Surely I cannot be the only one running the folding client on an older Sun Sparc ????
As per the latest News page, I quote ;
Well, I'm making myself heard !! I run the client on 2 Sun SparcServer 20's (with 180MHz Ross Hypersparc chips) and the new client falls over in a big heap...The latest version for Solaris was compiled with a new compiler and may no longer work on some older Sun CPUs. We are debating whether to switch to exclusively 64-bit code for Solaris or not, it depends how many users this would effect. If you are a Solaris user and your machine(s) do not support 64-bit binaries, please make yourself heard on our Discussion Forum to help us decide.
Anyone else ? or are these old babies condemned to running SETI for the end of their days ??
Cheers,
Nobby.
No offense but that's like running 486's on DF. I'd like to see some bench marks on those systems. I have a few ss20's with the 150MHZ modules and some ss5 170's. I don't run them because the power they consume costs too much in my state.
It would be nice to have two solaris clients. One 2.7 64 bit and one 2.51 32 bit only. Maybe 40% of my systems are running 2.8 or higher. I still have a lot of 2.6 or 2.7 systems that can't run DF at all.
guru
The latest Solaris client is still 32 bit but now it's built for the Sparc V8 (Ultra 1 and above) cpu's. This may help a little but it's still not 64 bit.It may take some core changing to make the 64 bit client work better then the 32 bit version.
guru
No offence taken - I fully realise these babies are old.
It would be better, as you say, to create an older 32bit binary (that will work on the older sparcs) and a newer 64bit binary for all the Ultra/Enterprise models...
Benchmarks - hmm, well I don't really watch what they are up to - give me a common way of working it out & I'll post the results.
Cheers,
Nobby.
Hey there,
okay can someone (guru?) tell me exactly what v7, v8, v8plus, v9, etc are and which one is best to use? I am not familiar with all the models of workstation. I know v9 is the latest and 64-bit, but will we be 'blocking out' decent machines by doing this? Since we require Pentium II/Pro as a minimum for Intel machines, what would be the equivalent in the Sun world? We'd rather support newer faster machines with optimized code for those platforms, but want people with machines less than 5 or so years old to still be able to run the software, albeit perhaps not optimize for their CPU. Basically I just need to know what xtarget= to use in the compiler (we compile with -fast as well). As soon as we can work this out I'll post a new Solaris binary for you folks.
Howard Feldman
Sparc V8 means Ultra arch. (ie. any ultra Sparc chip and above). Sparc V9 means 64 bit Ultra arc. (same as V8 but running a 64bit kernell). I'll search and find the exact differences for them all.
guru
Do you have to specify -xtarget= ??
can you not just use -xarch=v8 for 32bit and -xarch=v9 for 64bit ??
I'll try and do a bit more checking tomorrow.
Cheers,
Nobby.
Forget tomorrow - here's a link to the document you are looking for...
http://docs.sun.com/source/806-3568/ncg_sparc.html
explains v7,v8,v8a,v8plusa,v9 and v9a
Cheers,
Nobby.
In order to take advantage of the V9 some code changes are in order.
guru
No one has still answered the most important question for me.. which of these machines suck, and which are relatively modern (<5 years old)???
Howard Feldman
Supply me with a way to benchmark my hyperSPARCs (v8) and I will tell you...
Cheers,
Nobby.
I don't think its a question of whether they suck or not.
I have some Ultra 1 machines which are capable of running V8 but are very slow:
Structures Per Day: 7918.32
They may suck but they are still in production. Why not run them ? Every little bit helps.
In fact I have ~50 machines which are much more powerful but aren't running SUNOS 5.8 which rules them only for that reason.
devzero - v8/v9 is the architecture type, not the version of Solaris they support...
v8 will work on earlier 32bit versions of Solaris/SunOS
v9 will work on 64bit versions.
Cheers,
Nobby.
> devzero - v8/v9 is the architecture type, not the version of Solaris they support..
I know. I was getting an extra jab in there.
If it didn't require 5.8, I could get a lot more done. I've got some nice quad cpu machines that aren't being used.
KEEP THE 32 BIT!!
We just recieved about 50 new Ultra-1s
These older sparcs still kick ass, and if anyone compares them to a 486, ill whoop their ass.
howard, keep the 32, there are a lot of people who still want it.
Yes Please keep a 32 bit client. But at the same time can we get that 32 bit client built to run on an older version of solaris? Solaris 2.5.1 should be the oldest support needed, but I'd be happy with support for 2.6 or 2.7. If you need the OS to compile on I can supply it.
Howard, have you tried the performance lib's? Also read /opt/SUNWspro/READMEs/64bit_compilers. It has some good info on compiling 64 bit code.
guru
I think we will go with -v8 for 32-bit and -v9 for 64-bit since no one has been really useful in explaining to me which of these to use, grumble grumble
As for Solaris 2.5 onwards, can't we just have one binary that works on 2.5, 2.6, 2.7 and 2.8? I don't want to maintain so many Solaris versions.
We haven't installed the performance libraries yet as it is not clear how to install them! There no 'install' executable.. any help would be appreciated.
Howard Feldman
To install the perf lib's first gunzip them, then untar them. Then use 'pkgadd -d {path to the pkg}' Say you untar them in the /export/home dir then it would be 'pkgadd -d /export/home'.
Solaris is 99.5% backword compatible so all you have to do for the 32 bit client is compile using the oldest version of Solaris you want to support. I know your new compiler only supports one system so you may have to use gcc on the older OS to support it. I believe the latest version of gcc does a good job on Solaris. Or you might be able to use your old compiler for the 32 bit version.
guru
quote Brian The Fist:
I think we will go with -v8 for 32-bit and -v9 for 64-bit since no one has been really useful in explaining to me which of these to use, grumble grumble
Using SUNW compiler all of them except the -v9 are 32 bit. The difference is what version of sparc cpu is required.
-v7 will run on ANY sparc.
-v8 needs a minumum SuperSparc. SS20 and above
-v9 requires 64 bit mode UltraSparc only. Ultras only (which also implies Solaris 7+)
All executables shipped with Solaris are -v7 even if the kernel is running 64 bit.
Only the Ultra sparc (v8+) proc's support 64 bit. If you're using the 64 bit kernel you can use both 32 bit and 64 bit applications. S7-S9 shipped with both 32bit and 64 bit components. It sounds like we need a 2.51 or 2.6 32bit (v7) client and a 2.7 or 2.8 64 bit v9 client to support everyone. v8+ and v9 are the same processors, V9 just means 64 bit mode.
As far as what BTF asked earlier, Any Ultra sparc (v8+) and above system is considered new (ie. made in the last 5 years).
guru
and just to recap...
you will only need 2 seperate binaries for Sun Solaris ;-
-xarch=v8 for 32bit (which should run on 2.5, 2.6, 2.7 & 2.8)
-xarch=v9 for 64bit (which will run on 2.7 & 2.8)
don't specify -xtarget= as that tailors the compiler for a particular platform.
Cheers,
Nobby.
Ok, thats sort of what I suspected. So one last thing.
IF it is backwards compatible, why dont my Solaris 8 binaries work on solaris 7 et al? I only have solaris 8 on all our Sun machines so I cannot build on Solaris 5 or 6. Is there no way to make it work on these OSes without installing them somewhere?
Howard Feldman
more than likely becase you are setting xtarget= ,which in turn sets the xarch= and xchip= compiler flags...
or, if that isn't it - it might be the -fast flag - I'm not sure about that one, as I havn't used it before.
Cheers,
Nobby.
The problem with backward compatibility is the libs that you used to compile the client. You link to libs that are in Solaris 2.8. Some Those libs have changed from the older versions of Solaris. They should be backwards compatible for running programs but if you compile a program to use the newer version of the lib it will not be backward compatible.
guru
So if you gave me the solaris 2.6 version of the lib and I put it on my 2.8 machine and linked to it, would that work? Can you do that? It looks like its just librt (presumably, run-time lib)
Howard Feldman
Any idea when you'll have a 64 bit client ready to test? I'll work on getting the 2.6 version of that lib for you to try.
guru
As soon as we decide on what our 2 versions will be. It sounds like we want arch=v8 on Solaris 2.6 and arch=v9 on Solaris 2.8 (or 2.7?) should be sufficient but we need boxes with 2.6 or 2.7 on them which we don't have, so until we get them somehow, or if the 2.6/2.7 shared libarary will link under 2.8, we'll go with arch=v8 on our 2.8 machine which I think is what we originally had.
Howard Feldman
I did some checking and the first lib that foldtrajlite needs is the librt.so.1 (version 1.2). This is only available in solaris 2.8 and newer. Solaris 2.7 has librt.so.1 (version 1.1) and Solaris 2.6 doesn't even have the librt.so.1. Their may be more lib's that are not available in the older versions of Solaris. If you want t o make a 32 bit client that is backward compatible the client needs to be statically linked and not dynamically linked. That client will be bigger but it will be backward compatible and maybe a little faster.
guru
Guru,
There IS no static version of librt, and the docs say you shouldn't even THINK about looking for one..
So we need to either get the library or headers from 2.6 or we need to get a copy of 2.6 somehow. Are you able to assist with either of these? Otherwise we are stuck with only supporting Solaris 8.
Howard Feldman
guru: Solaris 2.6 doesn't even have the librt.so.1.
Upon further checking, I have found that the library is actually: "POSIX.1b Realtime Extensions library". (who would have thought they had manpage for that?)
Anyhow on Solaris 6 the equivalent of this is libposix4.
On Solaris 7,8 and 9 there is a symlink from libposix to librt so No Problem there all they have done is changed the name.
Brian the Fist: So we need to either get the library
Don't think you want to do that. Anyone who has ever messed with things in /lib and lived to tell about it knows what I mean.
So all you need is a copy of 2.6 which I don't should be discussed here(TM).
I said that in my post above. If you try running foldtrajlite on solaris 7 you get an error with librt.so.1 version 'SUNW_1.2'.. I think the only way then to support older OS's is to compile on that OS. I've been playing around with GCC and the Sun compiler and the newer versions of gcc seem do to a good job. It has the option '-mv8' to compile fo the v8 arch. It made some speed improvments on lame.guru: Solaris 2.6 doesn't even have the librt.so.1.
Feel free to discuss this further in private at trades@mshri.on.ca - we have an old sparc1 which we COULD downgrade from Solaris 8 to Solaris 6 although I don't know how good an idea that is..
Howard Feldman
The new Solaris 64 bit client is slower then the 32 bit version.
64 bit client. : ELF 64-bit MSB executable SPARCV9 Version 1, dynamically linked, stripped
------------------------------------------------------------
Distributed Folding Solaris Benchmark Script V1.0
Sample Size: 3100 structures over 9492 seconds.
Structures Per Second: 0.33
Structures Per Minute: 19.60
Structures Per Hour: 1175.73
Structures Per Day: 28217.52
Solaris OS - Running Version 5.9
-df -g 50 -qt -rt
------------------------------------------------------------
32 bit client: ELF 32-bit MSB executable SPARC Version 1, dynamically linked, stripped
------------------------------------------------------------
Distributed Folding Solaris Benchmark Script V1.0
Sample Size: 3550 structures over 9374 seconds.
Structures Per Second: 0.38
Structures Per Minute: 22.72
Structures Per Hour: 1363.35
Structures Per Day: 32720.40
Solaris OS - Running Version 5.9
-df -g 50 -qt -rt
------------------------------------------------------------
This was run on my Ultra 60 with dual 450's 4 MB cache and 2G of ram.
guru
So, any suggestions? We are not using the performance libraries yet.. (installed them but not sure how to tell the compiler to use them...)
Howard Feldman
I'll just add to all this, that the new 32bit client works like a dream on my Sun SparcServer 20's running Solaris 8 - many thanks BTF.
Cheers,
Nobby.
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