Linux: run BOINC without CPU switching to higher power modes?

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dentaku

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Joined: 14 Dec 06
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Germany
Message 56738 - Posted: 16 Oct 2014, 22:31:07 UTC

As a good boy, I first searched in the forums in hope to get an already written answer for my question. And then I found my own thread fromm 2009

Linux: always 100% CPU in newer versions: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thread.php?id=5771

Unfortunately, I can't post in this thread anymore - probably because it's too old.

After some years of "pause" from BOINC, I reactivated it some days ago with my new computer (AMD 7850K Quadcore 3.7 GHz, Ubuntu 14.04 64 Bit Linux). And 5 years later I still have the same question:

Is there a way to stay in AMD's Cool&Quiet "on demand" power state (so that any other App except BOINC will get full CPU power if needed) and run BOINC without Cool&Quiet switches the lowest power state to a higher (full) one?

I played with the BOINC client settings and I can't get it to work. If I set to use only 5% processing time, the CPU goes to full power state and 3.7 GHz for these 5% of the time. That is not what I want.

If I set lowest power state manually, BOINC can run 100% of the time and the CPU stays in lowest power mode ... of course. But all other Apps also don't get more CPU power. That is not what I want.

I want to stay in "on demand" power state and somehow configure BOINC (or it's Linux process) to use 100% power without increasing the CPU's power state (i.e. stay in lowest freuqncy if no other prozess will use it).

The "ignore_nice_load" workaround might work for the BOINC process - but unfortunately for other processes, too. And - you guessed it - that's not what I want.

Is there a way at all to do this?
BOINC 7.2.42 (x86_64) on Linux Ubuntu 16.04 (64 Bit), AMD APU 7850K 3.7 GHz, 32 GB RAM.
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Profile Jord
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Message 56752 - Posted: 17 Oct 2014, 21:43:03 UTC - in response to Message 56738.  

Short answer: No.
And although I can forward it to the developers and request for it to become a feature request, it would then only work that way under Linux, perhaps OS X, so then it's probably better if a third party programmer would offer to add this.

Or you can use one of the add-ons that may be able to do this. Like CPU Limit.
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SuperSluether

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Message 56796 - Posted: 19 Oct 2014, 2:03:10 UTC - in response to Message 56738.  

The whole point of BOINC is that is uses your computer when it's idle. If you give a processor a task, he'll want some power to go with it. (pardon the give a moose a muffin pun) I actually can't see why you would want to do this, because if it were possible, tasks would take much longer than usual. My guess is limiting how many cores BOINC uses. You may not be able to go to the low-power mode, but 1 core uses a lot less power than 4.
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ChristianB
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Message 56842 - Posted: 20 Oct 2014, 12:40:29 UTC

You can take a look at the low-energy BOINC Project: http://low-energy-boinc.cslparis.fr/ which has a similar goal as you described. They are most interested in Windows at the moment because in linux you can achieve this with built-in kernel modules. You may have to get in touch with them.
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Message boards : BOINC client : Linux: run BOINC without CPU switching to higher power modes?

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