| Index | Recent Threads | Unanswered Threads | Who's Active | Guidelines | Search |
 |
World Community Grid Forums
Category: Completed Research
Forum: Help Conquer Cancer
Thread: 8 Core Xeon - Mac OS - Runs at 85% |
| No member browsing this thread |
|
Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 23
|
|
| Author |
|
|
Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
From the TD thread I understand that your teammate ajeb has the same machine as yours and has not experienced your problem (yet?). What I have not found explicitly said is if he has tried to run HCC exclusively on the eight cores as you do. If he could say it and confirm that he is still running at about 100 % on all cores that would help to know if the problem is between HCC and 8-core Macs in general or if it is between HCC and your 8-core Mac and its setup. Cheers. Jean. Andrew (ajeb) here, sort of...I'm on vacation but am following this on my laptop. I am not running HCC on my MAC. When I first set the MAC up I found that the times for HCC and HPF2 were way off (taking longer) from the PCs that I am running and figured they just weren't optimized for MAC. I setup a custom profile to run just the other projects excluding HCC and HPF2 and let the PCs handle those two. I changed the device profile to run just HCC on the MAC earlier. The cache of other units should be done in a day or two and I'll see what's it's doing when I get home this weekend. Andrew [Edit 1 times, last edit by Former Member at Sep 25, 2008 7:41:53 PM] |
||
|
|
JmBoullier
Former Community Advisor Normandy - France Joined: Jan 26, 2007 Post Count: 3715 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
|
Andrew,
----------------------------------------Thank you very much for following up on this problem and for helping us to better figure out what this problem is, especially if it means for you to select a project which is not using your machine the best. I think WCG staff will appreciate. While typing this I am just thinking that maybe you will have the same problem as HiVolt and that it is one reason why HCC is not a good performer on your 8-core. People who see PCs simply as a keyboard, a mouse, a screen and a more or less fast processor inside would be surprised to see how different they can behave with the same kind of activity. When I started to use my Q6600 with Ubuntu 64 I was surprised to find that HCC was given a serious boost compared to XP32 while WUs from other projects were running about the same. And for your 8-core Macs it seems it is just the opposite. Funny. Cheers. Jean. |
||
|
|
gio777
Advanced Cruncher Georgia Joined: Dec 8, 2004 Post Count: 69 Status: Offline Project Badges:
|
OK. Here is the solution for MAC.
----------------------------------------Install virtual machine on MAC OS and it will solve your problem. I don't know how about MACs but I'm using the same QuadCore Xenons, several systems, with 4 quadcore cpu's, under win2k3r2 64 bit.  |
||
|
|
Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
While typing this I am just thinking that maybe you will have the same problem as HiVolt and that it is one reason why HCC is not a good performer on your 8-core. People who see PCs simply as a keyboard, a mouse, a screen and a more or less fast processor inside would be surprised to see how different they can behave with the same kind of activity. When I started to use my Q6600 with Ubuntu 64 I was surprised to find that HCC was given a serious boost compared to XP32 while WUs from other projects were running about the same. And for your 8-core Macs it seems it is just the opposite. Funny. Cheers. Jean. I'm running my own little computer experiment over here. I also have a Q6600 plus a Phenom 9600 as well as the Mac Pro. Each one seems to run different projects at better rates and I've custom selected for each computer by which they ran best. The Phenom was the most disappointing to get running until I discovered I needed to disable the patch AMD put out for the early Phenoms. But that's another discussion.... I see by my Results manager that I'm down to 8 non HCC units on the Mac. I should be running all HCC units by the time I return home tomorrow morning. Andrew |
||
|
|
Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Well HiVolt , it's not your machine. I am running 8 HCC and getting a reading of 85% on all cores. Just like yours.
A. |
||
|
|
Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Can you monitor the number of pagefaults the process is causing? For a useful diagnosis, you will need a utility that can distinguish between soft and hard faults.
I suspect a high level of soft faults is causing the excessive kernel time. You can reduce this by running fewer HCC tasks at once. Run a mix of projects instead. |
||
|
|
Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Well HiVolt , it's not your machine. I am running 8 HCC and getting a reading of 85% on all cores. Just like yours. A. Whew, thanks. I was going mental trying to troubleshoot this... At least it's confirmed as a problem. |
||
|
|
Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Can you monitor the number of pagefaults the process is causing? For a useful diagnosis, you will need a utility that can distinguish between soft and hard faults. I suspect a high level of soft faults is causing the excessive kernel time. You can reduce this by running fewer HCC tasks at once. Run a mix of projects instead. The only Utility I could find didn't distinguished, but I'm showing 1000 M/s page faults average. FYI...I'm in the process of clearing my HCC units. Right now I'm running 7 HCC and one rice...the processor % is up to 89 for the HCC units and 100% for rice. |
||
|
|
Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Given you have no shortage of memory, we can safely assume these are soft faults.
A solution is likely to take a long time, so for now I recommend running a mixture of projects or even opting out of HCC. I will pass this on to the techs. |
||
|
|
Diana G.
Master Cruncher Joined: Apr 6, 2005 Post Count: 3003 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
|
<snip>The Phenom was the most disappointing to get running until I discovered I needed to disable the patch AMD put out for the early Phenoms. But that's another discussion....<snip> Andrew Andrew can you discuss this further? I have a Phenom 9600 and I am finding the same thing...I would love to fix this on my machine... Thanks!! Diana  [Edit 1 times, last edit by Diana G. at Oct 1, 2008 5:28:13 PM] |
||
|
|
|