Yes. I am really sorry Tullio. I misunderstood you. That's because I'm not yet comfortable with English language. I've seen your profile. Now I know you know a lot of computing history by your personal experience. I admire it. Also I agree about RISC processors. RISC and UNIX are my favourite combination.
In room with my box is warm. That's true. I hope electricity bills won't be too high.
I donate whole CPU idle time to E@H. Unfortunately after 1-2 days of work all 8 einstein processes becomes zombie. After that I need to restart Boinc manually. I will investigate it later.
No problem. English is my second language since I studied for one year in the USA, but I also know some French, Spanish and German. The problem with these languages is how to use their diacritical marks on an Italian keyboard. English has no diacritical marks, so it is easier to write English. I was told that the Apple keyboard can do this but I never had a Macintosh. Cheers.
Tullio
Yes. I am really sorry Tullio. I misunderstood you. That's because I'm not yet comfortable with English language. I've seen your profile. Now I know you know a lot of computing history by your personal experience. I admire it. Also I agree about RISC processors. RISC and UNIX are my favourite combination.
In room with my box is warm. That's true. I hope electricity bills won't be too high.
I donate whole CPU idle time to E@H. Unfortunately after 1-2 days of work all 8 einstein processes becomes zombie. After that I need to restart Boinc manually. I will investigate it later.
No problem. English is my second language since I studied for one year in the USA, but I also know some French, Spanish and German. The problem with these languages is how to use their diacritical marks on an Italian keyboard. English has no diacritical marks, so it is easier to write English. I was told that the Apple keyboard can do this but I never had a Macintosh. Cheers.
Tullio
You'd love the Mac, I've got a MAc compatible keyboard that has things like ‰ , ∂, ™ and dozens of diacritical marks on it :-).
About the 8 CPU PIII box....how does it / Linux manage more than 4 GB of memory with a 32 bit CPU??
32bit x86 processors had support for more than 4GB RAM since the Pentium Pro, the addresses were extended to 36 bit, max RAM is then 64GB. Many 32bit OS can take advantage of this hardware support, however each application will still be limited to max 2 GB each on 32bit Windows, so the need for 64bit is still there, but at least one can run multipple apps this way.
In linux user mode and standard kernel configuration processes can address 32-bit virtual memory minus about 1GB for kernel address space. In linux kernel mode memory addresses are 36-bit so for example disk cache can be of size 10G on my machine. This is limitation if you want to have more then 3 GB flat memory space in one process. However you can split program to several processes. You can have separate processes like E@H as well. I have 8 of them. Theoretically they can consume whole 12GB. There are also other programming techniques like mmap'ing files to address space multiple times creating windows to physical space in virtual space. I'm not very familiar with that technique.
I will have many opportunities to program that computer. I'm especially interested in exploring well designed (efficient) multiprocessing and multithreading. To be ready for new era of multicore processors everywhere.
My configuration contains also filesystem in memory (shmfs) wchich I mount under /tmp. In that way I have temporary directory up to 10GB in RAM. AFAIK that technique is in use on big iron machines for years.
Do you have exotic machine? Modern or vintage. Or just machine you like very much for some reason. If does it still serve, especially einstein@home describe it. Anyone have Linux on Alpha or R10000?
I saw a box just like your Compaq on ebay. I was sorely tempted to buy it.
I'm very fond of my own "ServerBeast" IBM Netfinity. What isn't redundant (and usually hot-swappable, including controller cards) is just plain multiple. It has four PIII Xeon 500 CPUs, redundant PSUs, and a total of 13 drives.
I bought it "bare bones" - with most of the fans (which are also hot-swappable), the CD and floppy drives, and both power supplies - for $10. I just had to add CPUs, VRMs, hard drives and memory, which I patiently shopped for to get good prices. I also got a battery back up, caching RAID controller for cheap, and a Compaq external RAID box for $15 (also with both power supplies in place). As I recall, the SCSI cable to hook the Compaq box to the Netfinity cost quite a bit more than the Compaq box!
It does pretty well with the optimized SETI ("chicken") app, as the app likes Intel processors and lots of cache. 1MB is small by modern standards, but must have seemed like a lot when the PIII Xeon first came out.
I had a couple of catastropic failures, due to a combination of ancient drive mechanisms and power failures. I do have a 3.1 kVA UPS I got for $38.88 + tax, locally from an ebay auction, so I didn't have to pay shipping. It requires a 20 amp outlet, which I haven't gotten wired up yet.
I wouldn't run Einstein on the Netfinity, it would take too darn long.
Too long? Oh, I don't think it would be that bad. I had my Dad's P3 667 Coppermine attached for a while and it managed the deadlines although it is only on a couple of hours a day. But those were the smaller S5R2 WUs. Now the "monster WUs" are out in the wild I decided to switch that box to Prime Grid with its little appetizers of WUs (20 minutes/piece on my Core Duo, about an hour on the P3). But a machine running 24/7 should manage.
Too long? Oh, I don't think it would be that bad. I had my Dad's P3 667 Coppermine attached for a while and it managed the deadlines although it is only on a couple of hours a day. But those were the smaller S5R2 WUs. Now the "monster WUs" are out in the wild I decided to switch that box to Prime Grid with its little appetizers of WUs (20 minutes/piece on my Core Duo, about an hour on the P3). But a machine running 24/7 should manage.
As bernd has written in the "What's next" thread, workunits in the next run (S5R3) will be much smaller than the current monster workunits, so this gives vintage PCs a new chance. I guess once the SSE optimization is integrated, even the low end Pentium IIIs will be back in the game.
Yep, She's a beauty all
)
Yep, She's a beauty all right. I'd hazard to bet there's still a lot them still in everyday service commercially. ;-)
For your own personal use, I imagine you'd have get pretty ambitious with your own projects to start taxing it's capabilities. :-)
Sorry to hear BOINC is giving you some grief. Of course, if it just installed and ran without issues, that would take all the sport out of it! :-D
Alinator
RE: Yes. I am really sorry
)
No problem. English is my second language since I studied for one year in the USA, but I also know some French, Spanish and German. The problem with these languages is how to use their diacritical marks on an Italian keyboard. English has no diacritical marks, so it is easier to write English. I was told that the Apple keyboard can do this but I never had a Macintosh. Cheers.
Tullio
RE: RE: Yes. I am really
)
You'd love the Mac, I've got a MAc compatible keyboard that has things like ‰ , ∂, ™ and dozens of diacritical marks on it :-).
About the 8 CPU PIII box....how does it / Linux manage more than 4 GB of memory with a 32 bit CPU??
CU
H-B
RE: You'd love the Mac,
)
Well, the kernel says it is big mem. Maybe Linux can do it...I only have 320 MB.
Tullio
32bit x86 processors had
)
32bit x86 processors had support for more than 4GB RAM since the Pentium Pro, the addresses were extended to 36 bit, max RAM is then 64GB. Many 32bit OS can take advantage of this hardware support, however each application will still be limited to max 2 GB each on 32bit Windows, so the need for 64bit is still there, but at least one can run multipple apps this way.
Team Philippines
RE: 32bit x86 processors
)
But a lot of the chip sets did not support as much RAM as the CPU could address.
I have yet to buy a motherboard whose maximum was anywhere near 64GBytes.
In linux user mode and
)
In linux user mode and standard kernel configuration processes can address 32-bit virtual memory minus about 1GB for kernel address space. In linux kernel mode memory addresses are 36-bit so for example disk cache can be of size 10G on my machine. This is limitation if you want to have more then 3 GB flat memory space in one process. However you can split program to several processes. You can have separate processes like E@H as well. I have 8 of them. Theoretically they can consume whole 12GB. There are also other programming techniques like mmap'ing files to address space multiple times creating windows to physical space in virtual space. I'm not very familiar with that technique.
I will have many opportunities to program that computer. I'm especially interested in exploring well designed (efficient) multiprocessing and multithreading. To be ready for new era of multicore processors everywhere.
My configuration contains also filesystem in memory (shmfs) wchich I mount under /tmp. In that way I have temporary directory up to 10GB in RAM. AFAIK that technique is in use on big iron machines for years.
RE: Do you have exotic
)
I saw a box just like your Compaq on ebay. I was sorely tempted to buy it.
I'm very fond of my own "ServerBeast" IBM Netfinity. What isn't redundant (and usually hot-swappable, including controller cards) is just plain multiple. It has four PIII Xeon 500 CPUs, redundant PSUs, and a total of 13 drives.
I bought it "bare bones" - with most of the fans (which are also hot-swappable), the CD and floppy drives, and both power supplies - for $10. I just had to add CPUs, VRMs, hard drives and memory, which I patiently shopped for to get good prices. I also got a battery back up, caching RAID controller for cheap, and a Compaq external RAID box for $15 (also with both power supplies in place). As I recall, the SCSI cable to hook the Compaq box to the Netfinity cost quite a bit more than the Compaq box!
It does pretty well with the optimized SETI ("chicken") app, as the app likes Intel processors and lots of cache. 1MB is small by modern standards, but must have seemed like a lot when the PIII Xeon first came out.
I had a couple of catastropic failures, due to a combination of ancient drive mechanisms and power failures. I do have a 3.1 kVA UPS I got for $38.88 + tax, locally from an ebay auction, so I didn't have to pay shipping. It requires a 20 amp outlet, which I haven't gotten wired up yet.
I wouldn't run Einstein on the Netfinity, it would take too darn long.
Too long? Oh, I don't think
)
Too long? Oh, I don't think it would be that bad. I had my Dad's P3 667 Coppermine attached for a while and it managed the deadlines although it is only on a couple of hours a day. But those were the smaller S5R2 WUs. Now the "monster WUs" are out in the wild I decided to switch that box to Prime Grid with its little appetizers of WUs (20 minutes/piece on my Core Duo, about an hour on the P3). But a machine running 24/7 should manage.
RE: Too long? Oh, I don't
)
As bernd has written in the "What's next" thread, workunits in the next run (S5R3) will be much smaller than the current monster workunits, so this gives vintage PCs a new chance. I guess once the SSE optimization is integrated, even the low end Pentium IIIs will be back in the game.
CU
H-BE