Be client speed issues

[Chinasaur]

Howard and Jodie,

I don't program so bear with me...

While running your client, 'top' shows it does not keep the processor at peak usage. As much as 17% is not being used at times. Dnet and ECCp _DO_ keep the processor pegged.

It seems it might be related to whatever priority you set for the DF client. I'm just guessing here. This is probably a good reason why the Be client is underperforming compared to the Linux client.

I do know that my hourly totals drop by about 10-15% when I run the Be client so it follows it's due to not hogging the processor enough.

I hope something occurs to you as I'd like to use the Be port...but right now it's noticeably less efficient.

TIA.

[Jodie]

Be doesn't seem to have the best threading model in the world. (no suprise - they're non-posix-compliant wherever humanly possible... ;) )

Are you resetting the client priority higher to compensate for Be's somewhat lacking threading?

To do so within the client, -p is the switch and 20 to -20 is the range where -20 is 'realtime' priority - ie. preempts anything but kernel process pretty much. Try -19 and see if your utilization goes up...

Just a thought! Let me know if it works out for you?

[Brian the Fist]

The initial Be client did not support the -p flag to set the priority. NOw I figured out their wacky scheme so it may, I mean should ;), work in the updated version we are releasing today.
While POSIX uses priorities -20 to 20, Be thought they'd be cool and use 1-120 instead.

Anyways, for the new foldit, you still give a # from -20 to 20 and it maps it to the proper range for Be. Let me know if this improves your performance at all.

[Jodie]

[shaking head] Non-posix-compliant dead operating systems... [/shaking head]

How about a 32bit Irix client? I'll give you a machine to do the port on! ;)

I'm starting to bring up my O2 and Octanes and the Challange, Indy's and Indigo2 High Impact R10000 will be up next. But I still have all my Indigo 32bit machines. . .:rotfl:

[Chinasaur]

Howard and Jodie,

Howard...you did indeed fix the priority issue...very nicely done..it's actually the first time I've ever seen a DC project balanced across the processor use bars...don't know if that is luck or something you coded..but it was cool to see. Anyway, priority works.

Ok..I believe the BeOS port is as fast as any of the other ports....except.

When set to -19 (what I run my Linux boxes at) Be becomes _very_ hard to use..virtually unusable at times. Not your clients fault. I would have thought that Be could deal better with high priority threads than Linux..I was wrong :( Unless you can figure out a way to make it give way a bit more gracefully when something else wants the CPU...

Soooo..I'm going to run it on my main dual box until such time as the team can afford to lose the strucs I'll give up by running Be. I would like to turn all my boxes into Be boxes but we'll have to see about that.

I truly hope I'm not the only one using the port. I know I didn't instigate the request but I'm glad it's here. I've not seen a Team BeOS member (other that lutonhatter) post about the BeOS port in a while.

Happy Canada Day Howard and thanks again.

[Brian the Fist]

Just for the record, we've had over 20 downloads of the BeOS version in the last week (since the protein change), almost as much as MacOSX and more than Solaris! Now if only I could multiply all those numbers by 10 I'd be happy :|party|:

[Jodie]

How many Irix downloads, out of curiosity? I've downloaded it once - but will shortly be running it on about 50 processors.

Can you track only downloads - or do you log where the reports are coming from?

Seems like some interesting statistics.

(or maybe I'm just a hopeless geekette :p )

[Chinasaur]

Howard,

I let the Be client run for days..it averaged about 30K less structures per day per processor on the same machine running Linux :( . I would have no idea why.

The priority works well it just needs something...maybe a threading tweak..I don't know..too bad no old Be programmers are around.

Be interesting to see a stats page on total strucs submitted per client like SETI@Home has.

Proj on.