Multiple Clients - Ubuntu SMP

KE1HA · 20 Oct 2007 at 22:24

I was reading the SMP Installation Guide, which is very nice by the way.

SMP Client Installation Guide

I currently have 2x Quads running Ubuntu 64-Bit with the New 6.00 Beta-1 core installed via Finstall, but there's only one directory running, CPU1. So I'm assuming all four cores are crunching the single WU = 4x FahCore_a1.exe reported via top.

Would it be advisable, aka more PPD / total points accumulation to run 2 or maybe 4 clients instead of having all four crunching one WU? Both CPU's are clocked to about 2.95 to 3.0 GHZ or there about.

I'm not concerned about using the two quad boxes for anything other than FAH.
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SiriusB · 21 Oct 2007 at 00:11

Go for it. Add 3 more clients to each machine. I am running 4 clients on my quad!

Cob · 21 Oct 2007 at 12:48

Yeah one client uses something like 65-70% of a quad, two use ~80%, three use ~90%, and it takes a fourth to actually max out all four cores.

SiriusB · 21 Oct 2007 at 12:53

At about 3GHz you can expect anywhere between 3.5 and 4K PPD per machine

theheyes · 21 Oct 2007 at 13:10

Is there any particular reason why 1 client doesn't max out the cores?

Cob · 21 Oct 2007 at 13:49

It's not powerful enough.

It takes a hell of a lot of calculations to max out four cores.

It would be great if it could as it would expel the cache issues we see when running multiple clients.

Berserker · 21 Oct 2007 at 14:58

Not to mention the amount of RAM it takes to do it (on my box it looks like the WUs want 800MB each - not sure how well they run in less as I haven't tried).

PS - Don't forget you'll need to run two copies of Ubuntu due to VMWare only being able to use two cores at a time (at least I think that's still true).

rich99million · 21 Oct 2007 at 15:50

Berserker said:
PS - Don't forget you'll need to run two copies of Ubuntu due to VMWare only being able to use two cores at a time (at least I think that's still true).

I think he's running natively - at least that's the impression I got

Berserker · 21 Oct 2007 at 15:58

Yup, I think you may be right there, but just in case anyone else forgets.

SiriusB · 21 Oct 2007 at 16:44

All 4 of my clients combined are using less than a gig of RAM. Native > VM

Berserker · 21 Oct 2007 at 16:57

Hmm. I wonder how it calculates that. I'm looking at memory used inside the VM, not the memory used by the VM.

Code:

root@foldy:~# free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          1632       1623          9          0         70        161
-/+ buffers/cache:       1391        241
Swap:          117          1        116

SiriusB · 21 Oct 2007 at 17:33

Hmm, just ran the same command [via ssh] and I have nearly 1800mb of my RAM being used.

Hmm...

EDIT: OK, was reading the output wrong. The buffers/cache is the value you should be looking at for your applications. In my case this is 1300mb. Which seems about right... ~1GB for Fah and ~300mb for all my apps. I will confirm that when I get to my PC and check the Process Manager.

Cob · 21 Oct 2007 at 18:03

I get this with 512mb allocated to Ubuntu and two clients running-

Code:

davy@ubuntuserver1:~# free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          499        413          86          0         5          84
-/+ buffers/cache:       322         177
Swap:         313        168         144

I really need to get back upto 4gb, but the paging doesn't have all that much effect on my frame times tbh.

KE1HA · 21 Oct 2007 at 20:20

Here's my Mem-Free Status:

E6800 2GB native, VMware Ubuntu 1GB allocated, Running 2x Clients. I need to Fix the Swap Size, should have been 1GB.

Q6600 1GB. Native Ubuntu Install, Running 4x Clients.

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Berserker · 21 Oct 2007 at 20:23

How odd. No idea what's going on there. Might be Beta WUs I suppose.

KE1HA · 21 Oct 2007 at 20:52

Berserker said:
Not to mention the amount of RAM it takes to do it (on my box it looks like the WUs want 800MB each - not sure how well they run in less as I haven't tried).

PS - Don't forget you'll need to run two copies of Ubuntu due to VMWare only being able to use two cores at a time (at least I think that's still true).

My VMWare Install is not on a Quad, it's on the E6800. It's the only Hybrid box I have (except for two laptops, which are not worth using to crunch on these days), the other 4 boxes are all Native Ubuntu Installs, Makes Life Easy :-)

and keeps me aways form the WinDoze Woo's.

Re: 800mb WU's ... I dont think I've ever seen a WU that wants over 350mb or so. It may well be a Beta WU. Right now I dont have any machines doing Beta WU's.
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