Message boards : Theory Application : Comparison Theory VBox versus docker (BOINC set to 100% cpu)
Message board moderation
| Author | Message |
|---|---|
|
Send message Joined: 14 Jan 10 Posts: 1511 Credit: 10,001,714 RAC: 1,125   |
I noticed since we are able to run Theory In WSL container, that the docker results show a big gap between elapsed time and CPU-time (cputime much lower than elapsed) VBox tasks don't show a big difference between elapsed and cpu-time. Sometimes even equal or CPU higher than elapsed. I wanted to find out whether running Theory in a VirtualBox VM is faster then in a docker container on a Windows system. To test that you should exactly run the same task in both circumstances. I did not want to wait > 100 years to get the same job with the same parameters, so I had to manipulate the input file, so that the job is exactly doing the same processing. A first quick test showed me that VirtualBox was -surprise- much slower. Coïncidence? So I did a second test under the same host-load. The outcome of 2 times job ppbar zinclusive 1800 -,-,50,130 - pythia8 8.303 CP1-CR2 100000 642 1. docker 2. VirtualBox Returned 15 Feb 2026, 11:11:24 UTC 15 Feb 2026, 12:37:39 UTC Computer ID 10772116 10772116 Run time 19 min 22 sec 53 min 36 sec CPU time 16 min 36 sec 52 min 34 sec Validate state Valid Valid Credit 8.93 24.69 peak FLOPS 3.32 GFLOPS 3.32 GFLOPS App-version Theory Simulation v302.10 (docker) Theory Simulation v301.00 (vbox64_theory) PeakWorkingSet 13.20 MB 69.93 MB Peak swap size 6.63 MB 56.40 MB Peak disk usage 8.31 MB 614.12 MB job: run exitcode 0 0 job: diskusage 18052 18084 job: logsize 8072 k 8192 k job: time 23m 15.5s 50m 55.4s job: cpuusage 1447 s 3080 s |
|
Send message Joined: 2 May 07 Posts: 2284 Credit: 178,801,450 RAC: 1,929 
|
Cern-IT want to make this change from Virtualbox to Docker. Docker have less Overhead against Virtualbox. It would be good to get more help for this Transfer. But, Docker is not for free to use it. |
©2026 CERN