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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: BOINC Agent Support
Thread: Using an Intel Mac - Boinc runs natively, jobs run in emulation mode. |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 25
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hi all,
Apologies if this has already been discussed; I did do a search, but to no avail. I've just installed the Boinc client on my MacBook Pro, which all went fine. However, as work units download and begin to run, I notice that e.g. the wcg_faah_autodock process is running in emulation mode (PowerPC) rather than natively (Intel). Is this normal? If so, fine; however, this is clearly rather wasteful of CPU time. Will the Mac work units begin to run natively at some point in the future, to take full advance of the Intel CPUs now in use? |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Yes, and yes.
After a little nudging, WCG provided the PowerPC build for Intel Macs in emulation mode (which were excluded initially). They plan to provide a native build, but with the current low (very low) numbers of Intel Macs on the grid, I'm afraid it's probably not a priority. We'll keep reminding WCG for you. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Thanks for info
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Dotsch
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Feb 12, 2006 Post Count: 98 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Btw. for which WCG projects are binaries for the Mac available ?
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Btw. for which WCG projects are binaries for the Mac available ? I think I've had my Mac downloading work units for all the projects so far. All run very slowly in emulation mode, unfortunately  |
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knreed
Former World Community Grid Tech Joined: Nov 8, 2004 Post Count: 4504 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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We have released binaries for mac for FightAIDS@Home, Help Defeat Cancer and Human Proteome Folding - Phase 2. We only have them compiled for PPC-Mac at this time. We will create a Intel-Mac build but at this current time our focus is on resolving the Human Proteome Folding - Phase 2 problems.
Some information for you: Here is a count of results returned from BOINC agents yesterday by platform: 15,213 from Windows (71.4%) 5,474 from Linux (25.7%) 509 from PPC-Mac (2.4%) 100 from Intel-Mac (0.5%) In addition, there were 67,835 results returned by UD agents (all windows). Kevin |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
+1 for Intel-Mac/universal binaries
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I do hope it's occurred to someone that the low number of Intel Macs on the grid is partially due to the lack of native agents. I can't be the only one that's just not going to bother running under Rosetta.
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
If you look, you will see a low number of Macs in total. Intel Macs are still very new, and still have little market share. Meanwhile, the emulation isn't so bad - it should provide 60-80% of the native speed.
It's an acceptable stopgap for most people. WCG will provide the native version when they have time. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Meanwhile, the emulation isn't so bad - it should provide 60-80% of the native speed Unfortunately, I'm seeing more like 15-25% performance for the faah processes -- not an acceptable stopgap. When WCG provides universal binaries, I'll start crunching again. Until then, I'll look for a project that runs natively. |
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