Making the Most of Rosetta@Home

[hokiealumnus]

So...I've been looking into this thing after going ahead and starting Rosetta for the harvest and have a few questions.

In the preferences, you set the amount of CPU to use, 100% of course. You also set number of processors, so I set it to 8, for my i7 w/ HT. Then I got to the setting that tells it when to start crunching after the computer is idle...and I sighed.

You see, Folding@Home, which I've done for the past few years, runs 100% all the time 24/7. It is just at low priority, so when you want to do some computing, it gives up the CPU cycles that are needed for said task. This uses every single CPU cycle that you are not actively using.

BIONIC appears to display the annoying behavior of just plain stopping when you're at the computer. This is very inefficient; it's giving up many, many clock cycles (on many, many computers) while the computer is in use....as verified by its piddly use of the CPU while I was browsing around last night.

So, I guess my question is - can we change the client to act more like Folding@Home? I want my computer actively working to further the science...all the time. There is very little reason to give up the whole CPU just to browse a forum.

Also, should I choose to go that route, what does one need to do to use your GPU? If it does that by default, what do you need to do to turn it off? (It's an older GPU, second hand so no warranty and I can't afford to lose it.)

My apologies if these are answers already given. I'm at work and after cursory searching, I need to get some work done and it was faster to type this. Feel free to answer with links only and not re-answer things already asked. Thanks!

 

[benbaked]

I don't notice any slowdown from allowing BOINC to crunch while the computer is in use, try that setting in the processor usage tab of BOINC preferences. BOINC will give up cpu cycles to other programs as needed, it will also play well with the folding@home GPU client. Rosetta can't take advantage of GPUs yet.

 

[hokiealumnus]

Oh ok, I'll give that a shot. Not at home right now, so the options referenced were from the account web page.

 

[zangler]

So...I've been looking into this thing after going ahead and starting Rosetta for the harvest and have a few questions.

In the preferences, you set the amount of CPU to use, 100% of course. You also set number of processors, so I set it to 8, for my i7 w/ HT. Then I got to the setting that tells it when to start crunching after the computer is idle...and I sighed.

You see, Folding@Home, which I've done for the past few years, runs 100% all the time 24/7. It is just at low priority, so when you want to do some computing, it gives up the CPU cycles that are needed for said task. This uses every single CPU cycle that you are not actively using.

BIONIC appears to display the annoying behavior of just plain stopping when you're at the computer. This is very inefficient; it's giving up many, many clock cycles (on many, many computers) while the computer is in use....as verified by its piddly use of the CPU while I was browsing around last night.

So, I guess my question is - can we change the client to act more like Folding@Home? I want my computer actively working to further the science...all the time. There is very little reason to give up the whole CPU just to browse a forum.

Also, should I choose to go that route, what does one need to do to use your GPU? If it does that by default, what do you need to do to turn it off? (It's an older GPU, second hand so no warranty and I can't afford to lose it.)

My apologies if these are answers already given. I'm at work and after cursory searching, I need to get some work done and it was faster to type this. Feel free to answer with links only and not re-answer things already asked. Thanks!

i have the same processor, but in the BOINC preferences i see processors expressed as a percentage and not a number. at 100% it uses all 8 threads and at 50% it still seems to use all 8 threads, but jumps around load so that only 50% of cycles are being used.

i left the box checked for 'while computer is in use' and during browsing and stuff it leaves CPU use pretty much at max.

 

[zangler]

to add on to the questions for new guys (like me)...should i change my target CPU time? i am not sure i understand this, or why i would want to make it shorter/longer and what that will mean for RAC.

 

[Bobnova]

I'm running the linux flavor at full tilt 24/7 and haven't noticed any performance changes while i'm doing other stuff, just like with FAH.
Course that's linux.

Seems like 100% is a good target, i just left most of it at standard and it's using 98-100%.

 

[drshivas]

I let BOINC crunch while the computer is in use- gaming/work, etc, just like when I did F@H. No worries here. In my experience, the idle setting is an extra setting for machines need max resources when in use, and can't be bothered with anything else running, but will go back to crunching when not in use. The other goodie is the snooze feature. I use that frequently when I game because sometimes I/O from 4 threads writing to disk on a quad can make TF2 stutter. The snooze feature is just that- it will pause then resume automatically, unlike the GPU2 client's pause setting where I frequently forget to unpause it.

 

[Insane Scyth]

to add on to the questions for new guys (like me)...should i change my target CPU time? i am not sure i understand this, or why i would want to make it shorter/longer and what that will mean for RAC.

You can select cpu time when you are running multiple projects with Boinc. Boinc can be used with other DC projects like SETI, GPUGRID, etc. I'm pretty sure if you only have one project, it will run it 100% of the time no matter what you put in. If you had multiple it would delegate how long for each day it should run.

Currently there is no GPU client. Something about how how much memory the work units use is making it more difficult to use the GPU for the calculations. Or something like that.

One last quick tip is under Preferences -> network usage there is an option called additional work buffer. It is recommended you change it from the default .25 days to 3-5 days in case at some point your computer has trouble connecting to the server.

 

[hokiealumnus]

Thanks much for the responses folks. Just came home for lunch and it's crunching 100%, 100% of the time now. Sorry, I completely missed that setting. Also upped the work buffer, great idea Insane Scyth!

 

[baditude_df]

One last quick tip is under Preferences -> network usage there is an option called additional work buffer. It is recommended you change it from the default .25 days to 3-5 days in case at some point your computer has trouble connecting to the server.

Or if the server has trouble connecting to you! Which is more often the problem for me.

My work buffer is currently set to 10 days all the time. Some say that setting a number higher than 5 isn't always the best idea, because if servers go down they become completely overwhelmed on reboot trying to satisfy that much volume. As far as I've been able to tell, after server issues, you are given what can be spared until things are somewhat back to normal again, and then you slowly get what you've requested. Personally, I find no rhyme nor reason to how much work I'm given. The buffer always stays the same, and some days I have a 3 or 4 pages of WU's and today I have 10.5. I just prey that it's the latter if there happens to be server issues. That being said, I've never run out of work, and I've never seen a server issue that lasted more than a couple of days. This machine burns through WU's like a mother though.

PS: Looks like a new MiniRosetta application came out on the 5th in case no one here noticed. Version 2.00.
For anyone using Kaspersky, new Rosetta versions tend to cause a bit of a problem as they are classified as "Untrusted" by default. Basically as soon as BIONC hits the new batch of WUs using the new minirosetta App. you will start to get application errors and burn through your entire work buffer. Then you won't get anymore work for a while which kills your RAC.
The easy way around this is to go into Kaspersky under Application Filtering/Threats and Exclusions add the entire C:/Application Data/BOINC folder as an Exclusion, and Voila! No more problems.
IF you run Kaspersky. Personally I really like it.