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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Completed Research
Forum: Help Conquer Cancer
Thread: Any point to continuing with CPU version? |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 42
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
FWIW, I have a *lot* of GPUs that could speed this along. But I am using them elsewhere for now. I'm a badge chaser, and GPUs don't help that goal at all. GPU usage actually acts *against* my badge goals, if it completes the project before I get my blue badge. Once I get it, I will put my GPUs back to work on the project.
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mmstick
Senior Cruncher Joined: Aug 19, 2010 Post Count: 151 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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How does that act against? As I understand, the GPU counts the same as 1 CPU core, so if you run 8 work units on an 9 core PC with the GPU crunching, you will have earned 8 days of runtime. We are here to do science, not to play games for badges anyway, but using your GPU doesn't hurt your ability to get badges, but does help the research speed increase drastically.
----------------------------------------[Edit 1 times, last edit by mmstick at Oct 25, 2012 7:58:14 AM] |
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Steve1979
Cruncher Joined: Nov 22, 2004 Post Count: 32 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I think I see what zombie67 means - the GPU project uses the GPU and a CPU at the same time. So if you ran a quad core PC without the GPU you would amass 96 hours of runtime per day, if you used the GPU it would take up one of these cores, but the time would only be counted once, meaning the same 96 hours.
----------------------------------------zombie67 could take his GPU to another project that didn't use the CPU, get 96 hours with WCG + 24 hours (GPU) with a.n.other. This is the way I see it anyway - feel free to correct me if I am wrong. Steve.  |
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mikey
Veteran Cruncher Joined: May 10, 2009 Post Count: 821 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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How does that act against? As I understand, the GPU counts the same as 1 CPU core, so if you run 8 work units on an 9 core PC with the GPU crunching, you will have earned 8 days of runtime. We are here to do science, not to play games for badges anyway, but using your GPU doesn't hurt your ability to get badges, but does help the research speed increase drastically. Sort of...crunching is counted by TIME here at WCG, so if you use your cpu and do 1 units in 24 hours you get 1 days time added to your time credits, if you use your gpu and do 50 units in 24 hours, you STILL only get 1 days time added to your time credits. The difference is that the total number of available units drops by 50 instead of 1, reducing the total time available to get the badges. Now this could ALL change if more units are added, this was discussed as a POSSIBILITY in another thread. NO guarantees were given, just that the developers were thinking about it. There are MANY things that go into making more units available to us crunchers, such as is it a 'make work' plan, or will the additional work be helpful, can WCG support it, etc, etc, etc!   |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Sort of...crunching is counted by TIME here at WCG, so if you use your cpu and do 1 units in 24 hours you get 1 days time added to your time credits, if you use your gpu and do 50 units in 24 hours, you STILL only get 1 days time added to your time credits. The difference is that the total number of available units drops by 50 instead of 1, reducing the total time available to get the badges. Exactly! |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Interesting, working to stretch the project out... then consider that you could also slow down your CPU... underclock, consuming even less tasks. I can control the laptop CPU speed in steps of 0.1Ghz from 3.1 to 0.8Ghz.... it's usually running heat regulated between 2.0 and 2.7. Haha, not an original, but creative spirits have proposed to throttle down when Beta or DDDT2 are in the hopper. With HCC I'd consider it as a drop on the boilerplate though in lone action.
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
All I know is that the graph said 700 days left about a week ago, and now it says 197 days left. Until I get my blue, I don't want to be accelerating THAT.
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Sorry, but it's 187 days now, and continues to close in on the knreed prediction [:straight face smiley]. As of when there will be 2 WU packed in 1 task my "outlook" will be even more like doing a pregnancy test by reading the halo around the moon.
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Jim1348
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Jul 13, 2009 Post Count: 1066 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I think some have missed the point. It's been said that "every cycle counts", but when hugely superior alternatives exist, then they don't, really. In a very short time if all the CPU HCC crunchers were to leave, the work flow would hardly notice the difference (as best I can infer from reading various posts about the progress on GPUs). There have been comments like "what if I don't have a GPU?" Well there are plenty of other projects to crunch for, and while I too use points and badges as a fun motivator, lets not forget the ultimate purpose of WCG should be to do the best for the community through the research options. Where GPUs can do the work much quicker than a CPU, it seems to me the best public service option would be to transfer your cycles to a project where they can still make a difference. Don't forget crunching has a real cost both in monetary terms and environmental pollution. There is also the big cost: the delay of scientific results. How much does that cost in lives, and wasted time of the researchers? Some people choose the figure of merit to be using the least expensive equipment available. That is better than nothing, but an abacus might then be better still. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
My view is that the CPU-only approach to crunching will continue to compete against other approaches, mainly against GPU-based crunching. How much longer and to what extent may be debatable. There's also the idea of a GPU having an integrated-CPU which is the counterpart of the integrated-GPU in today's latest CPUs. How all these would shake out should be interesting, and I'm of the view that the dividing line between a CPU and a GPU will get lost in the mix.
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