LHC@home

I have no information from the official CPDN site. Just this from forum moderator Les Bayliss on the message board: http://climateapps2.oucs.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/forum_thread.php?id=4647&nowrap=true#23043
and this one:
http://climateapps2.oucs.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/forum_thread.php?id=4065&nowrap=true#20300

He does not say that the WU will be reissued, but that it might be. If you are just interested in BOINC credits, it is fine, you will still get them, but from the point of view of science your processing will be redundant with someone else's.

In your place I would ask the question on the CPDN message board.

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First computer I put BOINC on (back in mid 2005) was an Intel 2.53 GHz machine I have since overclocked to 2.75 GHz (it struggles with Einstein, taking 34+ hours per WU, but works fine on Seti and Rosetta).
I then added an AMD 4800+ X2 @ 2.52 GHz in September 2005.
With the bug now biting I added an AMD 848 dual Opteron and an AMD 275 dual Opteron, added March/April this year, neither overclocked.

I have built all of them myself (still paying for the 2 Opterons).
I also have a laptop but the wife won't let me use that.
So all up I do BOINC with 4 computers, 9 CPUs, 20.99 GHz, 11 MB, 1,660 GB.

I am in 8 projects but have no credit from LHC@home as I keep missing the new WUs that get issued.

I love the science and the competion, in the past competion has led to advancements in science. One research group might use Grid computing and volunteers while another may not. They are in competion probably without even knowing it.
I am glad that some of the researchers do need us volunteers and use grid computing as it gives me an excuse to play with my computers and dream of another one (after I pay off the others of course).

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The Proliant 8500 was rescued from certain destruction.
The battery was flat and so any system configs are lost whenever its powered down or restarted, so it was sent out for recycling.
I worked on it for about 5 minutes, swapped in a new battery and its running great.


137 pounds of 'puter!
8 550mhz Xeons, 1mb L2 cache, 4 gigs PC100 ECC system ram, 4 10k 9gig drives in Raid 5.
It does Einsteins in about 40 hours.
The Proliant is a touch slower than the Intel Sabre.
This is due to the L2 cache at 1mb, its about %15 slower.
I really want to get a set of 900's but I have yet to confirm if this specific system is capable of supporting them.
If not....I will get a set of 550's with 2mb L2.

Also recently added 4 Dell 2550's and a Dell 2500.
These are all Dual P3 1 ghz (socket 370).
The 2500 is capable of running the 1.4mhz processors, so eventually it will be upgraded.
I want to keep the 2500 as a file server/web host for the house.
The 2550's need PERC raid keys and then I will sell those($100), but for now I will crunch with them.


Everything is mounted in a server cabinet with a 24 port hub and HP 8 port KVM.
This is all running on a 30amp breaker and at 240volts.
Previously I had them just stacked around my garage and on my bench.
I had been searching and searching for one that was cheap.
Not wanting to pay hundreds of dollars for used rack, I traded some deck repair labour for a HP server rack.

I do plan on getting some pictures up on the i'net or maybe I should finally get busy setting up the web page for my company.

Hopefully LHC will have a big run soon, but untill then its Einstein!

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A sad day out in boinc farm today.
My favourite uber geek 8 proc system has been sold.

It was a Intel Sabre with 8 each Xeon 550mhz cpus with 2mb of L2 cache.
Interesting how some of the newest processors are finally getting big L2's.
It has be running boinc solid since the day I got it, mostly Einsteins lately.

It was sold to good home and it will be well fed and cared for.

Now this opens up a slot in my rack for something faster.
Maybe something more productive and hopefully lower electrical consumption.
Maybe a new quad core AMD ...... ya ... thats the ticket.

The wife has been complaining about the $200 electrical bills.
This system has dual 1100 watt power supplies !!!

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>Maybe a new quad core AMD ...... ya ... thats the ticket.

I don't want to turn this in yet another AMD vs. Intel discussion, but if you want to buy before Q3 2007 (K8L) you should really consider a Kentsfield Core 2 Quad. In Q1 the cheaper one (600 - 700$?) with 2.4GHz is supposed to come out and should easily do 3GHz. This will smoke anything AMD can offer today in performance / Watt.

This being said, I'm still happily crunching with my 2.5GHz A64 X2 plus an AXP 2.16GHz as my *farm* :)

MrS

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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

Despite sticking to AMD to reduce my Power consumption while increasing computing power, I've been watching the Core 2 Duo as well.

Seems (until AMD releases their new K8L based chips - let's see how well those will do) the Core 2 Duo is the way to go, those things pack a hefty punch of power while consuming very little indeed.

I would imagine buying and maintaining e.g. 2 separate Dual Cores will be quite a bit cheaper in the forseeable future than getting one expensive 4-way monster (at least that's how it always has been).

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Scientific Network : 45000 MHz - 77824 MB - 1970 GB

Oh I agree.
I am kinda just waiting.
My dual core 4400 system is going to the farm.
It is being replaced with a new intel e6700 cpu based system.
By most estimates, it should be aboot 25% stronger.
I am strongly trying to trim down the farm to what can fit in the 42u rack I have.
It is hard to adhere to my new personal "system spec"
It has forced me to sell some really really nice systems.
I like the P3 systems, solid, robust, thermal tolerant,cheap and plentiful.
My proliant 8500 will be my only exception.....for a while.

....now if I could just find some LHC wu's to crunch !!!

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For those of you out there tired of 8-way processing, and with very high credit limits, SUN is offering a 60 day free trial of a SUNFIRE x4600 server. That's up to 16 dual core 3 GHZ Opterons. Won't help you much for LHC though (64 bit procs, and who knows if you'd catch 1 work release in 60 days :) Do Einstein or SETI have good x64 apps out yet?

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Transformers for consumer devices are 40-60% efficient. So you basically double the power supply's capacity to find out how much juice will be sucking in. A 300W power supply will suck in 600 watts. A 400W PS on a gaming rig will suck in 800 watts from the AC outlet. BOINC will cause the PC to consume about 70-80% of the power supply's rating, 90-100% if you have a lot of drives or are pushing the video card with your screensaver or game.

600 watts at 10c/KW-h (SRP is 10.8c - 8.8c base + 2c 'fuel price surcharge') is 6c/hour, $1.44 per day, $43.20 per month!!!. So if you are running BOINC on a too old of a machine you are wasting money to your electric company. Is putting an old 100-400mhz desktop worth $40/month in electricity costs (assuming you run it with BOINC 24/7)?

Laptops are far more power efficient, taking in 140 (standard laptop) to 180 (gaming capable with mobile components) to 300 watts (gaming rig with SLI and desktop processor), but you will need an industrial-office fan to keep them cool. Alienwares can fend for themselves because they got 4 fans, just left it off the desk a little. Dells and Toshibas need help. The big 30" patton fan costs $200 to buy and uses 3amps of power, 1/2 of a desktop, or 1 laptop,and it can service 4-8 (depnding on how big/flat your desk is!) machines and a human or two. So if you want to run a geeky BOINC farm, I suggest using old laptops instead of old desktops. You will notice the difference in the electric bill, about $20 per machine.

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My... LinkSite | Blog | Pictures

OK I HAVE A QUESTION....I HAVE 2 LAPTOPS
:#1 DELL 240G CELERON 256MB.RAM
:#2 DELL 266G P-4 512MB.RAM
AND I NEED TO LET YOU KNOW THAT I AM A DUMMY COMPAIRED TO YA'LL!!
NO KIND OF COMPUTER TRAINING, AND OR ANY REASONBALE FACTSIMALY THERE OF!!! LIKE I SAID,.... I'M A DUMMY! I DONT UNDERSTAND ANYTHING ANY OF YOU ARE SAYING!! BUT I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW HOW TO MAKE MY 2 LITTLE UNITS A LITTLE BETTER THAN THEY ARE! BY THE WAY, I'M A SIMPLE PERSON, SO PLEASE, KEEP IT SIMPLE!

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A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory

Transformers for consumer devices are 40-60% efficient.

agree so far

So you basically double the power supply's capacity to find out how much juice will be sucking in. A 300W power supply will suck in 600 watts. ...

Only if the MB, disks, etc are consuming the full output of the power supply, which would be very bad design.

In addition the graphics card should power down while the box is BOINCing unattended, a significant saving if you have a games card, the USB ports are presumably not powering anything, if you have more than one disk then only one is running (you do have BOINC on the system disk yes - it does not need the performance boost of putting it on a spearate disk). That disk is running full time so is on its steady-speed current draw, which will be less than it draws when running up - drive motors are designed to come to running speed fast and use extra power to get there.

All these unused potential power draws should be provided within the PSU max output, so that you do not get power slumps even in the worst case (the worst case typically happens at cold boot time, so you would tend to notice).

The only way you can know is to measure the AC input with a Watt meter, or better with a Watt-hour meter over 24 hours and divide by time to get the average power used. In the UK they are on sale in Maplin (not a cheap outlet) for arounf £20, and elsewhere at anything down to £9.99

I was pleasantly surprised - I was expecting an AC draw around equal to the max output power rating (ie expecting to find them running on around 50% capacity). In fact every box I have tested comes in at even less than that.

Nicest surprise was an HP Kayak file server, twin 667MHz intel P3 cpus, PSU rated at 400W and actual power drawn running one Einstein and one Rosetta was 80W. Out of interest I also measured it with BOINC disabled and it dropped to around 45W.

You won't find such a deep discount on many P4 systems, but there still should be some. Measure it and get pleasantly surprised.

... or are pushing the video card with your screensaver ...

This is a very good point. Yes it is nice to see the s/s going, but in fairness to the planet and to you power bills, please do set Windows/Linux to power down the monitor after so long. Typlically you might want the s/s to start after 5 min idle, and the monitor to power down after 30min idle. The graphics card should drop to standby at the same time as the monitor. This will save a lot of energy over every night for example.

... So if you want to run a geeky BOINC farm, I suggest using old laptops instead of old desktops. You will notice the difference in the electric bill, about $20 per machine ...

For me the power is heat. I only run the farm in the winter. The house would be heated by electricity anyway. It costs a bit more to draw power 24/7 as I'd be turning normal heaters off overnight -- but it does not make the difference you'd expect as there is no morning power surge re-heating a chilled room. Buying old laptops is a lot dearer (in the UK) than buying old deskies, and tho I'd get twice the crunch to heat ouput with laptops the purchase cost woukd have been about 4x as much (twice the cost per GHz times needing to buy twice as many). But yes, if capital outlay had not been an issue I coulkd get twice the cobblestones for heating my lounge with laptops.

Pipedream is to run many motherboards off a single big PSU and with only one HD serving them all. That costs less per GHz than buying new laptops. What is stopping me is not getting round to learning how to net-boot linux. The ideal Mb for comfort would be the Via passive-cooled cards - cutting out the fan noise that visitors comment on!

River~~

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Oh I agree.
I am kinda just waiting.
My dual core 4400 system is going to the farm.
It is being replaced with a new intel e6700 cpu based system.
By most estimates, it should be aboot 25% stronger.
I am strongly trying to trim down the farm to what can fit in the 42u rack I have.
It is hard to adhere to my new personal "system spec"
It has forced me to sell some really really nice systems.
I like the P3 systems, solid, robust, thermal tolerant,cheap and plentiful.
My proliant 8500 will be my only exception.....for a while.

....now if I could just find some LHC wu's to crunch !!!

I've got a Proliant 8500, fully loaded, sitting in our loading dock at work, destined for salvage *cry*. They won't let me save it for "testing" purposes.

@GreatInca

That's not correct.

Typical (modern) Power Supplies operate at approx. 70-85% efficiency (where >80% is very good). In the past, these efficiently levels were known to be only reached unter ~75-80% load conditions, something which has recently changed to the better.

A 300W PSU can never pull more than ~300W from the Plug (exact specs and safety circuits usually cut in slightly below that, depending on which supply lines hit their individual Ampere limit first).
It is a common error to believe e.g. a 500W PSU would actually draw 500W of power all the time. In fact, a good 500W PSU can operate at a sustained 40W with a power-saving Hardware setup attached to it. The attached Hardware is what defines the power consumption (minus a factor of the PSU's efficiency).

I'm running modern Systems with way overpowered PSU's (300-420W, since it's sheer impossible to get e.g. a 150W ATX 2.0 PSU nowadays), and they're effectively using 75W to 115W in total (depending on Hardware Setup) from the Plug (measured).

A good Laptop with crunching in mind should not use more than 45-50W unter full CPU load.
Something in the figures of 100W or more are power-wasting Desktop replacement Notebooks and terribly inefficient when crunching comes into play; 180W for any Laptop would be completely unacceptable. (A well setup crunching Desktop uses far less than that and offers higher performance at the same time)

A Pentium4 is about the worst-case scenario (highly inefficient and by now comparably slow when compared to other architectures)... The only CPU to be less efficient than the P4 was the P4 based Celeron (which marks the rock bottom of poor efficiency in the whole x86 field).

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Scientific Network : 45000 MHz - 77824 MB - 1970 GB

My Alienware laptop has a desktop Pentium 4 in it. It is 2.9A AC-In with a 300W requirement for inverter for a car dapter. That is 180 W (20V, 9A) DC-out and 300W AC-In (probably actually 100V @ 2.9A = 290W). 180/290=0.621 - 62.1%. So Consumer devices (excluding ultra-light travel adapters) are probably really 50-70% efficient. Using the same pattern for Dell - 1.5A @ 100V (150W) in, 20V 4.5A out (90W) - 60% efficiency. My Dell Inspiron has a Penitum 4-M.

@GreatInca

That's not correct.

Typical (modern) Power Supplies operate at approx. 70-85% efficiency (where >80% is very good). In the past, these efficiently levels were known to be only reached unter ~75-80% load conditions, something which has recently changed to the better.

A 300W PSU can never pull more than ~300W from the Plug (exact specs and safety circuits usually cut in slightly below that, depending on which supply lines hit their individual Ampere limit first).
It is a common error to believe e.g. a 500W PSU would actually draw 500W of power all the time. In fact, a good 500W PSU can operate at a sustained 40W with a power-saving Hardware setup attached to it. The attached Hardware is what defines the power consumption (minus a factor of the PSU's efficiency).

I'm running modern Systems with way overpowered PSU's (300-420W, since it's sheer impossible to get e.g. a 150W ATX 2.0 PSU nowadays), and they're effectively using 75W to 115W in total (depending on Hardware Setup) from the Plug (measured).

A good Laptop with crunching in mind should not use more than 45-50W unter full CPU load.
Something in the figures of 100W or more are power-wasting Desktop replacement Notebooks and terribly inefficient when crunching comes into play; 180W for any Laptop would be completely unacceptable. (A well setup crunching Desktop uses far less than that and offers higher performance at the same time)

A Pentium4 is about the worst-case scenario (highly inefficient and by now comparably slow when compared to other architectures)... The only CPU to be less efficient than the P4 was the P4 based Celeron (which marks the rock bottom of poor efficiency in the whole x86 field).

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My... LinkSite | Blog | Pictures

My Alienware laptop has a desktop Pentium 4 in it. It is 2.9A AC-In with a 300W requirement for inverter for a car dapter. That is 180 W (20V, 9A) DC-out and 300W AC-In (probably actually 100V @ 2.9A = 290W). 180/290=0.621 - 62.1%. So Consumer devices (excluding ultra-light travel adapters) are probably really 50-70% efficient. Using the same pattern for Dell - 1.5A @ 100V (150W) in, 20V 4.5A out (90W) - 60% efficiency. My Dell Inspiron has a Penitum 4-M.

These figures are outright insane, I seriously doubt any of these Notebooks actually draws significantly more than 100W of Power. Reason being, cooling off >100W of Thermal power in a Notebook is about impossible without the entire Notebook reaching 60+ Deg Temperatures even with Turbine-level cooling all the time.

It still shows how terribly inefficient and unsuitable the Pentium 4 ever was for Notebooks (I assume the Alienware especially takes the bite with a fast GPU as well)

The Car adapter is absolutely not representative for any consumer device, the 300W requirement is way out of proportion.

The only way to get the real figures is to plug it into the Wall and measure the actual consumtion. If that was to be 180W, your Notebook would be (literally) melting at >100 Deg Celsius and a 100dB Noise level cooling. Plus, the AC/DC converter would have to come in at 5-10lbs of weight to assure safe operation at 180W output.

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Scientific Network : 45000 MHz - 77824 MB - 1970 GB

My Alienware laptop has a desktop Pentium 4 in it. It is 2.9A AC-In with a 300W requirement for inverter for a car dapter. That is 180 W (20V, 9A) DC-out and 300W AC-In (probably actually 100V @ 2.9A = 290W). 180/290=0.621 - 62.1%. So Consumer devices (excluding ultra-light travel adapters) are probably really 50-70% efficient. Using the same pattern for Dell - 1.5A @ 100V (150W) in, 20V 4.5A out (90W) - 60% efficiency. My Dell Inspiron has a Penitum 4-M.

These figures are outright insane, I seriously doubt any of these Notebooks actually draws significantly more than 100W of Power. Reason being, cooling off >100W of Thermal power in a Notebook is about impossible without the entire Notebook reaching 60+ Deg Temperatures even with Turbine-level cooling all the time.

It still shows how terribly inefficient and unsuitable the Pentium 4 ever was for Notebooks (I assume the Alienware especially takes the bite with a fast GPU as well)

The Car adapter is absolutely not representative for any consumer device, the 300W requirement is way out of proportion.

The only way to get the real figures is to plug it into the Wall and measure the actual consumtion. If that was to be 180W, your Notebook would be (literally) melting at >100 Deg Celsius and a 100dB Noise level cooling. Plus, the AC/DC converter would have to come in at 5-10lbs of weight to assure safe operation at 180W output.

The UL listing (max possible consumption) on my IBM T41's (1.6GHz Pentium M) power adapter lists the max A/C input as 100~240v and 1.6 to .08A. This would be 160w to 192w. It lists the max DC output of 16v @ 4.5A (72w). While I'm sure the actual laptop is typically using much less than the 72w max, the draw at the wall due to the transformer is still gonna be over 75w with the CPU pegged. If I did the math right the laptop adapter is only about 45% eff. at best.

Well, I'm off to buy a line amp meter this weekend. Have been curious since the middle of summer when my breakers started popping what the electrical overhead on the UPS(s) was. Guess I'll figure it out this weekend... when I'll also check the actual wall plug draw on the T41.

BTW, What are these things called "case fans" ya'll keep talking about?

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- da shu @ HeliOS,
"Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech”, not as in “free beer".

Here's part of my farm.

http://i87.photobucket.com/albums/k134/samlapp/Picture01233.jpg

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Damn, they have cases! :o

MrS

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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

My Farm:

1) Core2duo E6300 1.83
2) P4 3.4
3) P4 3.2
4) P4 2.8
5) AMD Athlon XP2400 2.0

Total GHz = 13.23

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Here's part of my farm.

Is this a private farm, or buissiness? If private, how do you cooling down this, and what does you wife say to that room and electric costs :)

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