two 14 Core Xeons, No WU's for weeks

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JaredReabow
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two 14 Core Xeons, No WU's for weeks

Post by JaredReabow »

IT has been weeks since i have had a WU for the Cpu's ,whats going on ??
I thought it was my computer so i reinstalled windows, but nope still no WU to speak of.
GPU chugging away whilst cpu's get the easy life.
ChristianVirtual
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Re: two 14 Core Xeons, No WU's for weeks

Post by ChristianVirtual »

Welcome to the forum JaredReabow,

Unfortunate we have to start with some bad news for you: those projects with high CPU/Threat count are rare and the old BigAdv is retired (plus was Linux only).

But: to get your system working try to configure one CPU slot with 24 cores. With one core for a GPU you have three left. you could add a second CPU slot with three cores to max out the load or just keep those three idle.
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Joe_H
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Re: two 14 Core Xeons, No WU's for weeks

Post by Joe_H »

Welcome to the folding support forum.

There currently is a shortage of WU's for assingment to more than 24 CPU threads. Configuring your systems to request assignment for up to 24 threads should get WU's assigned. You could possibly add a second CPU slot to use the remaining thread available, but that may add little additional processing and may actually slow down other work. You would have to test that configuration to see whether you got improved total throughput compared to a single slot.

Posting the first 100 or so lines of a log file to show the current system info and folding configuration would give us additional information to base recommendations on.
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JaredReabow
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Re: two 14 Core Xeons, No WU's for weeks

Post by JaredReabow »

i would expect that with 1 cpu slot on -1 it should pick the best job for 2 cpu's with 14 cores each.
Why should i have to create two slots for it to use one.
Joe_H
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Re: two 14 Core Xeons, No WU's for weeks

Post by Joe_H »

Because the folding client was not programmed to automatically create more than one CPU folding slot. In general, using as many of the available CPU threads on a single WU is the best for quick return of WU's. As the vast majority of systems have 8 CPU threads (for example a quad-core w/ HT) or fewer available, programmer time was not spent on handling all less common configuration issues.

Basically, the -1 setting for the CPU slot just leaves the selection of how many cores to use to be determined by the power slider. The maximum is used at Full, the number of cores minus one reserved for a GPU slot if configured for that. It is only a default setup value aimed at the majority of potential setups, your 14-core Xeons are somewhat rare in folding use.

One thing that is not clear from your description, are you describing two separate servers each with a 14-core Xeon, or a single DP system with 2 Xeon processors? The setup recommendations would be different.

P.S. Some of the available projects will not be assigned to systems requesting for multiples of the prime number 7.
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bruce
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Re: two 14 Core Xeons, No WU's for weeks

Post by bruce »

JaredReabow wrote:i would expect that with 1 cpu slot on -1 it should pick the best job for 2 cpu's with 14 cores each.
Why should i have to create two slots for it to use one.
The "-1" configuration setting is not dynamic; it configures the system to the best permanent connection that it believes might happen. On the other hand, the projects being run by the scientists varies.

Clearly, if somebody decided to work on a protein that runs on 48 CPUs or less it would be assigned to your 28 CPU machine. When that project ends, there might not be any other projects that run on machines with more than 24 cores. While you can manually reconfigure (see recommendations above) that, too is a permanent setting which might not be optimum over the long-term.

There's currently no plan to assign a WU that's designed for 24 cores to a machine with 28 cores unless you manually reconfigure to tell it to ignore the other 4 cores or to use them for something else.
JaredReabow
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Re: two 14 Core Xeons, No WU's for weeks

Post by JaredReabow »

Well i have one desktop pc with two Hyperthreaded 14 core Xeons.
It also has 64Gb of ram and a GTX 980.
And two SSD's in Raid 0 along with a 2tb HDD.
That is the whole spec of the computer.
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Re: two 14 Core Xeons, No WU's for weeks

Post by Joe_H »

Then I would recommend you set the CPU slot for 24 threads. You already are going to have to reduce the total from 28 to 27 to support the GPU if you are folding on that. And it has been reported that some GPU WU's can take 2 cores to fully utilize a higher end card like your 980. Personally, I would not try adding a second slot as the additional folding you would get from that will not be much.

One note, even if projects for Windows come back that will use 28 cores, 24 threads may be the maximum usable if you are also using the GPU for folding. 27 threads is an odd multiple, and I believe is usually not used for folding. 26 is out as it is a multiple of 13, and I don't think 25 is used either.

P.S. Fixed that typo noted by CV.
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ChristianVirtual
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Re: two 14 Core Xeons, No WU's for weeks

Post by ChristianVirtual »

Joe_H wrote: 25 is out as it is a multiple of 13,
Return to last checkpoint and calculate again :mrgreen:
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