Einstein@Home GPU Application for ATI/AMD Graphics Cards
Submitted on 15 May 2012 12:21:17 UTC
After more than a year of work by Oliver Bock, Bernd Machenschalk, Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein and other developers, we are pleased to announce the release of the first Einstein@Home application for ATI/AMD Graphics Cards.
This OpenCL application, which searches Arecibo data for new radio pulsars, is about a factor of ten faster than the same search running on a typical CPU. The application is currently available for Windows and Linux computers with Radeon HD 5000 or better graphics cards. We hope to have a version for Macintosh (Apple OS X 10.8, Mountain Lion) sometime this summer, but there are still some problems that need to be fixed or worked around.
Volunteers who wish to run this application will need to install version 7.0.27 or later of the BOINC client. Please see this thread for more information, or if you want to ask questions.
Many thanks to the AMD/ATI team for their support in the OpenCL software development effort.
Bruce Allen
Director, Einstein@Home
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Copyright © 2024 Einstein@Home. All rights reserved.
Comments
OK -- so I wonder about
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OK -- so I wonder about combinations.
I've built up a farm with HD 4850's. I realize that advances in programming and drivers are pushing this card off the table.
Not being inclined to spend excessive dollars either on cards, power supplies, and cooling, I'm looking at something like the HD 6750 (I realize I can't use that card with MilkyWay and so over time I'll fade away from that project as I'm unwilling to go with the high wattage high dollar newer DP AMD cards).
But with Einstein, my impression is that I *can* use HD 6750 cards - *provided* I am not running Windows XP it seems as the BOINC client under XP doesn't believe the HD 6750 is a usable GPU (is that true or is it simply a driver of the month issue with AMD there -- I was trying the 12.4 driver for this).
So, can some of the folks who've been there / done that confirm I can use an HD 6750 with Windows 7 and a BOINC client and have the BOINC client believe in the GPU tooth fairy? If so, which AMD driver of the month should I match to it?
I also realize that the Einstein AMD GPU application currently *requires* the 'client of the week' BOINC beta -- (is that true??) Can someone confirm that as well.
I tried the 6750 with an XP set up - no fun there -- and lot's of games to get the 12.4 driver out of the system since it (like a number of the AMD drivers of the month seems to really not like the HD 4850)
So before I sink more time in the this HD 6750 test, I would like some feedback from folks.
Thanks
Sorry about the 4850s...but
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Sorry about the 4850s...but anyway the 6750 should do much better in terms of Flops/Watt. The 7750 and 7770 should be even better for E@H BOINC crunching, at a comparable price point and power consumption. They might be slower for gaming tho than equally expensive 6xxx cards AFAIK, but their "Graphics Core Next" architecture is more similar to NVIDIAs designs, and the BRP4 app happens to have its origins in the CUDA world.
I don't know about XP, but under Windows 7, you will have no problems using these cards with BOINC.
Yes, E@H currently requires a development version of BOINC for AMD/OpenCL apps, but the development cycles of BOINC are rather fast paced and this version or a newer one will be the official version quite soon if testing goes as expected.
Cheers
HB
RE: But with Einstein, my
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I did some hunting down when I first started to read messages like this.
I found that the 12.1 drivers for Windows XP (I tested the 32-bit version) unpack a folder
C:\AMD\Support\12-1_xp32_dd_ccc\Packages\Apps\OpenCL
That folder contains a file "OpenCL.msi", and the installer program offers an APP/SDK installation option, which would seem to be what you need for OpenCL runtime support and to enable BOINC's detection of the OpenCL capabilities for the card.
I tried the same exercise with the 12.4 XP drivers - no OpenCL.msi file, no APP installation option.
I'll leave it to someone else to test 12.2 and 12.3
Vit, If you happen to
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Vit,
If you happen to catch this. Have you tried to see how it scales up to 3 tasks? Also which OS are you currently using?
Oh, and the real energy efficiency is probably much higher than 5-7x, since you have you CPU OC'd to 4.5. Would think, IMHO, that it's probably around 8-9, maybe even 10. 4.5 is high enough that more juice is being drawn from the higher vcore.
Nice runs BTW. Welcome to GPU crunching.
Cheers
How can i see that my
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How can i see that my graphics card is used in computing.......?
RE: How can i see that my
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It isn't:
KR
Michael
Team Linux Users Everywhere
RE: RE: How can i see
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Seems to be a driver problem in this case. You should try to update it to the latest version. Does BOINC recognize your GPU (see BOINC's event log)?
Oliver
Einstein@Home Project
RE: How can i see that my
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According to Hal6000's driver cheat sheet, you're running Cat 9.11 (1.4.467), this predates OpenCL support (even with the SDK), update your driver to something more recent, i suggest Cat 12.3,
Claggy
RE: We hope to have a
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Hurrah that there is work being done on OS X.
Is there a particular reason why Mountain Lion will be the minimum OS requirement?
Thanks!
Steve
RE: RE: We hope to have
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Actually, currently it looks as if we will have something that will work (at least) for "Lion" and up, for AMD/ATI GPUs. We are currently testing a release candidate at our test project, Albert@Home ( http://albert.phys.uwm.edu), results so far look perfect.
What took us so long was that Apple's implementation of the OpenCL standard had some ...well... very unique features (I'd call them bugs actually). We saw some improvements in the previews for Mountain Lion, and had initially hoped for a fix there (which are not always backported by Apple to earlier OSX releases) , but then we found a way to work around the problem.
Stay tuned.
HB
FYI: BOINC has made
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FYI:
BOINC has made version 7.0.28 the "official", recommended version, so you no longer need a developer version of BOINC to run AMD/ATI OpenCL apps.
Cheers
HB
Following my earlier report,
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Following my earlier report, it's now been confirmed by AMD that OpenCL runtime support has been removed from Windows XP drivers, despite what it says on the download page: source http://devgurus.amd.com/message/1282438#1282438.
In that forum, Sirish Kumar says that support was removed "from Cat-12.4 (8.961) onwards", but in practice it's missing in 12.2 and 12.3 as well.
So, the last Catalyst download usable here on Windows XP is 12.1
HAL6000 also updated his
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HAL6000 also updated his driver list today.
http://www.hal6000.com/seti/boinc_ati_gpu_cheat_sheet.htm
RE: RE: RE: We hope to
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Just installed Mountain Lion, now I am looking forward to receiving my first WU for ATI GPU.
Ni!
For Science and Shrubberies! Since January 13 2000.
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Quote:RE: Γιατι κυÏιοι
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