What's Changed?

[nivrip]

Since the partial shutdown of BOINC last weekend things on my PCs seem to have changed. I have the Additional Work Buffer set at 2.5 days and before last weekend I had lots of tasks "ready to start" (2.5 days worth).

Now, the number of tasks "ready to start" is vastly reduced and when I click on Projects > Update I get a message (in Messages) stating that "this computer has reached a limit on tasks in progress"

Other messages state that " tasks for NVIDIA GPU and tasks for AMD/ATI GPU are available but your preferences are not set to accept them"

I have never seen these messages before and have never had any problems with the Additional Work Buffer before last weekend.

Something has clearly changed since last weekend and I'm not sure how to get back to the original settings. I can find nothing in preferences about NVIDIA GPU. It's exactly the same on my other PC which is used purely for crunching.

Any ideas?

 

[Anon_F]

Have you tried on the WCG site >Device Manager>Profile?
It does seem to have changed a lot of my settings.
And not getting more than a few jobs at a time now.

 

[nivrip]

Actually, I've just looked at the WCG Forums and there is a lot on there about this very problem. It is obviously causing world wide trouble.

Some of the "explanations" are rather technical but it sounds as though they are aware of it and are trying to resolve it.

I'm still at a loss as to what all this GPU stuff is all about.

 

[Taffycat]

I found this explanation which might help a bit:

What are the advantages of running World Community Grid on a computer's graphics card?

A few years ago, the graphics card manufacturers realized that graphics cards could perform certain types of computations significantly faster than the central processing unit (CPU) inside a computer. As a result, they extended the capabilities of some graphics cards so that they could run tasks that were written in a specialized development language. As a result, applications that are modified to use this specialized development language and can leverage the graphics cards specialized capability appropriately, can potentially run many times faster on the graphics card then on the CPU. The advantage of running World Community Grid on your computer's graphic card is the fact that you can expect to complete more research then you would be able to complete using just your CPU.

However, graphics card processing is different than CPU processing in that graphics card processing does not have the same sophisticated operating system capabilities that allow us to make sure that running the research does not interfere with your use of your computer. Many graphics cards can run World Community Grid without any interference, however, some will cause your computer to be slow in responding to you.

There is more (including a list of which GPUs are suitable, HERE.

 

[nivrip]

Thanks TC.

I've now been into My Projects and ticked the box "If my computer can process work on my graphics card, then please send me work to run on my graphics card for the projects that I have selected above" and saved it.

So far nothing has changed.

I've also looked in the WCG Forums again and people are starting to run out of tasks to crunch. Some of the stuff about settings using CPU and GPU is becoming incomprehensible. I thought this was meant to be simple.

I wonder why these changes have come about which are making life very complicated.

 

[Taffycat]

You're welcome Niv .... I certainly have a much shorter work list, but I don't seem to actually be running out of work. Looking at the 'message' tab, it's looking as if finished units are uploaded and immediately replaced by fresh new work units to crunch. But of course, I'm guessing this would be pretty awkward for anyone who doesn't have an 'always-on' internet connection.

I see a permanent list of 8 being crunched. (But oddly, my OH's computer, a single core which only crunches one unit at a time, has a total of 10 work-units waiting...!)

Fwiw, my GPU wasn't listed as being usable for crunching so I didn't alter any settings here (not that I'd be happy to use my graphics card for crunching tbh, due to gaming.)

Perhaps things will settle down in a day or two... can always hope anyway

 

[nivrip]

Looks like the Tasks Ready To Start have reverted to the numbers we had before.