correct. Now it shows only 2 processors.

Nprmally it runs AP 6.02 and Setiathomecuda units. It was a long process getting the cuda stuff to run. Turned out there is a problem in the latest NVIDIA SDK drivers (libraries could not be found) and we had to drop back a level to fix it. Cuda started right up, but it stopped running the 'normal' Setiathome_v7 stuff as it was prior to getting cuda started. Now the AP 6.02 is all 'waiting to run' in favor of the pogs which is running 'high priority' (some units, but not all). Confused yet?

Think there has been a bug in app_info or something all along, but don't know where. Just confused as to why I should lose 6 processors - at least according to BOINC.

3.5 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4096 MB

Shot is what currently running looks like, including a stalled AP 6.02. Behind this is a huge list of Ready to start stuff.

Thoughts appreciated.

running.jpg

[myshortpencil]

Zombie67 is our resident iMac expert, among others. If he doesn't reply to this entry in a day, try sending a private message (PM) to him.

[Mumps]

Well, for starters, I see you're running 7.2.39. And only first joined pogs with that host on Saturday. Could it be that you upgraded to 7.2.39 then? Looks like 7.2.39 for Mac has only been available since Jan 28th, much more recent than your connecting the system to Seti. Some things to check would be starting with the local settings.

Under Tools->Computing Preferences, make sure you have "On multiprocessor systems, use at most" to something near 100%. To "reserve" a core to help feed the GPU better, you may want that set down to something like 90%. On your 8-thread system, that should reserve a full Core simply to meet the needs of feeding data for your 3 GPU WU's you're running, and only try running at most 7 WU's on the CPU threads at a time. If that's set to something like 25%, that could explain the missing 6 cores.

Another thing you could provide that would be helpful in trouble shooting this is the start of the logs from right after starting/restarting BOINC. Included in that should be a few lines identifying your CPU, and another configuration file that could be restricting you is named "cc_config.xml" You might see a line in the startup indicating that the number of processors has been set to 2 by an "ncpus" option in a cc_config.xml file. That would show up in the early parts of the log as a line saying:

Config: simulate 2 CPUs

[myshortpencil]

This looks like your list of computers at SETI. It looks like you are running Darwin for the computers showing only 2 cores for your i7-4771. Is that right?

[Mumps]

Yup. Darwin is MacOS.

[myshortpencil]

Yup. Darwin is MacOS.

Ok. I'll shut up.

[jgillett]

Zombie67 is our resident iMac expert, among others. If he doesn't reply to this entry in a day, try sending a private message (PM) to him.

Tank U!

[jgillett]

Well, for starters, I see you're running 7.2.39. And only first joined pogs with that host on Saturday. Could it be that you upgraded to 7.2.39 then? Looks like 7.2.39 for Mac has only been available since Jan 28th, much more recent than your connecting the system to Seti. Some things to check would be starting with the local settings.

If I remember correctly (I'm old - therefore allowed to forget!), 7.2.39 went up a few days at most before I joined the pogs challenge.

Under Tools->Computing Preferences, make sure you have "On multiprocessor systems, use at most" to something near 100%. To "reserve" a core to help feed the GPU better, you may want that set down to something like 90%. On your 8-thread system, that should reserve a full Core simply to meet the needs of feeding data for your 3 GPU WU's you're running, and only try running at most 7 WU's on the CPU threads at a time. If that's set to something like 25%, that could explain the missing 6 cores.

Right now that is set to 0 (zero) - i.e., ignore. I just set it to 90% and one of the two running pogs immediately dropped to 'waiting to run'. So now both an AP and a pogs are stalled. All 3 GPUs continue to run (actually it's the CPUs that are funky). Set it back to 0 and the stalled pogs started again.

Another thing you could provide that would be helpful in trouble shooting this is the start of the logs from right after starting/restarting BOINC. Included in that should be a few lines identifying your CPU, and another configuration file that could be restricting you is named "cc_config.xml" You might see a line in the startup indicating that the number of processors has been set to 2 by an "ncpus" option in a cc_config.xml file. That would show up in the early parts of the log as a line saying:

Config: simulate 2 CPUs

cc_config never had existed on this system. Found one online somewhere and put it up. Such a deal... It had <ncpus>2</ncpus>. Just changed that to 8 with the running results shown below.

That's more than just a 5-Star difference!! Good catch. Should I change it back to 7 just to give me some elbow room on the rest of the machine?

Current cc-config is simply...

<cc_config>
<log_flags>
</log_flags>
<options>
<use_all_gpus>1</use_all_gpus>
<ncpus>8</ncpus>
</options>
</cc_config>


Suggestions for something 'correct'?

And one last thing - how do I get this thing to start running the Setiathome_v7 CPU units again? They were running fine prior to changes made to get the GPU stuff running.

Thank you!!

[jgillett]

This looks like your list of computers at SETI. It looks like you are running Darwin for the computers showing only 2 cores for your i7-4771. Is that right?

Yes, those are mine (except for one you probably recognize), but now fixed, thanks to Mumps!

[John P. Myers]

Personally i'd remove the NCPUS line completely, unless you're trying to trick the server into thinking you have more cores than you actually do. To run the number of cores you actually have, or less, NCPUS isn't needed. It can be set in your BOINC manager.