Question since the beginning...GPU

[Chubfish]

Hey

I am well aware of the countless of threads asking the question: "How to use GPU with WCG?" and "When will it be available?"

But yeah...I am asking this again in the one place I believe an sincere answer can be given with up to date facts.

Also after setting up 2 additional servers with nvidia cards I am really anxious about this.

Cheers

 

[stinger608]

Unfortunately, the video card support for World Community Grid stopped 2 or 3 years ago with no support in site.

Every one of us that crunch for Team TPU wishes the same thing. LOL. It was awesome when video cards were able to crunch, however, it was short-lived and pretty much just a test.

 

[infrared]

There's always folding@home

 

[twilyth]

We all feel your pain @Chubfish. It does indeed suck that no more projects have come along to offer gpu support. Personally I think the reason for this is that few projects have dedicated developers. I don't know this for a fact but that's my guess. I think you probably have people who are primarily researchers doing the software development so they're not really current with new developments like HPC with GPGPUs.

Also the line I keep hearing from others at the WCG forum is that not every project is amenable to using the gpu approach. I don't really get the specifics of why that is and I don't really like taking it on faith, but that seems to be the consensus even from the admins and techs at WCG.

 

[Chubfish]

Thank you guys for the responses! My brain is going "Hey if Einstein@home and others can do it why not WCG?" , with that in mind shouldn't IBM be able to get this GPU show on the road?

 

[Caring1]

I've been running Einstein@home for a couple of years and have noticed they haven't used GPU for a while too.
I did turn of GPU usage for a while due to heat and power, but tried it again to find it wasn't running.

 

[twilyth]

Thank you guys for the responses! My brain is going "Hey if Einstein@home and others can do it why not WCG?" , with that in mind shouldn't IBM be able to get this GPU show on the road?

I don't know the intimate details of how new projects get launched but it's my understanding that WCG is mostly passive when it comes this. IOW they have to wait for researchers to come to them with project proposals and then the project has to satisfy a variety of criteria including things like having enough work to keep the huge collection of machines running WCG busy for at least a few months. That alone is no small requirement.

Personally, I'd like to see WCG put ads in publications like Science and Nature to attract new projects. At one point I even looked into what such advertising would cost. It's not a lot of money to run a small ad but I don't think IBM gives them enough funding to such things. I guess we should be grateful that IBM supports the project at all but I hate to see their not giving WCG the money they need to really be first rate.

 

[Chubfish]

I've been running Einstein@home for a couple of years and have noticed they haven't used GPU for a while too.
I did turn of GPU usage for a while due to heat and power, but tried it again to find it wasn't running.

I am able to use GPU with Einstein actually