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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: Suggestions / Feedback
Thread: Better Multi-Processor support |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 26
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I used these tips in the past to run both of these programs as services, using Microsoft's Srvany file (comes with the resouce kit):
http://www.centered.com/secondcopy/tips.html#TT_NTService http://bppresence.com/support/users/kb.php?id...;category_id=17&sid2= I don't recommend this for anyone who does not know what they're doing. But for those comfortable with working with services and in their computer's registry, I suspect the methods described in these two links could be applied to working with the grid agent. Again, I have no dual-processor systems that I can risk experimenting with like this. But are there any other takers, perhaps? |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
@Lawrence: I think there is/was also a light version of firedeamon wich is free to use, but you can only setup and manage one service with it.
@Compudude: Yeah you are right, firedeamon can't do any better then other free tools around there on the internet. But you can also write your own service, it's isn't that hard. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;137890 It's with the tools INSTSRV and SRVANY. I installed the seti program as a service once on this way. I used this guide: http://www.geocities.com/lwddemon/setiservice/ |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Good links, Pconfig. A little more detailed and easy to follow than the ones I used showing the same procedure for Microsoft's Srvany.
Has anyone tried using it yet? I don't see why it wouldn't work, but confirmation would still be nice. I'll still have to wait until the grid client supports SMP natively, as I can't risk this level of tweaking on production machines.  |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I think I had better add a link to this post: http://worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread?thread=1148#6280
Apparently the Agent cannot make full use of a multi-processor in a safe and reasonable way. According to other people's experiences, this is one experiment that should NOT be tried. Sadly, Lawrence |
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Alther
Former World Community Grid Tech United States of America Joined: Sep 30, 2004 Post Count: 414 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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OK, here we go one more time:
----------------------------------------The agent is NOT designed to run on an SMP system. Period. While you MAY get two instances to run, you're very likely corrupting both workunits. The reason for this is because system objects such as shared memory, semaphores and mutexes use hard coded names and the agent makes assumptions that just it and the application are accessing them. If two agents and applications attach to these objects there is the very real potential of clobbering shared memory, corrupting the semaphore/mutex lock count etc. It's just a limitation of the United Devices agent, which will not be "fixed" in this current version. The end result is you end up wasting your time and this project's time because the workunits must be sent out again to be recalculated. As mentioned, the only "safe" way to do this is to use a virtual machine, such as VMWare. However, this would only be beneficial to true SMP machines. It's pointless to even try this with Hyperthreaded CPUs as it's really just one CPU and you end up thrashing between the two agents, thus slowing both down.
Rick Alther
Former World Community Grid Developer |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
So this process is a no-go as far as trying to get 2 copies going on one SMP machine. It could still work for purposes of running it as a process, however, should that be important in some scenarios (running while logged off the network, for instance, for security reasons).
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
OK, here we go one more time: Thanks for the info. I was going to try this What kind of machine would do this?The agent is NOT designed to run on an SMP system. Period. While you MAY get two instances to run, you're very likely corrupting both workunits. The reason for this is because system objects such as shared memory, semaphores and mutexes use hard coded names and the agent makes assumptions that just it and the application are accessing them. If two agents and applications attach to these objects there is the very real potential of clobbering shared memory, corrupting the semaphore/mutex lock count etc. It's just a limitation of the United Devices agent, which will not be "fixed" in this current version. The end result is you end up wasting your time and this project's time because the workunits must be sent out again to be recalculated. As mentioned, the only "safe" way to do this is to use a virtual machine, such as VMWare. However, this would only be beneficial to true SMP machines. It's pointless to even try this with Hyperthreaded CPUs as it's really just one CPU and you end up thrashing between the two agents, thus slowing both down. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Thanks for the info. I was going to try this What kind of machine would do this? This doesn't apply to you unless you have a dual-processor machine. If you do, you can purchase software called VMWare, which sets up a virtual computer within your computer that you could devote the second processor to. Way overkill, as solutions go. Like swatting a fly with a buick. Hard as hell to do, and very wasteful of a perfectly good buick.  |
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Alther
Former World Community Grid Tech United States of America Joined: Sep 30, 2004 Post Count: 414 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Way overkill, as solutions go. Like swatting a fly with a buick. Hard as hell to do, and very wasteful of a perfectly good buick. Interesting analogy 
Rick Alther
Former World Community Grid Developer |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
The WCG should take a long hard look at the multiproccesor issue because in the future it looks like Intel is going to a dual core design on its next generation CPU's.
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