Posts by Gill..

1) Message boards : Cafe LHC : Whatever happened to LHC@home....apologies and thanks. (Message 21785) Posted 6 Jan 2010 by Gill.. Post: Happy New Year Eric and fellow LHC folks. Just wanted to say hi, and give you a continued support post. I myself have upgraded my system, we got a great community over on another website (OC'ing, I'll devulge in PM if you want, no shameless plugs here) doing some great work for BOINC. We're all still hoping CERN comes to it's senses and supports you and your efforts more this coming year and decade. I now have 2 4770's and a 4870 running in addition to 8 cores - all dedicated to BOINC. Only time they're not running is when 1 of my 2 machine's is gaming. Normally I'm ranting though, crunching away. We ourselves thrive on the hardware aspect of things, but distributed computing is becoming ever more popular - which is a good thing. People complain about overclocker's on some project's threads - and I say this to them, why would you complain - my goal (every overclocker's) is for a STABLE overclock - once we achieve that - well..it's nirvana crunching-wise.. You run Milkyway on stock settings, and you'll see it's arguably the toughest thing you can do to a video card - tougher than Furmark in my opinion. It runs 10C hotter than ANYTHING else, games - Collatz - you name it...So even on all stock settings - if you don't know what you're doing..you can just as easily crash you system or kill your GPU. Point being, for real distributed computing performance - you're probably actually better off with overclockers than the average joe..I mean really. It can't be said enough, the work that's coming along on GPU's too..this is goosd stuff. Say what you will about these particular equations - but there must be something going on at CERN where you could put the public's GPU's to use - saving CERN literally millions or more a year in IT costs. Use it for extra magnet's for the next time something goes wrong.. .I'm sure they can find something to do with the saved money. The consulting will always be there (hence human capital employment isn't going to go away if they continued your work), the hardware/solution vendors I see as the only "gatkeepers" to such a noble concept and venture. Don't give up OR let them win - I implore you. They can still build an inhouse GPU farm too if they really want :) In this global economic situation, there's only one responsible approach to tackling what CERN and the global network of scientists are trying to accomplish. Heck, you're trying to physically maintain the biggest machine in the world as is...why add troubles trying to build your own in-house calculators too?? We're here still - just because the project has been down for a while doesn't mean we're going away. I'm still attached and my RAC is 0.07....it's still something, for that I thank you. My Milkyway RAC is in the 170K's RAC, and Collatz mid 20's..I'm not bragging - I'm showing everyone what's out there available to these scientists. We're talking unseen or unheard of computing power available to them now - that literally wasn't availble even a year or so ago (as these are KILLING CUDA apps right now). Open CL is becoming more supported, Fermi is almost here..both brands will have to inevitably come to terms that for everyone's sake - a single open approach makes most sense..and everone wins. CAL and CUDA are old..as dead as the computer's listed above (ps, this 30 year old remember's MOST of that above)..64 and 128K ram is before my time...that's laughable..my first was 1 MB if I remember right, because I remember upgrading to 2 as my first "upgrade" with my dad and brother. Even the Chinese defense department made the top 5 supercomputers in the world - their debut mind you...and guess what it was powered by - 2500 4870 X2's...in addition to a swarm of Xeon's... What's CERN's trying to accomplish is nothing short of some of the most important scientific work the world has ever seen in history. They can fight it as long as they want (your work, BOINC and us of course1), but they're only hurting a.)themselves b.)science c.)progress in every sense of the word. That is what is at stake here folks..dark matter, boson higgs, strings themselves - there is no tougher question on the planet. People are all up in arms over global warming, but at the end of the day - we're one planet, one speck. We find dark matter, finalize M Theory and we're in an entirely new ballgame. Global warming will look like chump change if CERN and the scientists are successful. (please note I still do think global warming is very important too - but I think this moreso). The "conspiracy from the future", and bird droppings, hidden terrorists, while great at generating interest - highlight the fact that this is real and going on now. And in all those news stories never once is it ever mentioned that there are thousands of people waiting to help - or press pointing people to this site. Such a shame and a waste. Let us know how we can help. You're (CERN, not you Eric) missing out. We want to help...we're free...we're buying the crazy hardware - and we'll continue to do so...for me, it's fun - better than spending it on many other bad things.. Thanks for listening Eric, I don't mean this as criticism towards you at all. Just saying we're here for you man! Steve Gill PS...I swear, you can tell them I personally can promise them 20 plus 5970's of compute power if they get it up and running (not all me, other people too...that's out of my range...5850 is what I'm gunning for...but I can promise I can bring that many people to you. PPS - I have 4 lanes of PCIE I can maximize on with these next series cards..that's me alone...2 more downstairs.. PPPS - there are many other crazy people like me doing this as well - not everyone gripes about how poor their RAC on their crappy P4 is..we just upgrade and sell our P4 to some sucker who was on a P3..(as an example). Everything's relative! PPPPS - I use 2 4770's because they have double precision capabilities - unlike the 5750 or 5770...makes no sense...I hope the nexxt wave of 12 cards will. Double precision is a requirement for Milkyway, Single for Collatz. 2 4770's yeild me 1280 Stream thread processors for $220 total, and they run a little above 200 watts combined at full load (thereabouts)...I need a Killawat to confirm, but they're very power conscious cards..I can confirm that they run almost exactly at 75% of the times that the 4870 does per wu (which has 800 stream processor threads for those not in the know)..so it's perfectly in line. No joke cheap super-calculators...
2) Message boards : Number crunching : visualisation? (Message 21174) Posted 8 Feb 2009 by Gill.. Post: Why couldn\\\'t take google earth, maps, CAD software and create a sick 3d animation. Those of us with nikce graphics would really love it.

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