Low CPU & Memory Usage
19 Jan 2005 23:04:00 UTC
Topic 187268
(moderation:
Howdy, new tester here. CPU and memory usage low when running E@H, KDE process manager shows about zero for both, E@H doesn't even show running "top". But am making progress, about 15% in 10 hours. Also running S@H which uses about 95% and 5% CPU and memory when running every 60 minutes. Linux box PII 400, 256 MB ram. Have set general preferences resource share to 50 for both E@H and S@H. How can I get E@H to use more resources and speed up?
Low CPU & Memory Usage
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Hi, since you didn't tell us which kernel you're using, let me guess:
it's a 2.6 flavour. Right? Don't worry, even if there is a Sleeping or
Zombie process, only trust the entry in your client_state.xml
Look at the output of "top" (command line version), in the summary lines you
should have a quite high "nice" percentage value.
Leave Seti@H at 50 and set
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Leave Seti@H at 50 and set E@H to 200 or 300
Link to Unofficial Wiki for BOINC, by Paul and Friends
Using 2.6.8 kernel, Mandrake
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Using 2.6.8 kernel, Mandrake 10.1 upgraded to KDE 3.3.2, boinc 4.15, E@H 4.69. What wu times should I expect on this 400 Mhz PII? When E@H running "top" shows
Tasks: 84 total, 1 running, 83 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 2.6% us, 1.0% sy, 96.4% ni, 0.0% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si
Mem: 256408k total, 253368k used, 3040k free, 31736k buffers
Swap: 400640k total, 69132k used, 331508k free, 118364k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
24542 robby 16 0 2000 1004 1788 R 1.0 0.4 0:00.21 top
3590 root 15 0 25784 6460 12m S 0.7 2.5 12:29.26 X
This fairly recent post seems to have the same issue.
http://einsteinathome.org/node/187186
Using Boinc bash script, http://phileimer.9online.fr/ , I'm getting
Current Working Units
H1_0050.9__0051.0_0.1_T02_Test02 Project : einstein
State : being computed CPU Time : 17h 48min
Progress : 26.54%
Which is about 70 hours for the above wu. Is this typical? Would rather have E@H make better use of the resources than giving it more time. E@H seems to be running much slower than S@H, typically 16 hrs per wu and at the top of the "top" listing:)
> Leave Seti@H at 50 and set
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> Leave Seti@H at 50 and set E@H to 200 or 300
The resource shares only affect the amount of time BOINC spends on each project. Increasing the resource share will not "speed up" E@H.
> Using 2.6.8 kernel,
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> Using 2.6.8 kernel, Mandrake 10.1 upgraded to KDE 3.3.2, boinc 4.15, E@H 4.69.
Ah, this at least explains the somewhat strange numbers. More below...
> What wu times should I expect on this 400 Mhz PII?
On a 2200+ Athlon, it would now take about 12000 CPU seconds. So for you
I'd guess about 10-20 times longer (processor efficiencies scale badly between
PentiumII and P4/Athlon families) resulting in some 35-70 hours...
> Tasks: 84 total, 1 running, 83 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
> Cpu(s): 2.6% us, 1.0% sy, 96.4% ni, 0.0% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si
It's the 95+% nice that's doing your BOINC, even if you don't see it below.
Look for a einstein* process at the end (with idle on)
> H1_0050.9__0051.0_0.1_T02_Test02 Project : einstein
> State : being computed CPU Time : 17h 48min
> Progress : 26.54%
>
> Which is about 70 hours for the above wu. Is this typical? Would rather have
> E@H make better use of the resources than giving it more time. E@H seems to
> be running much slower than S@H, typically 16 hrs per wu and at the top of the
> "top" listing:)
E@H *is* already using your resources. And for your CPU about 70 hours appear
to be perfectly OK...
Please see the following. It
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Please see the following. It applies to us because Einstein@Home is a multi-threaded application.
http://procps.sourceforge.net/faq.html
Question: Why is %CPU underreported for multi-threaded (Java, etc.) apps?
Answer: You need to upgrade to the 2.6.10 kernel at least. Older kernels do not provide a reasonable way to get this information.
Director, Einstein@Home
Thanks Bruce and Steffen.
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Thanks Bruce and Steffen. Good info, will check out references and possibly upgrade to 2.6.10. Ignore my post in questions and problems forum, same question.