POEM: GPU Project Status

[Bryan]

Here are some times for 3 versus 4 WU

7970
11500 3WU 146.5k/day
15500 4WU 144.9k/day

GTX 780
11000 3WU 153.1k/day
14500 4WU 154.9k/day

There is virtually no difference between 3 and 4 at a time except WuProp goes up faster with 4 - the reason I changed I'm running the clocks at 1050.

I'm reserving 4 threads in all cases. The 7970 could be cut back to 1 or 2 and shouldn't have any effect ... VERY little CPU usage. The GTX 780 however IS using a full thread per WU.

[Slicker]

The GTX 780 however IS using a full thread per WU.

and nVidia doesn't care.

[rant]
nVidia has decided that since there is nothing in the OpenCL specs about whether kernels need to truly run asynchronously, unless there are more OpenCL command queues instantiated than there are CPU cores, it will run the kernel in synchronous mode which means the CPU will wait for the kernel to finish. That uses 100% of the CPU even though it really isn't doing anything but waiting. While many have complained about it, the excuse thus far has been.... OK. There hasn't been any and that's pissing many people off. Of course, nVidia would rather everyone use CUDA since that is proprietary and requires nVidia hardware. The CUDA apps use asynchronous kernels so my guess is that it is a marketing ploy. First they push OpenCL to get AMD to abandon CAL and Brook+ and then they change the drivers to encourage people to use CUDA. AMD's OpenCL compiler still has lots of bugs so nVidia doesn't feel threatened there. That, and AMD seems only interested in gamers now.[/rant]