| Index | Recent Threads | Unanswered Threads | Who's Active | Guidelines | Search |
 |
World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: Suggestions / Feedback
Thread: Uni Computer Labs |
| No member browsing this thread |
|
Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 9
|
|
| Author |
|
|
MDHC
Cruncher Joined: Dec 8, 2008 Post Count: 11 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
|
At all the universities I've been to there are labs filled with comps that do next to nothing all day. They just sit idle. Sometimes students come in and use the word processors, stats software, etc., but none of this utilizes a significant portion of the computer's resources. This is a tremendous waste of computing power and an opportunity lost! We must infiltrate all university computer labs and install the grid upon them all!
----------------------------------------
I'm here to spread love all over the world.
|
||
|
|
Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
There are many universities on WCG - wish we could have them all! If you attend one, try to promote it to the IT department.
Don't install without permission though.  |
||
|
|
MrKermit
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Jun 13, 2009 Post Count: 95 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
|
Unfortunately the Power costs are under heavy scrutiny, and spinning up the procs could double the actual power usage... a change that would certainly get noticed.
----------------------------------------Personally I think you're absolutely right, but until power management allows for threads that run at the low power settings I think it will be hard to convince them there is no additional cost. As I've said before, the real waste is the 99% of those computers sitting idle 99% of their lives ; if we're going to spend the energy and capital to create all this hardware, it should be doing useful work for 90+ percent of it's life. Cheers! MrKermit  |
||
|
|
JmBoullier
Former Community Advisor Normandy - France Joined: Jan 26, 2007 Post Count: 3715 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
|
but until power management allows for threads that run at the low power settings I think it will be hard to convince them there is no additional cost. I don't know for Windows systems, but in some (all?) current versions of Linux systems when Boinc is running alone the machine is considered as idle by the power management function and it is switched to economy mode. That leads to a lower contribution but much more than doing nothing! Feedback for Windows systems is welcome. Jean. |
||
|
|
KLiK
Master Cruncher Croatia Joined: Nov 13, 2006 Post Count: 3108 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
|
Unfortunately the Power costs are under heavy scrutiny, and spinning up the procs could double the actual power usage... a change that would certainly get noticed. Personally I think you're absolutely right, but until power management allows for threads that run at the low power settings I think it will be hard to convince them there is no additional cost. As I've said before, the real waste is the 99% of those computers sitting idle 99% of their lives ; if we're going to spend the energy and capital to create all this hardware, it should be doing useful work for 90+ percent of it's life. Cheers! MrKermit wrong! the power consumtion is 20-30% more, than on idle...'cause only the CPU & RAM are active for BOINC calculating... my measurements are done on "UPS power supply", that has the "Watt meter" installed and reports it to computer via USB connection! KLiK |
||
|
|
Sekerob
Ace Cruncher Joined: Jul 24, 2005 Post Count: 20043 Status: Offline |
KLiK, if you share what processor and OS with what power savings features enabled that's on there'd be a reference to understand where your measurements are coming from.
----------------------------------------
WCG
Please help to make the Forums an enjoyable experience for All! |
||
|
|
Somervillejudson@netscape.net
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: May 16, 2008 Post Count: 1065 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
|
The wasted computer time is amazing. Once I started on WCG I realized how little I actually used of my computers capacity. Talk about over powered. Then considering that in my experiance most computers are near the end of their effective life at three years, one probably uses less than 10% of what they could accomplish. Maybe less than 1%. An amazing waste. Energy costs are an issue but in the long term what we are doing will more than make up for them. I wonder what amount of computer capacity lays fallow out there?
|
||
|
|
Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Yes! Talk to the IT department. I approached the IT department here at University of Texas last summer only to get the response that they already run it during the down time!
But don't stop at colleges, I worked at the local hospital last summer, and mentioned it to them, now they are looking into it (they made clear there were no promises, but atleast they are looking into it) and also my past high school. I was in a big high school with over 2000 computer cores. I remember somewhere I calculated out what that was for the whole district and remember it was over 21,000 cores. Still in talks with them, which is hard as i'm a long way away at college, but not giving up! Keep it in mind! |
||
|
|
MrKermit
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Jun 13, 2009 Post Count: 95 Status: Offline Project Badges:
|
Unfortunately the Power costs are under heavy scrutiny, and spinning up the procs could double the actual power usage... a change that would certainly get noticed. Personally I think you're absolutely right, but until power management allows for threads that run at the low power settings I think it will be hard to convince them there is no additional cost. As I've said before, the real waste is the 99% of those computers sitting idle 99% of their lives ; if we're going to spend the energy and capital to create all this hardware, it should be doing useful work for 90+ percent of it's life. Cheers! MrKermit wrong! the power consumtion is 20-30% more, than on idle...'cause only the CPU & RAM are active for BOINC calculating... my measurements are done on "UPS power supply", that has the "Watt meter" installed and reports it to computer via USB connection! KLiK KLiK, 20% to 30% increase in power is significant when dealing with hundreds or thousands of nodes, enough to get noticed or put a bad light on the would be volunteer admins of such labs if "discovered". The good news is, after googling for a bit I agree with your conclusion. By running the cpuspeed/cpufreq utilities and changing a default setting so that they ignore "nice" processes when deciding to clock up I think it's achievable to get the impact closer to zero. I have a Watt's up Pro that can get a good long term average, so if I get a chance to play I'll post the results. I hope we can do better than 20-30% power consumptuion. It will be a couple weeks before I have a good window open up most likely. Keep crunching, and let me know if you find a good formula to dial the cpu's down while still WCG'ing. Cheers! MrKermit |
||
|
|
|