25/09-30/09 Astra* Family Forum Return Celebration Challenge

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Thu Aug 27, 2015 10:39 pm

http://boincstats.com/en/stats/challenge/team/chat/710

Name Astra* Family Forum Return Celebration Challenge
Status Upcoming
Project Asteroids@home
Issued by Sicituradastra.
Start time 2015-09-25 00:00 UTC
End time 2015-09-30 00:00 UTC
Late entrants allowed? Yes
Number of teams participating Â» 13
Number of users participating 0

Wouldn't miss it AriZonaMoon*!

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Sun Sep 20, 2015 9:51 pm

Time to save up!Asteroids has a Nvidia GPU app. It doesn't pay as well as most GPU apps but it's still well worth running as it uses very little CPU time. Also, be careful running the AVX CPU WUs. They will cause your CPU cores to run very hot.

Is Skywalker chasing down Janos for that #1 TSBT position? Well, watch out lads! I'm coming after both of you.

Janos (retired) · Post by **Janos (retired)** » Mon Sep 21, 2015 2:25 am

...and still no ATI GPU app.

Post by **utopia-i** » Mon Sep 21, 2015 4:28 pm

And why are these WUs so hot then ?

They dont go down well in an open plan office with fans on constantly ..

________

Does it have to do with
http://asteroidsathome.net/boinc/workun ... d=36138444

Avx, cuda55, sse3

Why am I avx ?

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Tue Sep 22, 2015 1:25 am

This can give you a little info about AVX, but unless you're familiar with the details of assembly machine language on these cpus, it's nerd speak. Short answer is WUs compiled to take advantage of the AVX instructions are more efficient and run hotter than the SSE2 or SSE3 WUs. Only the new CPUs support the AVX instructions (operands for the nerd savvy).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_ ... Extensions

Post by **Dirk Broer** » Tue Sep 22, 2015 1:57 am

scole250 wrote:Only the new CPUs support the AVX instructions (operands for the nerd savvy).

To get even nerdier: Both at PrimeGrid and at SRBase they point out that the AMD implementation of the AVX instructions renders them -the AMD CPUs- useless for AVX tasks. They do not question their own programming skills.

Post by **Bryan** » Wed Sep 23, 2015 4:00 am

On Asteroids only the Haswell AVX 2.0 works and gives a 30-40% boost. The Sandy Bridge Intel chips with AVX 1.0 have no benefit. On SRBase (and probably PG) AVX 1.0 helps but isn't as good as AVX 2.0. On my I7-3930s Asteroids won't give me any AVX WU on Windows, but it does on Linux. No difference in crunch time between that and SSE2/3.

Good luck in the challenge!

I think we are going to try and piss on Sic*'s parade

No one has been bunkering and with a 11 day deadline I'm guessing there will be some huge drops from Sic ... and probably Scole too

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Wed Sep 23, 2015 10:38 am

Your not going to try and ruin the celebration of the moon cult are you

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Wed Sep 23, 2015 11:27 am

I got a late start saving up. I am looking forward to getting that next badge though.

Post by **utopia-i** » Wed Sep 23, 2015 1:06 pm

whats that comin' over t' hill, be it a

_________________________________

Work #
Tasks ready to send 58261
Tasks in progress 313818

Has scole250 got them all

Post by **Bryan** » Wed Sep 23, 2015 1:57 pm

Alez wrote:Your not going to try and ruin the celebration of the moon cult are you

We're gonna give it a run. Sic* has pretty good CPU capability and their GPU is phenomenal. Being this is their "coming out" party I imagine they will show up in force and they've probably been bunkering for a week. Since we didn't decide to do this until yesterday afternoon we may get run over

It should be interesting though.

The number of WU in progress represents 150M credits so someone is certainly bunkering :bom:

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Wed Sep 23, 2015 3:12 pm

Bryan wrote:On Asteroids only the Haswell AVX 2.0 works and gives a 30-40% boost.

I have one system with a Haswell but they run so darn hot I can only run half the cores with them so I actually lose!

Post by **Bryan** » Wed Sep 23, 2015 7:35 pm

scole250 wrote:
Bryan wrote:On Asteroids only the Haswell AVX 2.0 works and gives a 30-40% boost.
I have one system with a Haswell but they run so darn hot I can only run half the cores with them so I actually lose!

Are you water cooled?

Look at the daily FreeDC numbers on Asteroids and then click on P3DN and look at their daily graph! I think I know where a lot of those WU are stashed. I'm guessing they are going to be top dog because they've been bunkering for days now.

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Wed Sep 23, 2015 7:47 pm

Bryan wrote:Are you water cooled?

Sort of. It's a E3-1246 v3 @ 3.50GHz with a Corsair H100i cooler. Maybe I need to redo the thermal paste.

Post by **Bryan** » Wed Sep 23, 2015 8:50 pm

scole250 wrote:
Bryan wrote:Are you water cooled?
Sort of. It's a E3-1246 v3 @ 3.50GHz with a Corsair H100i cooler. Maybe I need to redo the thermal paste.

Wow, I'm amazed that a H100 doesn't keep it cool. I guess the AVX really stresses the cores. I use the H100s on my I7 machines.

Post by **utopia-i** » Thu Sep 24, 2015 10:50 am

is the Challenge still on ..

Work #
Tasks ready to send 0
Tasks in progress 308914

Guess the 11 day opportunity to bunker has sucked up all the WUs

The challenge will be all about who has bunkered most

(CSG is also out of work but NFS has plenty) ...

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Thu Sep 24, 2015 1:39 pm

It's still on. No guarantee any more work will be available for it, but I'm pretty sure several hundred thousand WUs will make in on the board. That's 144,000,000 credits outstanding. The last asteroids challenge only posted 64,000,000 credits and that was a 7 day challenge.

Post by **utopia-i** » Thu Sep 24, 2015 5:30 pm

Work #
Tasks ready to send 7109
Tasks in progress 300011

Its a go again, hopefully more to come 8)

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Thu Sep 24, 2015 11:21 pm

The tension is so thick you could slice it with a knife! Who's staying up to release their bunker? I'm just hoping I don't get washed out of the pool when the heavyweights make their splash.

Silver · Post by **Silver** » Thu Sep 24, 2015 11:57 pm

I was thinking about staying up but I've just realised that its another hour away so I'm going to call it a night.
I'll release my bucket, bunker is way too optimistic! ) in the morning.

Post by **utopia-i** » Fri Sep 25, 2015 9:06 am

I'm in now, managed 782K with 79 WUs pending ... my best yet.

Asteroids does seem to pay well per WU, better than I'm used to with WCG anyhow,

... its not the points, its the taking part 8)

Silver · Post by **Silver** » Fri Sep 25, 2015 9:23 am

And the prize for most understated post of the thread goes to.....

utopia-i wrote:I'm in now

Now that's how to drop a bunker

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Fri Sep 25, 2015 9:30 am

#12 with a bullet, best share with scole how you did it so that he can try better next time

Post by **utopia-i** » Fri Sep 25, 2015 10:15 am

I just took the simplistic approach and advantage of the 11 day deadline, when I ran out of WUs on one PC, network suspended, I installed BOINC from new on a USB stick thing, downloaded more WUs and saved them up, only 3 days worth., but keeping the show on the road.

It was a bit of a guddle getting them uploaded but was brutal. I'll need help on how to unravel once the comp is over, I can't install from new on the PC after USB removed as the installer points at drive E and falls over. I need to have a total UNinstall on both hard drive and E I suspect. (and if anyone understands what Ive done they will get a prize!)

The disadvantage of a bunker is that its all down hill from now on, slipping down the list , that Bryan has leapfrogged me already

... Its amazing to see the megga bunkers with multi million dumps, quite spectacular .. so where are you Alez ?

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Fri Sep 25, 2015 11:14 am

Nice drop utopia-i. Alez, not so much.

You could also setup a VM under virtualbox. I've also simply setup a separate boinc folder for all the project data and point to that folder when I run the boinc client. Problem with that setup is it uses the same computer name and can cause issues with wuprop. The VM method is the cleanest. It makes it look like a completely different computer.

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Fri Sep 25, 2015 8:09 pm

I said I was away and so out of Asteroids and moowrapper

jeez. My systems are still on universe

and primegrid. I should be home to babysit the milkyway GPU thrash fest though .....
utopia-i, easy thing to fix, just stick a stick back in as e: run boinc installer and manually browse it back to c: that should solve the issue.

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Fri Sep 25, 2015 9:29 pm

Where in the world is Alez this week?

(aye, the first one was making me dizzy :pukeleft:)

Post by **Bryan** » Sat Sep 26, 2015 1:00 am

Boy those TSBT guys are a real pain in the backside. First utopia-1 bounces me and now Scole is right on my tail!

Nice bunker bombs guys

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Sat Sep 26, 2015 1:14 am

I'll race you to 1,000,000

Post by **Bryan** » Sat Sep 26, 2015 2:29 am

scole250 wrote:I'll race you to 1,000,000

I concede, you whupped me

I won't even challenge you to a race to 2M ... you'd let me think I had a chance and then bomb the heck out of me

This is turning out to be a really good challenge and you guys are really doing well ... keep it up!

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Sat Sep 26, 2015 12:02 pm

scole250 wrote:Where in the world is Alez this week?

(aye, the first one was making me dizzy :pukeleft:)

Bobbing about on the blue bit :pukeleft:

Post by **Bryan** » Sat Sep 26, 2015 6:38 pm

Ok Scole, I caught back up so it's time to drop your next bunker bomb

Silver · Post by **Silver** » Sat Sep 26, 2015 6:43 pm

Looks like there should be a good battle between Scole and Bryan.
I'm obviously on team Scole but I'll be interested to see how this one goes, carry on chaps

Post by **utopia-i** » Sat Sep 26, 2015 7:13 pm

Will it be down to luck

, pending validations may have a say in the battle Royal, Scole v Bryan, whos on the juding panel

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Sat Sep 26, 2015 8:38 pm

Well, here goes my last stash. Won't keep me ahead of Bryan for long though. Based on his recent stats, he's holding more than few WUs.

Post by **Bryan** » Sat Sep 26, 2015 9:25 pm

I just knew you were going to do that to me again

I just released my little "firecracker" but it won't be able to cover the damage you did! I was saving that for Mankka* but it wasn't needed.

We have a fast mover on our six ... RaymondFO* is going to take us both down.

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Sat Sep 26, 2015 10:56 pm

I was provoked! That was it though. Going to have to see where I coast in.

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Sun Sep 27, 2015 3:16 pm

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Sun Sep 27, 2015 10:58 pm

2 days to go!

TSBT is 5th of 23 teams

Individual postions...
scole of TSBT 12th
utopia-i 20th
Janos of TSBT 46th
Skywalker TSBT 52nd
Megacruncher TSBT 111th
Paul of TSBT 123rd
leecarver 328th
stuhawkes 354th
alez [ TSBT's Pirate ] 451st
phildemeur 496th
Garry Ross 541st
Arnie 554th
thinboab 624th
Grum 636th
David Jackson 644th

Keep it up!

Post by **Sphynx** » Sun Sep 27, 2015 11:30 pm

scole250 wrote:I was provoked! That was it though. Going to have to see where I coast in.

I don't know about you coasting in, but I do have to say you win for the most interesting graph of a bunker release! :bounce: Nice!

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 12:30 am

Did you like that? I should have waited longer but I have so self control.

Post by **Sphynx** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 1:55 pm

scole250 wrote:Did you like that? I should have waited longer but I have so self control.

I did like it. Bryan usually makes fun of me when I drop one because my internet bandwidth tends to be very slow on uploads. I remember one Challenge with larger uploads that took me 48 hours to complete. One of these days I'll get my act together and put more effort into a bunker just to see what I can do if I put my mind to it. Too much thinking in RL lately to really focus on bunkering I guess.

Post by **utopia-i** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 4:33 pm

scole250 wrote:

boinc@Poland hot on our heals

We as a team can hold on!

Bryan, we can extend you a team visitor badge for a day

Scole250, you know you need that 10m badge .. Come back and get crunching :mrgreen:

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 5:58 pm

utopia-i wrote:Scole250, you know you need that 10m badge .. Come back and get crunching :mrgreen:

I'm on it chief! :salute: And I'll get my 10M badge. I have over 400K pending.

Post by **Bryan** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 7:10 pm

For those with nothing but time on your hands you can greatly help your output by only crunching WU that have already been turned in by your wingman. That way nothing winds up in pending.

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 7:54 pm

Is there an easy way to do the look up?

Post by **utopia-i** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 8:40 pm

All I'll say is that, Im hoping for a Top 20 finish, well 20th will do

a last gasp secret bunker, not of the same initial magnitude however, evey little helps ...

I have 152 WUs pending, who can I mach up with

Post by **Bryan** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 9:27 pm

I'm not aware of an automated way to do it, but it isn't difficult. Time consuming yes, but difficult no. This is how I do it:

Use BoincTasks and slam it to the left side of the screen so Win7/8 makes it a 1/2 page on the left side of your screen. Open the project > computers on project and select "tasks" for the one you want to do. Then hit "In Progress" and in the header of the left hand column select "SHOW NAMES". That gives you the WU name that will match BoincTasks. Slam your browser to the right side of the screen so that the right 1/2 of your screen is the project tasks.

BoincTasks: select the computer you want to do. Suspend ALL cached WU. Double click the suspended WU you want to start with; ie SSE2/SSE3/AVX. Double clicking expands the list. Usually best to start with the ones with the soonest deadline since those are the oldest "aged" WU. SORT the WU by name ... click the name column until "^" character shows. The WU on BoincTasks are now in the same order as what the project is showing.

Use the "next 20" tab at the top of the project task listing to go through the list and find where the cached WU you are checking are located. Now you are ready to go.

That sounds like a lot of steps, but after you've done it once the 2nd time will take you maybe 15 seconds 8). The actual picking and chosing will go MUCH faster if you have a mouse that has a 3rd button or side button that is assigned as "BACK".

Checking WU:
Click on the 2nd column "Work Unit" and look at the status. If there is a "completed, waiting for validation" then you are in business. On your BoincTasks screen left click and highlight that WU. If there is already a WU/s highlighted then press CTRL and highlight the new one. That adds it to the list without unmarking the other ones.

If it doesn't show the WU as completed then go back (easiest/far faster with the 3rd button). Just move the cursor anywhere over the project page and hit the back button which returns you to the list.

Repeat the above ad nauseam.

Notes:
I do 1 page worth at a time. I will mark all completed WU on BTasks for the entire 20 unit project page. Once I get to the last Wu on the 20 WU page I right click the highlighted WU and tell them to resume. Then I hit the next 20 tab and do the next page.

More times than not the completed WU come in clumps. So when you find several in a row you can start skipping down the task list 2-3 WU at a time until you hit one that is not completed. Then back up and find where they stopped. The same is true if you are in a clump of WU where none have been completed. Don't look at every WU ... jump down a few until you find one that is completed.

When I am highlighting the WUs I mark the 1st one found. If I'm in a clump of them then I wait until I get to the last completed WU. If only the 1st one is highlighted then you can hit SHIFT left click on the last WU and everything in between there and the 1st one will highlight.

If I already have WUs highlighted and I find a new clump of finished WU I will do a CTRL and highlight the start of the new batch. I will check the WU and go down until I find an unfinished one. Then I go to BTasks and hit CTRL on the last good one I found and then continue up the list until I get to the last one that was highlighted. The point here is rather than highlight each and every WU when you find it it is much quicker to press CTRL and run up the list quicly rather than doing a back and forth.

It isn't difficult, but it does take some time. It certainly isn't as bad as this post makes it sound. I am just trying to give enough info and cover some of the speedup tricks I've found.

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 11:15 pm

Well with 939 pending, I had to try but I decided to check who my wingman was on some of those pending and guess who the first 20 were! That's right...BRYAN!

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 11:16 pm

No, not really.

But I do have 939 pending