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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Community
Forum: Hardware Chat Room
Thread: Power8 CPU architecture support |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 10
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R.West
Cruncher Joined: Jan 17, 2018 Post Count: 11 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Today we spun up an IBM Power8 server. We installed CentOS 7 (Little Endian) and the boinc-client, which runs perfectly.
We've attached the WCG project to the boinc-client, and I see the machine in my WCG account. Yet the machine doesn't receive work units. 1) Is this due to the fact that the Power8 architecture isn't supported? 2) Is there a way to get WCG up and running on a Power8 CPU archtitecture? Btw, the server is on and remains on. If anyone of the WCG team would like to do some testing for Power8, my server will accept beta work units  . |
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hchc
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Aug 15, 2006 Post Count: 798 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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R.West said:
----------------------------------------1) Is this due to the fact that the Power8 architecture isn't supported? Yep. Seems like only x86 (32-bit) and amd64 (64-bit) CPU architectures are supported on Linux (at least as far as WCG applications). See: https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/help/viewTopic.do?shortName=minimumreq I can't speak to #2. Maybe search around for emulation software that allows Power8 to emulate amd64 binaries? Maybe using KVM or Xen or QEMU?
[Edit 2 times, last edit by hchc at Dec 19, 2018 1:51:14 PM] |
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R.West
Cruncher Joined: Jan 17, 2018 Post Count: 11 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I can't speak to #2. Maybe search around for emulation software that allows Power8 to emulate amd64 binaries? Maybe using KVM or Xen or QEMU? If anyone has experience with virtualization on this platform, then please supply me with any relevant documentation on the subject. It's a shame that this server, with 96 parallel threads, now stands idle  . |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I don't believe you be will able to get it to work. The sciences aren't compiled for that architecture. At one time, IBM provided a x86 emulator with some of their tools packages in AIX but it added a tremendous amount of overhead which mostly negated the benefits of the machine. I think it has been withdrawn. I have always felt it was a shame they didn't support their own processors. There are systems out there now that allow close to 140 threads in the Power9 series. I believe WCG doesn't support Power because few people run those processors. Not worth the support effort is my understanding.
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dango
Senior Cruncher Joined: Jul 27, 2009 Post Count: 307 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I can't speak to #2. Maybe search around for emulation software that allows Power8 to emulate amd64 binaries? Maybe using KVM or Xen or QEMU? If anyone has experience with virtualization on this platform, then please supply me with any relevant documentation on the subject. It's a shame that this server, with 96 parallel threads, now stands idle .Hi, I am managing few POWER systems. You cannot emulate another architecture. WCG will not run there :/ |
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manalog
Cruncher Joined: Apr 9, 2015 Post Count: 18 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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There is only an option to run Boinc on that server: compile the application by yourself.
In order to do this you need the source code of the application. I do not know if World Community Grid releases sources; perhaps you should consider to contribute to some other Boinc project. I think Tn-Grid (http://gene.disi.unitn.it/test) could be a good choice: they are doing interesting biological researches (also on Coronavirus) and the app they run has a very simple source code in C++ that can be downloaded and compiled by anyone. I had no previous experience in compilation of software but I was able to compile an optimized app for my CPU only by reading the instruction; I think it shouldn't be hard to compile a version for Power8 architecture, and it could be an important milestone in the Boinc ecosystem. I know that the post is old, but I wasn't able to contact you privately. |
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BladeD
Ace Cruncher USA Joined: Nov 17, 2004 Post Count: 28976 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Keep us updated if this goes anywhere!
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R.West
Cruncher Joined: Jan 17, 2018 Post Count: 11 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Keep us updated if this goes anywhere! It won't: the Power8 server has been sold off. Seeing how difficult it is to add support for ARM/Android, which has a much larger install base, I don't see support for other CPU architectures coming any time soon. |
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BladeD
Ace Cruncher USA Joined: Nov 17, 2004 Post Count: 28976 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I was replying to the post ahead of mine.
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manalog
Cruncher Joined: Apr 9, 2015 Post Count: 18 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Sad news... It would have been an important milestone to run some Boinc app on this powerful server. As I said in the previous post, if you are looking for an "official" support for a particular architecture then, no, you are right, it is a very difficult thing. But compiling an app for a specific project can be very very easy: many Boinc application relies on very small&simple source code that can be compiled by anyone very easily on every particular architecture, including Power8.
I referred to Tn-Grid because I read on the boinc-dev forum that they are porting this project to very particular architectures, such as MIPS (OpenWrt). |
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