Thursday, November 28th 2019
AMD Radeon "Navi" OpenCL Bug Makes it Unfit for SETI@Home
A bug with the Radeon RX 5700-series "Navi" OpenCL compute API ICD (installable client driver) is causing the GPUs to crunch incorrect results for distributed compute project SETI@Home. Since there are "many" Navi GPUs crunching the project cross-validating each others' incorrect results, the large volume of incorrect results are able to beat the platform's algorithm and passing statistical validation, "polluting" the SETI@Home database. Some volunteers at the SETI@Home forums, where the the issue is being discussed, advocate banning or limiting results from contributors using these GPUs, until AMD comes out with a fix for its OpenCL driver. SETI@Home is a distributed computing project run by SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), tapping into volunteers' compute power to make sense of radio waves from space.
Sources:
SETI@Home Forums, AMD Community, TH1813254617 (Reddit)
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