SETI or F@H?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Deleted member 651465
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Deleted member 651465

Deleted member 651465

Hey all,

I'm a member of the OcUK F@H team, and currently use my PS3 for the odd work unit, however it just isn't powerful enough and the mrs moans when I leave it running long enough to actually complete the work (~7hrs) :rolleyes:

Anyway, I have a Apple Mac Pro on the way and will like to utilise the 8-core goodness towards 1 of the 2 projects (SETI or F@H).

Ideally I would like to take up one that has good OS X support, or perhaps both, but feel I'd benefit more towards a single team.

So, does anyone know which of the SETI or F@H apps is better suited to the machine? By that I mean, what is the OS X support like for either? In a perfect world I'd like to have 8 instances of one app open at a time to utilise the full potential of the machine, but have no idea where to start and if that is even possible with these apps?
 
Alright EVH,

I don't know much the SETI stuff but as far as I know you can download the BOINC software and get SETI work units that way. I've no idea if SETI supports multithreaded systems but at the very least you'll just be able to run 8 instances. Someone who does SETI work will probably give you a more clued up answer.

As for folding@home, it currently supports multiple processors if you use what's called the SMP client. In my experience on running it on a Mac its quite stable (ran it for months on end without logging into my computer). You can download the SMP client here:

http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Download

Now, I'm not sure how this is going to scale across 8 cores. I seem to recall running two instances of SMP to get the most out of it. Also, if running two instances, you might want to download the Installer version, run that, and then download the CLI version and look at this thread:

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1130

Basically each client needs a different "Machine ID" to stop it tripping over itself. Setting it in Windows is pretty trivial but on the Mac it seems to work best by running one installer version and one CLI version. I can't speak from experience though as I only run one instance on my Core Duo iMac.

If you want to check how much of your CPU power you're using then obviously fire up activity monitor and check the graphs. Give it a few minutes to get going though, I thought my client wasn't working when activity monitor showed no cpu usage but I came back to it later in the afternoon and it worked fine.

edit - a good place to look might be a mac-specific forum because some of my info might be out of date:

http://teammacosx.org/forum/cgi-bin/ikonboard.pl?act=SF;f=63 :)
 
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Cheers for the links, I'll have a read and see what I can dig up.

All the OS X software for F@H seems to be in beta :(
 
Cheers for the links, I'll have a read and see what I can dig up.

All the OS X software for F@H seems to be in beta :(

It is in beta but it's very reliable, Stanford seem to be into these extended beta sessions whereby it's 99.9% the finished article but every now and then something will go a bit wayward (more often it's actually something their end) and they have the beta tag to fall back on when people get upset about delays in getting the points :o
The only drawback is that the client will expire x months down the line and you'll have to download the latest client - this is often the same version but with a new expiry date :p


As for BOINC/SETI I believe you specify how many cores you want it to utilise and it will run enough WUs to make use of them.
 
Cheers for the links, I'll have a read and see what I can dig up.

All the OS X software for F@H seems to be in beta :(

Yeah, all the SMP clients are beta - Windows and Linux too. The only ones that arent in beta are the standard clients. You could run 8 instances of those and max out all the cores but the points wouldn't be as good as SMP if points are your thing. :)

The worst beta client is Windows, Linux and OSX clients are pretty good.
 
If you specify 8 cores in the boinc client, it will utilise all those spare cpu cycles. Choose the advanced view as the default muppet view is horrible and I personally favour running seti as a service.
Needless to say, my vote is for seti - join the ocuk team, we are having a resurgence at the moment and you would be very welcome :p
 
Yeah, all the SMP clients are beta - Windows and Linux too. The only ones that arent in beta are the standard clients. You could run 8 instances of those and max out all the cores but the points wouldn't be as good as SMP if points are your thing. :)

The worst beta client is Windows, Linux and OSX clients are pretty good.

To be honest I just wanted to contribute as much as possible, so points are probably the priority. I wouldn't want to be hammering the 8 cores if it's going to be inefficient.

Would you say running the SMP is better (vs. the standard)?
 
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