Prime Grid Year of the Dragon Challenge 23/28 Jan PPS LLR

Zydor · Post by **Zydor** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 1:58 am

Year of the Dragon Challenge at Prime Grid 1800 UTC 23 Jan to 1800 UTC 28 Jan 2012, PPS LLR, WUs only count if downloaded and reported within Challenge time.

http://www.primegrid.com/forum_thread.php?id=3951#47123

We up for this ??

Regards
Zy

melter65 · Post by **melter65** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 6:46 pm

I'm in :D

Post by **Jeffers** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 9:11 am

I crunch Primegrid already... is there anything special I need to do to ensure all my work qualifies during the challenge?

UBT - Rick Horn · Post by **UBT - Rick Horn** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 9:33 am

Jeffers wrote: is there anything special I need to do to ensure all my work qualifies during the challenge?

The main thing is to download your work after the official start time.
Any work in hand before the start time will not be counted.

Zydor · Post by **Zydor** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 2:47 pm

Anyone with an Intel AVX extensions capable processor - and thats really the AMD Bulldozer cpu's and Intel 39XX, maybe others I'm not 100% certain, don't think so, I think its just those two series of cpu's, but look via CPU-Z that will tell you - make sure you load up the necessary files to use AVX, the difference is stunning.

There are two threads on AVX at Prime Grid Number Crunching forum, the main thread on AVX, and a second titled app_info.

At present an app_info file is needed to run PPS LLR CPU using AVX. If issues arise, yell, I'll try and help.

Regards
Zy

Barrie · Post by **Barrie** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 12:19 pm

Yeah OK, no AVX though

TroubledBunny · Post by **TroubledBunny** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 11:34 am

Jeffers wrote:I crunch Primegrid already... is there anything special I need to do to ensure all my work qualifies during the challenge?

As the PrimeGrid thread says, you must select the correct sub-project in your preferences i.e. PPS LLR.
AVXllr is another matter, the AVX app is c. 30% quicker but as Zydor says you are looking at Sandy Bridge (I have an i7-2700K) or Bulldozer CPUs. Your OS also needs to support AVX, for instance Win7 requires SP1 and XP doesn't support AVX at all.
There are lots of details on the PG message boards.
I eventually got it working under BOINC but as I wanted to use my GPU at PG I had to use an app_info.xml and also manually download all of the missing files mentioned in that app_info.

Zydor · Post by **Zydor** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 1:16 am

Seven hours in and we are 18th out of 164 teams, which is great for only 10 of us crunching.

Anyone with some cores they can contribute welcomed, 4 days plus to go - and every bit helps. We could do better than our average PG Challenge showing this time, with a bit more crunching added.

Regards
Zy

Zydor · Post by **Zydor** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 9:29 am

Barrie

Saw your PG post, holding reply is there, can you clarify the issue - and possibly unhide PCs, and I'll try to help

Regards
Zy

Zydor · Post by **Zydor** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 9:56 am

Barrie

Try setting (deliberately) for Sieve CPUs in the preferences connected with your PC, save it, then reopen and change to CPU LLR, deselecting Sieve CPU, then saving the change, that should (hopefully) force a write to the database and get the correct selection in place. Make sure No Tasks is set whilst doing it to prevent some sieve spinning down before the amend to LLR CPU.

Regards
Zy

Zydor · Post by **Zydor** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 11:43 am

Damn .... just lost 5 hours work on my main box for the challenge. I went out, and when I came back it was moaning about no disc space - nonsense of course, Tb's of it, and 50Gb available to BOINC. Moo was still running fine, it was just PrimeGrid. Fiddled for a minute or so, then deinstalled BOINC (6.12.34). Reinstalled 6.12.34, and it worked first go .... grrrrr .... no idea what caused it.

Have met the issue before, its rare but I've seen it, there was plenty of space available - It just reckoned PrimeGrid didnt have enough space. What a time for it to pick ..... ah well, going again, I guess the French were going to overtake us anyway as overall Team output had gone down by around 1,000 hour before I fell over .... but still .... it irritates.

Anyway, crunch on, three days still to go, help from anyone with available cores always welcomed, we still have the chance for a real good showing if some more join in the fray to help out.

Regards
Zy

Barrie · Post by **Barrie** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 1:15 pm

Thanks for the replies Zydor, I've been a bit busy with dentist and hospital appointments to keep track everywhere, and the problem doesn't seem to have recurred again so far...

I lost a few hours right at the start, and then quite a few Monday night/Tuesday morning too due to a recurring, random explorer crash on the Xeon machine, cba to fix it as I'll be losing that machine on Weds anyhoo ( which might well cripple my CPU grinding capabilities for the foreseeable future... )

Zydor · Post by **Zydor** » Thu Jan 26, 2012 3:06 pm

Whilst there is just over a day to go, "Xtrem Team Boinc Addicted" are closing on us at the rate of about 2000+ an hour having put on a focused spurt to catch us.

At their current rate they will overtake before the Challenge closes.

Anyone who can pitch in with a few cores overnight, would make a real difference, and stop them overtaking. If we can increase our Team output by an additional 2000-3000 Challenge Points an hour (which is roughly an additional 20-30 WUs an hour, for 12hrs+ overnight, we can stop them overtaking before the finish.

To stop them every little bit definitely helps ...

Regards
Zy

Barrie · Post by **Barrie** » Fri Jan 27, 2012 9:12 am

Grrrr Yesterday I lost another 30-odd CPU hours ( 7 or 8 on each of 4 cores ) crunching Sieve on CPU which isn't even selected

Now I've got a load of 3hr+ LLR tasks instead of the usual 20min, which probably means I'll lose some more CPU time at the end of the challenge with unfinished tasks...

Seems like some of the cpu sieve tasks that I shouldn't have had to begin with, were running in the background unbeknownst to Boinc manager or myself... Grrr >:o[