The Scottish Boinc Team

Posted: **Mon Oct 22, 2018 7:52 pm**

pinhodecarlos wrote: ↑Mon Oct 22, 2018 7:38 pm I suppose the stats takes awhile to be updated.

The 1st days stats will appear at about 0100 UTC tonight and then at that time through the 29th. Go to your account on WCG, click on "My Team" and towards the bottom you will see the link to the challenge stats.

Posted: **Mon Oct 29, 2018 8:07 pm**

Okay folks, OFF YOUR BUTTS. Time to hit WCG

BTW, with the exception of MIPs ALL other apps run about 75% faster using LInux.

The order of payout:

OET - going away in a few days
Zika - pays a little better than SCC
SCC - pays a little less that Zika
MIPs - way down / pays poorly

NOTE: my credits will be down a little today but should return to normal tomorrow. I was doing some benchmarking/optimization on the new computer so it was not on WCG.

Posted: **Mon Oct 29, 2018 8:40 pm**

WCG is my go-to project so this is good news as I switched back at end of the Sprint. All on Linux too. I'll untick MIPs based on your info though, thanks

ETA : Wowsers - how many cores have you got to be doing 360K per day

Posted: **Mon Oct 29, 2018 8:56 pm**

davidBAM wrote: ↑Mon Oct 29, 2018 8:40 pm
ETA : Wowsers - how many cores have you got to be doing 360K per day

I've got a few

360k - that's what I was saying, my numbers are down. They should improve by tomorrow at least while OET continues. I don't know how far down it'll go when I have to switch to Zika but I'm guessing a drop of maybe 30% (pure guess).

Posted: **Tue Oct 30, 2018 4:35 am**

We'll jump 2 positions tomorrow - 118th. 3M to position 117. No fast movers behind us at least in the 100-200 positions. Well, there is 1 team 6M behind doing a little under 500k/day.

Posted: **Thu Nov 01, 2018 8:26 am**

Indeed, 118th Now!
It’s great having you onboard Bryan.
We’ve been making steady progress over the course of the year but your presence has already helped things along a big bit.
I’ve got all my working cores on WCG including 64 threads on my latest Threadripper 2990WX. Oh yes! I reckon it possibly doubles my WCG capacity and I’d hope to be nudging 6 figures per day once it’s all running full out.
Full steam ahead!

Posted: **Thu Nov 01, 2018 8:44 am**

Megacruncher wrote: ↑Thu Nov 01, 2018 8:26 am Threadripper 2990WX

Nice

Posted: **Thu Nov 01, 2018 10:35 am**

davidBAM wrote: ↑Thu Nov 01, 2018 8:44 am
Megacruncher wrote: ↑Thu Nov 01, 2018 8:26 am Threadripper 2990WX
Nice

Very!

Posted: **Thu Nov 01, 2018 10:59 am**

Wait until you download 2 days of WU for the next bunker operation. You'll have many many pages listing them in boincmgr

I have a 44 thread xeon e5-2696v4 and that certainly gets plenty. Same mobo can take a second processor so I might put it on my Santa list

Posted: **Thu Nov 01, 2018 11:08 am**

Speaking of 2990WX, I notice you have a GTX 1080Ti in yours. What wattage of PSU are you using for it? I had originally planned on moving one of my 1080Ti GPUs to the new machine (haven't done it yet) which has a 1000W supply. I haven't had the opportunity to play with it to see if that is enough PSU. When I brought the machine up I spent 1 hour on Windows running Prime95 to make sure the cooling was working. Then I switched to Linux and started a 17 day run on WCG for the Thor challenge. I really haven't had the opportunity to play around yet.

Running OET on LInux I'm getting 100k/day from it. I'm a happy camper

Posted: **Thu Nov 01, 2018 11:25 am**

davidBAM wrote: ↑Thu Nov 01, 2018 10:59 am Wait until you download 2 days of WU for the next bunker operation. You'll have many many pages listing them in boincmgr I have a 44 thread xeon e5-2696v4 and that certainly gets plenty. Same mobo can take a second processor so I might put it on my Santa list

WCG will give a max of 1100 WU to a machine. On OET, the 2990WX goess through those in 3 days

On other projects, like ZIka, it only lasts 2 days because some of the WU are really short.

david, if you add a 2nd CPU get with me and I'll tell you how to get it to work in WIndows. WIndows only supports 64 memory channels (NUMA). There is a technique to run 2 instances of BOINC with one assigned to each CPU. Then you get 128 memory channel capability. Linux supports the 88 threads without any problem.

Posted: **Thu Nov 01, 2018 11:29 am**

Thanks Bryan. Good to know. I'm a unix-only house (which is what keeps me so young

)

Posted: **Thu Nov 01, 2018 11:36 am**

Cruncher Pete wrote: ↑Thu Nov 01, 2018 11:32 am
I heard somebody mentioning that it is not worth going past 64 threads for some reason or other on windows. I think Bryan might be able to shed some light on this, I am only going from memory and I am known to have pensioner moments..

Hey Pete, it works fine if you know the secret handshake and you have the right karma

As I mentioned above you have to run 2 instances of BOINC and assign 1 instance to each of the CPUs.

Posted: **Thu Nov 01, 2018 4:00 pm**

@ Bryan
The 2990WX with 1080Ti seems to be quite happy with an 800W PSU. I’d worried that it might be too feeble. But it’s a fairly good quality Corsair one & it seems to be managing. Am I likely to burn the house down? It doesn’t seem to be running hot.

Posted: **Fri Nov 02, 2018 1:59 pm**

Our numbers continue to climb on WCG. According to Bstats, TSBT did 834k yesterday!

OET is still issuing work and it pays the best - by far IIRC.

I think the Sprint starts in 5 days. While you guys go forth and kick butt I'll hold down the fort on WCG

Posted: **Fri Nov 02, 2018 8:49 pm**

Thanks Bryan.
We should be up another place to 117th by tomorrow!
Already our RAC is up to 329K which is 43rd best in the world.

Posted: **Fri Nov 02, 2018 11:36 pm**

I was looking at the stats on WCG yesterday and TSBT is in position 100 for the number of results returned

Posted: **Sun Nov 04, 2018 2:42 pm**

Bryan wrote: ↑Fri Nov 02, 2018 11:36 pm I was looking at the stats on WCG yesterday and TSBT is in position 100 for the number of results returned

Personal best for me yesterday, broke the 1K barrier with 1082 results returned according to https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/ms/v ... History.do

Not sure if a result shows on that page when it is returned or when it is validated? I am guessing when validated

Posted: **Sun Nov 04, 2018 7:53 pm**

I'm pretty sure that that is showing the number "validated" because for a while you'll show something there even when you haven't turned anything in.

My numbers may drop tomorrow since I have a machine that overloaded itself. I expect when the WU get cancelled by the server for being too late then I will drop out of the "trusted" mode and everything will go to Pending Verification status.

Posted: **Mon Nov 05, 2018 12:57 am**

We are up to 117th now!

We should be at least another couple of places ahead by Wednesday end.

Our RAC is up to 419K which is 32nd in the world.

Posted: **Mon Nov 05, 2018 4:40 am**

There is a VERY fast mover, Neumannium Labs, coming from behind. They are outgunning us by 700k/day. They are currently 25M behind.

Posted: **Mon Nov 05, 2018 10:08 pm**

Thank you Pete. Just in case anyone didn't, here is what I emailed to the team

Hello Team

We will all have different reasons for crunching on the World Community Grid. I wanted to assist with Cancer and other Medical Research and figured that the higher electricity bills from crunching on WCG were a better way than giving cash to a charity. Keeps me warm in winter too!

So, I joined The Scottish Boinc Team as a complete beginner, joined the forum on https://tsbt.co.uk/forum & got lots of help from folks on there. Clearly I made enough noise to get noticed and have subsequently been appointed Team Captain for WCG. Yikes!

I am hoping that some of you who haven't crunched for a while will consider getting back into it; you might be surprised just how much difference regular contributions can make to the Team totals - particularly as we will be making a big effort in Formula Boinc League 2 next year.

World Community Grid may not be the glitziest project out there and they don't yet offer GPU work units with huge earnings but Boinc credits aren't my main goal. Personally, I like knowing that my own contributions help Cancer Research to help our dear dear friend Elaine, others who are still fighting and still others who will have to fight in future.

Regards davidBAM
or just David to my friends

Posted: **Tue Nov 06, 2018 10:55 am**

Nice message David.
Even if it just gets one or two people crunching again then its worth while. At very least it should help keep the silent stalwarts on-board.

Posted: **Tue Nov 06, 2018 2:05 pm**

It looks like OET is over since i'm getting the "no work available for OET" message on all machines. I should burn through in my cache in 5-7 days and then I'll have to change over to ZIka. I think that will be a big hit on credits plus I have to get all machines "trusted".

When the new machine runs out of work I need to take it offline for a day or two. I've got to get it ready for remote operation.

EDIT: in about a month I will be permanently retiring 48 threads so that will also cause a drop.

Posted: **Tue Nov 06, 2018 3:22 pm**

16 new threads on an E5-2690v1 crunching WCG this morning. They are in a freeBSD VM on a twin-processor, freeBSD host under bhyve virtualisation. Will be interesting to see how each thread earns / performs as I have a similar processor in another machine running on bare metal

Will be monitoring the impact, if any, on the host system and the other VMs it supports

Posted: **Tue Nov 06, 2018 10:39 pm**

Megacruncher wrote: ↑Tue Nov 06, 2018 10:55 am Nice message David.
Even if it just gets one or two people crunching again then its worth while. At very least it should help keep the silent stalwarts on-board.

I restarted for a wee while and threw in some WCG.

Jock

Posted: **Tue Nov 06, 2018 11:45 pm**

Hi Jock,
Good to hear from you! Truly a blast from the past!
Don’t leave it another 5 years before your next post!

No disrespect to the current crew, but it would be excellent to have another of my vintage hanging out in the forum!
Regards,
Willie

Posted: **Wed Nov 07, 2018 1:18 pm**

Thanks everyone - I think I am going to enjoy this job

Especially nice to hear that you are back at the wheel Jock. Many thanks

Posted: **Wed Nov 07, 2018 3:57 pm**

Megacruncher wrote: ↑Tue Nov 06, 2018 11:45 pm Hi Jock,
Good to hear from you! Truly a blast from the past!
Don’t leave it another 5 years before your next post!
No disrespect to the current crew, but it would be excellent to have another of my vintage hanging out in the forum!
Regards,
Willie

That's a fair cop Willie :)

Only issue all the kit is so old now even finding drivers is a pain and took me 6 hours to get the GPU's back online. Damn but I had to install Windows as well due to AMD/ATI Driver 'opportunities'.

Anyway I supplemented a little

to kickstart the numbers but not for long then it will be back to a steady trickle

.

Posted: **Wed Nov 07, 2018 7:16 pm**

No probs Jock. Mony a Mickle maks a muckle, as my granny used to erroneously say.

Impressed to hear that you’ve still got the stuff & even more that you’ve managed to get it all working again.

Posted: **Thu Nov 08, 2018 10:55 pm**

The March to 100th progresses. Thankfully largely uninterrupted by the penultimate 2018 FB challenge.
115th Now!
We shall be up another place by the weekend & up 2 more by the end of next week.
As flagged up by Bryan the Neumannium Labs juggernaut is bearing down on us and will overtake us probably at the beginning of December, ish.
That aside: All good.

Posted: **Fri Nov 09, 2018 12:50 am**

As reported we are up to 115th place now.

Seemed like a good excuse for a table post

and who doesn't love a good table ?

WCG position

Position	Team	Points
112	Romania	210,633,694
113	Bulgaria	210,512,202
114	BRASIL	207,674,929
115	The Scottish Boinc Team	206,851,047
116	US NAVY	206,062,479

Posted: **Sat Nov 10, 2018 1:47 am**

114th

In less than 4 days we'll move up 2 more spots

We're doing quite well

Posted: **Sat Nov 10, 2018 11:49 pm**

We are doing fantastically Bryan & most of the credit must go to you. Thank you.
What once looked like it would take a year or more is going to happen within a couple of months at most.
And this time we will hold on to top 100 status!
Not squander it like we did 10 years ago.

Posted: **Sun Nov 11, 2018 6:09 am**

Within a few days my WCG is going to drop. OET pays about 15-20% better than the other projects but it is finished. My machines will run out of OET cache over the next 3-4 days. None are trusted on any other app so what I produce will go into pending for a while.

I also need to start getting ready for remote operation - we'll be heading south for the winter around the 1st of the year. I want to upgrade all machines from Mint 17 to Mint 19. Of course when I do that I'll take machines off line 1 at a time so it won't be a complete drop.

I figure we'll get it done within 2 months ... maybe sooner.

EDIT: I will also be retiring 2 machines (48 threads) around Dec 10th. There is a possibility that I will retire 3 machines (72 threads) but if I do that I will be adding a 2nd 2990WX

Posted: **Sun Nov 11, 2018 8:14 am**

Cruncher Pete wrote: ↑Sun Nov 11, 2018 7:28 am Aborted a lot of units

I've done a bit of this myself but can't help feeling a touch bad about it. Is it quite prevalent because, if so, I'll abort jobs rather than wait for hours before, say, reloading a machine with a different OS

Posted: **Sun Nov 11, 2018 9:34 am**

[mention]davidBAM[/mention] - on most projects aborting WU is no big deal. Most projects immediately put them at the front of the queue and they get resent quickly. So even if they have a wingman it won't delay them that long.

[mention]Cruncher Pete[/mention] - Don't run the MIPs WU, they pay very poorly! Anything else pays quite a bit better. I hope you get that new 2990WX for Christmas. You'll love it!

Posted: **Sun Nov 11, 2018 2:13 pm**

It's better to abort tasks staright away so they can be sent out again to others rather than hanging onto unwanted work and finally aborting days later.

Posted: **Tue Nov 13, 2018 8:33 pm**

I just tried Linux (Mint 19) on the 2990WX.

In the past I’ve generally tried Linux on what ever was the feeblest rig in the farm at the time. Even if I did manage to get BOINC running, the improvement over Windows was usually modest & heavily offset by the fact that I could never get the GPU crunching.

Not this time. Installed & BOINCing, GPU & all, in less than 40 minutes.

I am massively impressed at the performance improvement on WCG. For instance It used to complete an OpenZika WU in c.150 min. On Linux it takes c.55min & earns the same credits.

This is collosal. Why didn’t you tell me it was this good? I know you are, mostly, Linux fans but I assumed that a matter of geek snobbery.

If I’d realized I could double my credit I would have persevered.

Verily, I am a sinner saved!

Is it like this across the board or is this magnitude of improvement particular to WCG or to this processor?

Anyhoo the point is that my WCG RAC should be increasing quite a bit very soon. Which is nice.

Whatever, we will be 112th by tomorrow.

Posted: **Tue Nov 13, 2018 8:38 pm**

Megacruncher wrote: ↑Tue Nov 13, 2018 8:33 pm Why didn’t you tell me it was this good?

I would have (if I had known myself)

which GPU?

Posted: **Tue Nov 13, 2018 8:45 pm**

Hmmmm, did anyone bother to read post 156 in this thread?

It is that way on all machines not just the 2990WX.

Avoid MIPs ... it pays very poorly.

Posted: **Tue Nov 13, 2018 8:58 pm**

Seems I did

I can't actually remember unchecking this box but obviously I did

Posted: **Tue Nov 13, 2018 9:04 pm**

[mention]Megacruncher[/mention] - your timing is perfect. The 2990WX ran out of OET WU and I've transitioned to Zika. It's too early to tell what the reduction will be. I was getting 100k/day on OET.

Within 24 hours all machines will have to make the move to Zika. None of the machines are trusted so it will take at least a day to get back up to speed so I'm going to take a hit for a few days.

With you switching to Linux it should more than compensate for my drop

Onwards and upwards!

Posted: **Tue Nov 13, 2018 9:16 pm**

BTW, if you have to or want to switch projects and you aren't trusted the best way is to either set WCG to ZERO resource or better is to set an individual machine to .01/.02 in your Boinc Client Preferences.

That way it will only give you enough WU to match the number of threads the machine has. Once the projects VALIDATES 14-15 WU a machines becomes trusted and WCG will give you WU that don't require a wingman. When you get to that point you can open up your preferences and load your cache.

Posted: **Tue Nov 13, 2018 9:56 pm**

Cruncher Pete wrote: ↑Tue Nov 13, 2018 9:36 pm Not to be outdone, I ordered a 2990WX a few minutes ago and I should receive it in a couple of days.

Fantastic Pete ... it'll do about 50% more credits than ANY of your E5 V4 Xeon machines

I tried to order the parts for a 2nd 2990WX this morning but no one has either ASUS or MSI motherboards in stock

There are some Gigabyte MB available but I've used the other 2 brands many times over the years and I've had really good success so I want to stick with those!

Posted: **Tue Nov 13, 2018 9:57 pm**

Excellent news Pete

Yes, Linux Mint is 100% my system of choice for my main workstation(s) where I do my day job. I tend to describe it to Windows fans as Windows XP without the crashes

I also crunch quite happily on Linux Mint while I am working BUT I would have to say that GPU crunching is easier on Lubuntu or Ubuntu - especially for AMD GPU

Posted: **Tue Nov 13, 2018 10:00 pm**

Does the 2990WX also hyperthread for 64 threads? (Yes I understand that the improvement isn't 100% but it is still an improvement

Posted: **Tue Nov 13, 2018 10:03 pm**

Yes sir ... I think AMD calls it SMT instead of HT but there are 64 threads.

Posted: **Tue Nov 13, 2018 10:12 pm**

Bryan wrote: ↑Tue Nov 13, 2018 9:56 pm ASUS or MSI motherboards

Asus are one of my favourites mobo manufacturers too. That said, I have a couple of Asrock which I also really like

Posted: **Tue Nov 13, 2018 10:47 pm**

Bryan
I’m sure I did read post 156 & no doubt that subliminally influenced my move. Your 75% gain claim does seem rather conservative, however. I’ll be switching over 2 of the remaining Threadrippers and the Xeon over the next couple of days. I’d better refrain from forcing anyone else in the family to adopt Mint. My 15yo son would be particularly horrified if I messed with his gaming PC, although, now I think about it, it wouldn’t do him any harm if it ran Linux while he was at school & he could boot it back into windows when he comes home.

davidBAM
The GPU is the 1080Ti. It seems to run Primegrid exactly as it did under windows. I’m not able to get any other GPU project to run on it. But one step at a time.

Pete
Way to go! I can assure you that you are way ahead of me & likely to remain so despite me finally seeing the light at this late stage in the game.

The Scottish Boinc Team

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