WinXP vs. Linux - Help?

[Enkidu]

I just installed linux on a machine that has been running XP for awhile and am a little concerned with the benchmarks I am seeing...

Under XP, it is as follows:
Measured floating point speed 493.36 million ops/sec
Measured integer speed 1227.1 million ops/sec

Under Linux it is as follows:
Measured floating point speed 291.55 million ops/sec
Measured integer speed 564.6 million ops/sec

Virtually half - what on earth? Anyone seen this before, and should I be worried? I am running Slackware 10.1 with kernel 2.4.29, this is a P3-550mhz processor.

I also have a p4 1.6ghz running the same linux version that is posting the following:
Measured floating point speed 439.02 million ops/sec
Measured integer speed 1253.1 million ops/sec
Which again, seems unbelievably low to me.

All of the above are using BOINC 4.19 CLI.

Thoughts, ideas, suggestions - all welcome!

Thanks,
Enk

[rajausa]

Ive noticed that the floating point speed and integer speeds on linux systems are lower than that of XP systems most of the time ; but not always . If you go to the Seti message boards and scroll through to linux or linux benchmarking you will notice that they have lower benching on their linux systems as well. From what ive seen other people have questioned this as well. From what i have read some of those machines putting out lower benching are also putting out alot of WU per day !!!! Just to let you know Enk i have no linux systems running of my own at this time. I use to a long time ago . Hope some of that helps :thup: :)

[Enkidu]

Just a follow-up for anyone else who has similar problems. I was able to significantly improve benchmark scores by installing a linux optimized boinc client. Available from several places, I got mine from: http://www.pperry.f2s.com/

Before & after benchmarks follow...


p3-550 BEFORE: (Standard linux BOINC client)
Measured floating point speed 291.55 million ops/sec
Measured integer speed 564.6 million ops/sec

p3-550 AFTER: (Optimized linux BOINC client)
Measured floating point speed 551.98 million ops/sec
Measured integer speed 1130.42 million ops/sec

-----------------------

p4 1.6 BEFORE: (Standard linux BOINC client)
Measured floating point speed 439.02 million ops/sec
Measured integer speed 1253.1 million ops/sec

p4 1.6 AFTER: (Optimized linux BOINC client)
Measured floating point speed 908.22 million ops/sec
Measured integer speed 2160.24 million ops/sec

Hope others find this helpful.
Enk

[Shabadoo]

I have run both Seti and Einstein using Fedora Core 2 and 3. I noticed the poor bench marks under linux and discovered the optimised boinc clients also. The wu completion times under linux were generally still 20 pct longer than the windows version.
I am now running the windows versions of Einstein on the linux boxes using wine. I got a 60 pct improvement in processing speed.
Today I am loading Fedora core 3 on a windows box. I am going to try the windows version of Seti using wine. I will let you know how it comes out.

[Enkidu]

Interesting.

In a few days I'll have some work unit completion times for comparison to the windows installs. I'll post them when I have them.

[TC]

This has been pretty well discussed in the berkeley forum. The compiler for windows uses some tricks that make the boinc benchmark look a lot better than it actually should. In other words you can't really compare the two and come away with a meaningful conclusion.

[Enkidu]

Nod - my only concern is actual completion times :)

[TC]

Yeah I hear ya. I tried compiling my own boinc client and seti binary on linux and got very little improvement in completion times. The benchmark looked a lot better, but actual performance didn't improve a whole lot.

[Shabadoo]

This computer is a linux fedora core 3 OS running the windows 4.19 version of seti under WINE. It is an athlon xp 1700 clocked at 1739 Meg. The completion times are about 3:35. It has completed 7 work units in 25 hours.
http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=775629


Created 17 Apr 2005 22:32:15 UTC
Total Credit 160.98
Recent average credit 46.93
CPU type GenuineIntel x86 Family 6 Model 6 Stepping 1 1739MHz
Number of CPUs 1
Operating System Microsoft Windows 95 , (04.00.0950.00)
Memory 250.11 MB
Cache 976.56 KB
Swap space 511.99 MB
Total disk space 7.66 GB
Free Disk Space 4.09 GB
Measured floating point speed 1593.63 million ops/sec
Measured integer speed 3798.07 million ops/sec


54044281 13157797 17 Apr 2005 22:42:21 UTC 18 Apr 2005 16:37:37 UTC Over Success Done 13,368.49 41.71 41.71
54044277 13157798 17 Apr 2005 22:42:21 UTC 18 Apr 2005 9:08:07 UTC Over Success Done 12,522.74 39.07 39.07

[Enkidu]

Well, it definitely appears the linux client crunches slower. These two are the same physical machine, I just reloaded the box with a new OS and made note of the completion times prior to doing so.

WINDOWS COMPLETION TIMES (In Seconds)
41,302.54
40,705.47
40,881.86
41,121.78
41,369.40
41,384.41

LINUX COMPLETION TIMES (In Seconds)
47,455.60
47,526.11
47,298.14
47,240.43

This is representative of a nearly two hour increase. This is definitely annoying - I guess I'm going back to windows - it seems silly to install such a "tight" and lightweight system like linux - and then have to install a hefty window manager and Wine to emulate windows just to get similar completion times.

For those that are curious the machine, for windows, ran Windows XP Professional SP2, for linux ran Slackware 10.1 (Kernel 2.4.29)

CPU type GenuineIntel Pentium III 550mhz (Katmai)
Number of CPUs 1
Memory 250.2 MB
Cache 512 KB
Total disk space 18.61 GB
Free Disk Space 18.26 GB

[TC]

This computer is a linux fedora core 3 OS running the windows 4.19 version of seti under WINE. It is an athlon xp 1700 clocked at 1739 Meg. The completion times are about 3:35. It has completed 7 work units in 25 hours.


Any tips on getting boinc to run under wine? I tried it a few weeks ago under core 3 and it would just spit out errors about not being able to read cpu time or something to that effect, and after a while it would quit.

[Shabadoo]

TC,
Use windows version 4.19
From a terminal
$cd to BOINC folder:

mine is at /home/joe/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/BOINC

$export WINEDEBUG="err-all,warn-all,fixme-all,trace-all"
$wine boinc_cli.exe -return_results_immediately

By exporting the "fixme-all" messages to WINEDEBUG you don't see them.
Notice that I am running the boinc_cli not the boinc_gui.

Leave the terminal open and you will get your activity messages from Boinc.

If you want to monitor progress of a work unit you can
$grep "fraction_done" client_state.xml
$grep "checkpoint_cpu_time" client_state.xml

Its very stable
take a look at hostid 775629

I have also been running it on Einstein on a couple of Bartons for several weeks with no reboots

[TC]

Thanks that's a big help since I'm running linux on all but one of my crunchers.

[TC]

Well I gave this a shot on my main seti rig - shuttle athlon 64 box and it keeps crashing after an hour or two of running. Here's the latest output. Any ideas?

2005-04-22 20:15:43 [SETI@home] Finished download of 26ja05ab.16009.1698.298580.21
2005-04-22 20:15:43 [SETI@home] Throughput 21063 bytes/sec
wine: Unhandled exception (thread 000c), starting debugger...
WineDbg starting on pid 0xa
Unhandled exception: page fault on read access to 0x00000034 in 32-bit code (0x0752c48d).
In 32 bit mode.
Register dump:
CS:0073 SS:007b DS:007b ES:007b FS:003b GS:0033
EIP:0752c48d ESP:7f2be634 EBP:7f2be658 EFLAGS:00210202( - 00 - -RI1)
EAX:00000000 EBX:00000000 ECX:79b12148 EDX:ffffffc0
ESI:79b05c98 EDI:00000001
Stack dump:
0x7f2be634: 0031f59c 79b0e7f0 00270472 79b05c98
0x7f2be644: 79b0e7f4 00270387 7ffa42f0 7ffaa3d4
0x7f2be654: 00000001 7f2be66c 7ff6ad8c 79b05c98
0x7f2be664: 7ffa42f0 7ff40000 7f2be864 7ff8188f
0x7f2be674: 77edb850 0000000f 7f2be6a8 77ef16c8
0x7f2be684: 00000000 7f510340 00000000 00000000
Backtrace:
=>1 0x0752c48d in libgl.so.1 (+0x3a48d) (0x7f2be658)
2 0x7ff6ad8c X11DRV_GDI_Finalize in x11drv (0x7f2be66c)
3 0x7ff8188f DllMain in x11drv (0x7f2be864)
4 0x7ff46d78 in x11drv (+0x6d78) (0x7f2be894)
5 0x77ec4d82 call_dll_entry_point in ntdll (0x7f2be8ac)
6 0x77ec826b in ntdll (+0x2826b) (0x7f2be93c)
7 0x77ec8b34 in ntdll (+0x28b34) (0x7f2be964)
8 0x77b957e2 ExitProcess in kernel32 (0x7f2be9ec)
9 0x0047e9f6 in setiathome_4.09_windows_intelx8 (+0x7e9f6) (0x7f2bea24)
10 0x0047eb79 in setiathome_4.09_windows_intelx8 (+0x7eb79) (0x7f2beb34)
11 0x0040cffb in setiathome_4.09_windows_intelx8 (+0xcffb) (0x7f2bec08)
12 0x77ee106d in ntdll (+0x4106d) (0x7f2bf458)
13 0x0034c3ae in libwine_unicode.so.1 (+0xf03ae) (0x7f2bf4cc)
14 0xf6f8bb6e (0x00000000)
0x0752c48d: cmpl 0x34(%ebx),%esi
Wine-dbg>

[Shabadoo]

TC,
Sorry but I can't help with that one. I did find a thread on the boinc forum that boasts of an optimised client for linux that is 35% faster that the official linux client. Try the link below. There is an amd 64 optimised client near the bottom of the page.



http://mkx.feridot.com/boinc/

[none1]

Great info folks! Please keep us updated on your findings.

DISKLESS FARM = Server serves up linux, nodes run linux
So I'm concerned about the linux performance, reding you all so far, I'm very concerned.

OPTIONS
1) Seti server, nodes = linux command line = seems SHOULD BE fastest, node not running a gui = way less resources needed so SHOULD BE fastest

but you all seem to show that its not fastest SO ....

2) Should server = seti, and I try to get all the nodes to run wine over the network?

OR

3) Try to run windows on all machines? Boot off of CD roms? Yuck.

Thanks!

I'll wait for more info ........

[none1]

Well, it definitely appears the linux client crunches slower. These two are the same physical machine, I just reloaded the box with a new OS and made note of the completion times prior to doing so.

WINDOWS COMPLETION TIMES (In Seconds)
41,302.54
40,705.47
40,881.86
41,121.78
41,369.40
41,384.41

LINUX COMPLETION TIMES (In Seconds)
47,455.60
47,526.11
47,298.14
47,240.43

This is representative of a nearly two hour increase. This is definitely annoying - I guess I'm going back to windows - it seems silly to install such a "tight" and lightweight system like linux - and then have to install a hefty window manager and Wine to emulate windows just to get similar completion times.

For those that are curious the machine, for windows, ran Windows XP Professional SP2, for linux ran Slackware 10.1 (Kernel 2.4.29)

CPU type GenuineIntel Pentium III 550mhz (Katmai)
Number of CPUs 1
Memory 250.2 MB
Cache 512 KB
Total disk space 18.61 GB
Free Disk Space 18.26 GB


Enkidu, great numbers! Which linux client were you using for THOSE numbers, the standard client or the optimized linux client?

Thanks!

[Enkidu]

The standard client. I opted not to even try the optimized client since it seemed everyone was saying it didnt help much. I may try it though given how slow they are running :)

Enk