SLI computing

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sirfrancis14

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Message 105974 - Posted: 5 Nov 2021, 5:16:54 UTC

I'm running BOINC and working the Rosetta@home project. Question is this program taking advantage of both my GPU's (SLI) or just one?
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robsmith
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Message 105975 - Posted: 5 Nov 2021, 9:20:54 UTC - in response to Message 105974.  

That very much depends on the application that is being run. May applications do not use SLI, or if they do the performance is no better than it not being used, a few do use SLI to run one task across multiple GPUs.
You can see what is being run at any one time by opening BOINC's own manager and switching to the "advanced" view, this ha a number of tabs, the one of interest is the "Tasks" tab, sort by "elapsed" and you will see a list of tasks running; in the status column you will a number of tasks that just say "running", those are running on your CPU, and one or two that say "Running (xGPU, yCPU)". In your case with 2 GPUs I would expect y=2 if SLI is active or y=1 if SLI is active (assuming you haven't modified one of the configurations files to allow more than one task to run on a GPU at a time - that's a question for another day).
Good hunting.
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sirfrancis14

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Message 105977 - Posted: 5 Nov 2021, 11:15:22 UTC - in response to Message 105975.  
Last modified: 5 Nov 2021, 11:17:32 UTC

Hmm... Thanks for the response. I only see 6 running and that's the CPU ones... SO it's not using my GPU at all... I have the settings set to always use GPU and the task bar icon says GPU computing Enabled. Is there something I'm missing or does Rosetta@Home just only runs that way? I have 2 very powerful GPU's so I would really like to take advantage of that! Thanks again for helping I have an uncurable form of leukemia and this project gives me hope so I want to do anything I can to help move it along.
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Richard Haselgrove
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Message 105978 - Posted: 5 Nov 2021, 11:16:00 UTC - in response to Message 105975.  

y=2 if SLI is active or y=1 if SLI is INactive?
I haven't been following all the most recent developments in GPU design and project application development, but I've never seen - or read discussion about - multi-GPU applications running under BOINC.

BOINC itself is not SLI aware. It will always see and report an SLI pair as two separate devices, and assign a task to run on one or the other. I'll look at the code, but I don't think it's possible (yet) to schedule a task to wait until two GPUs are both available, and then launch a single task to occupy both.

In my (only brief) experience of running an SLI pair, my observation was that SLI operation locked both GPUs to the same clock rate. This rather negated the benefit of modern developments like 'Graphics boost clock'.
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Bryn Mawr
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Message 105979 - Posted: 5 Nov 2021, 11:17:34 UTC

If you’re running Rosetta and only Rosetta then the answer is none - Rosetta does not have any GPU tasks.
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Richard Haselgrove
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Message 105980 - Posted: 5 Nov 2021, 11:23:20 UTC - in response to Message 105977.  

... does Rosetta@Home just only runs that way?
Looking at their applications page, I only see CPU apps. A regular Rosetta volunteer could possibly advise?
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sirfrancis14

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Message 105981 - Posted: 5 Nov 2021, 11:27:39 UTC

This is copied from BOINC Properties of Rosetta@Home if I'm reading this correectly it doesn't work on Nvidia GPU's...

General
URL - https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/
User name - Francis Grice Jr
Team name - USA
Resource share - 100
Disk usage - 1.60 GB
Computer ID - 614*****
Suspended via GUI - no
Don't request tasks - no
Host location - default
Tasks completed - 118
Tasks failed - 0
Credit - User
29,177 total, 2,009.99 average - Host
29,177 total, 2,009.99 average - Scheduling
Scheduling priority - -1.00
Don't request tasks for NVIDIA GPU - Project has no apps for NVIDIA GPU
Last scheduler reply
11/5/2021 4:21:26 AM
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Profile Joseph Stateson
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Message 105983 - Posted: 5 Nov 2021, 12:17:24 UTC - in response to Message 105978.  

y=2 if SLI is active or y=1 if SLI is INactive?
I haven't been following all the most recent developments in GPU design and project application development, but I've never seen - or read discussion about - multi-GPU applications running under BOINC.

BOINC itself is not SLI aware. It will always see and report an SLI pair as two separate devices, and assign a task to run on one or the other. I'll look at the code, but I don't think it's possible (yet) to schedule a task to wait until two GPUs are both available, and then launch a single task to occupy both.

In my (only brief) experience of running an SLI pair, my observation was that SLI operation locked both GPUs to the same clock rate. This rather negated the benefit of modern developments like 'Graphics boost clock'.


Years ago, the project DNETC had an app that used both GPUs.

I had SLI and Crossfire enabled for testing at one time and noticed that the project I was testing on used only one of the two boards. At one time ATI turned on crossfire automatically if a second board was discovered. I remember having to disable crossfire in their driver to stop that.
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robsmith
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Message 105984 - Posted: 5 Nov 2021, 12:55:13 UTC - in response to Message 105978.  

Argh - changing my mind half way through typing, taking phone calls, and being generally distracted.
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Falconet

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Message 105987 - Posted: 5 Nov 2021, 14:29:34 UTC

Rosetta@home only has CPU applications.
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sirfrancis14

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Message 105990 - Posted: 5 Nov 2021, 19:52:00 UTC - in response to Message 105987.  

That's really unfortunate because my GPU's can do the job atleast 50x faster (atleast 5000% faster)... Is there any chance that they will change this in the future?
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Barn Owl
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Message 105991 - Posted: 5 Nov 2021, 20:33:32 UTC - in response to Message 105990.  

You'll have to ask the project people about their plans for future apps.
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sirfrancis14

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Message 105992 - Posted: 5 Nov 2021, 20:39:15 UTC

Instead of just running Rosetta@Home what I'm doing is Running R@H on the CPU and Folding@Home on both of my GPU's! It's working perfect! I'm concidering just using F@H on the CPU and GPU's. I like that with F@H you can tell it to just work on Cancer research!
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Message boards : Questions and problems : SLI computing

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