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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: BOINC Agent Support
Thread: Solid State Hard Drive (RESOLVED) |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 10
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WilhelmGGW
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Nov 12, 2005 Post Count: 52 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Has anyone had experience running BOINC on a machine with solid state hard drive -- like the Dell Inspiron Mini 9?
----------------------------------------I've ordered one of these units with the Ubuntu OS, and I'm eager to set it up for WCG -- IF I can be assured it will handle well the processor heat issue. Not only is it a laptop, but it also has no cooling fan (as I understand). [Edit 1 times, last edit by WilhelmGGW at Mar 25, 2009 3:58:25 PM] |
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Dotsch
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Feb 12, 2006 Post Count: 100 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I am running BOINC with my own Linux distribution (Dotsch/UX) from a USB stick. Works very well.
I think there is no difference between crunching on a USB stick and a solid state disk... |
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WilhelmGGW
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Nov 12, 2005 Post Count: 52 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I am running BOINC with my own Linux distribution (Dotsch/UX) from a USB stick. Works very well. I think there is no difference between crunching on a USB stick and a solid state disk... The heat issue is not one of the storage media -- the spinning hard drive or the solid state unit. It's an issue of the processor -- running full out, 24/7, like it does when we're running BOINC in its normal -- and most desirable! -- settings. That generates extra heat that desktop models generally take care of well, with all their box space and cooling fans. Laptops generally have more trouble staying cool, because of their tight interiors and a less efficient cooling fan. I don't expect the solid-state storage media to be an issue -- compared, that is, to a spinning hard drive or a USB stick. My concern is with relying on only passive ventilation to keep the processor cool enough to operate at full speed. I know we can throttle back on BOINC, so it's not crunching all the time. And I'll do that if I need to, I guess. But I'm wondering about what experience others have had with this issue on this hardware configuration. I guess it's kind of a new situation for our computing experience, introduced by the advent of popular units with sold-state storage instead of spinning hard drives. |
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Sekerob
Ace Cruncher Joined: Jul 24, 2005 Post Count: 20043 Status: Offline |
Is this an Atom processor? Some folk posted about this on the forums.
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WCG
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darth_vader
Veteran Cruncher A galaxy far, far away... Joined: Jul 13, 2005 Post Count: 514 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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The Inspiron Mini 9 has a Atom N270 (1 core, HT, 2.5W TDP). It should be able to dissipate the heat of the processor running at 100% if well designed. It might help to only run on 1 of the virtual cores.
I think the SSD wear would be more of an issue than processor heat for an application that checkpoints frequently. For example, DDDT checkpoints about once a minute (or 1440 times a day) on one of my machines. If the SSD does not have some wear-leveling or lazy write logic built in, it could start having problems in a few weeks or months. Most flash memory is rated for somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 write cycles per cell. - D |
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WilhelmGGW
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Nov 12, 2005 Post Count: 52 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Thanks so much for the helpful responses! I had no idea about the wear issue with SSDs. Now I know to follow up on this more.
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Sekerob
Ace Cruncher Joined: Jul 24, 2005 Post Count: 20043 Status: Offline |
The Inspiron Mini 9 has a Atom N270 (1 core, HT, 2.5W TDP). It should be able to dissipate the heat of the processor running at 100% if well designed. It might help to only run on 1 of the virtual cores. I think the SSD wear would be more of an issue than processor heat for an application that checkpoints frequently. For example, DDDT checkpoints about once a minute (or 1440 times a day) on one of my machines. If the SSD does not have some wear-leveling or lazy write logic built in, it could start having problems in a few weeks or months. Most flash memory is rated for somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 write cycles per cell. - D You can in/decrease that 1 minute write, by changing the BOINC default from 60 seconds. I've got it depending on the machine on 10 minutes or even the max of 999 seconds. I really don't worry about loosing 17 minutes over an unexpected power out, more about least time lost writing data checkpoint files which can be pretty large for some sciences.
WCG
----------------------------------------Please help to make the Forums an enjoyable experience for All! [Edit 1 times, last edit by Sekerob at Mar 2, 2009 5:55:54 PM] |
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WilhelmGGW
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Nov 12, 2005 Post Count: 52 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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What about this? Is there a way to set BOINC/WCG to do all its saves to an outside source -- like on a cloud connection or on a USB memory stick? Just to get the frequent saves away from wearing out the solid state drive on the computer?
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WilhelmGGW
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Nov 12, 2005 Post Count: 52 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I am running BOINC with my own Linux distribution (Dotsch/UX) from a USB stick. Works very well. I think there is no difference between crunching on a USB stick and a solid state disk... This may be a great fix for me. I didn't know this could be done. How would I go about this? How do you set it up? |
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Dotsch
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Feb 12, 2006 Post Count: 100 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I am running BOINC with my own Linux distribution (Dotsch/UX) from a USB stick. Works very well. I think there is no difference between crunching on a USB stick and a solid state disk... This may be a great fix for me. I didn't know this could be done. How would I go about this? How do you set it up? It's available as download at www.dostch.de/Dotsch_UX. Dotsch/UX is stripped down Ubunutu based distribution. A lot of unused software was removed, unused services deactivated and remastered in a ISO image. The installation on the USB stick would be done by booting the CD and write a compressed image with the OS and a not compressed image for the data to the USB stick. |
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