I have two computers crunching away at rosetta@home. The first is a dual 1.8 GHz powermac, and the second one uses an AMD cpu (Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+) on the latest ubuntu with the 2.6.15-26-386 kernel.

So far, I have about 8050 credits on the linux/AMD and 22,500 credits on the mac. There are two processes on the mac and one on the dual core AMD.

The AMD is a newer processor, so I'm suprised that it isn't doing better. Any hints about what makes it slower or ways to make it better would be appreciated.

Stephen

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I have two computers crunching away at rosetta@home. The first is a dual 1.8 GHz powermac, and the second one uses an AMD cpu (Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+) on the latest ubuntu with the 2.6.15-26-386 kernel.

So far, I have about 8050 credits on the linux/AMD and 22,500 credits on the mac. There are two processes on the mac and one on the dual core AMD.

The AMD is a newer processor, so I'm suprised that it isn't doing better. Any hints about what makes it slower or ways to make it better would be appreciated.

Stephen

Ack! 386! You are using only one core with your linux box. The default is the 386 version, which supports only one core. You need the more advanced 686 version. Go to Admin => system monitor and you will see only one CPU. To fix this go to Admin => synaptic and search on "linux-686" and install the whole group of packages. Reboot. Then go to Admin => system monitor and you will see two CPUs. Bingo! You just doubled your crunching!

That will be 500 credits. =;^)

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Reno, NV
Team: SETI.USA

Another problem is that because you're running Linux, you're getting penalized by the standard boinc client. Under windows, each of your dual cores should be giving you around 255 credits/day.

The new crediting system will take care of the problem so each of your 2Ghz cores under Linux will score the same as mine under Windows. (And hurry up and unleash the second core.. :)

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Great -- I'm off to get the extra core.

There is linux-686 and linux-686-smp. Do I need the smp?

Stephen

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Great -- I'm off to get the extra core.

There is linux-686 and linux-686-smp. Do I need the smp?

Stephen

You'll want the SMP one.

Just to pick some tiny nit here: The fact that you only get ONE processor visible is to do with SMP not being enabled in your kernel, NOT with the fact that it's i386. Now it just so happens that it's unlikely that an old 386/486 processor would support SMP anyways, and most likely, you'll be running on a Pentium Pro or better (i686) if you're running SMP, so the distributions usually put i686-smp on the disk. I just tested in my Linux source to set i386, and the SMP feature is still available in that mode...

There will be a small performance difference in i686's advantage, but if you're running Rosetta, it wouldn't make any big difference since 99.99% of the time is spent inside Rosetta itself...

--
Mats

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Great -- I'm off to get the extra core.

There is linux-686 and linux-686-smp. Do I need the smp?

Stephen

By all means install the SMP kernel, otherwise you can only use one core and waste the other! The next thing is that the standard Boinc client discriminates against us linux users and claims half the credit than in Windows on the same hardware. You can correct this by an optimized Boinc core.

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The boards were down before I saw any replies, and in the meantime I just installed the linux-686 kernel, without the "smp". Interestingly, I see two processes, each of which is using nearly 100% of a core:

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
12700 stephen 39 19 49060 16m 3624 R 99 1.6 47:42.74 rosetta_5.25_i6...
12571 stephen 39 19 47112 15m 3624 R 93 1.5 57:02.96 rosetta_5.25_i6...

So I have to think that the straight 686 version enables both cores. Can't wait to see my averages go up.

Stephen

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The boards were down before I saw any replies, and in the meantime I just installed the linux-686 kernel, without the "smp". Interestingly, I see two processes, each of which is using nearly 100% of a core:

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
12700 stephen 39 19 49060 16m 3624 R 99 1.6 47:42.74 rosetta_5.25_i6...
12571 stephen 39 19 47112 15m 3624 R 93 1.5 57:02.96 rosetta_5.25_i6...

So I have to think that the straight 686 version enables both cores. Can't wait to see my averages go up.

Stephen

You don't need the smp version. The 686 has that support as part of it already.

Erik

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Reno, NV
Team: SETI.USA