Latest drivers (NVidia and ATI)

[arkayn]

Could one of our resident ATI driver gurus have a look at http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thread.php?id=6846, please?

It's always been the case that NVidia drivers are inaccessible to BOINC installed in 'Protected Application Execution' (aka 'service') mode under Windows Vista and Windows 7.

The posters in that thread seem to be implying that ATI drivers up to and including 11.6 could be used in service mode, but 11.7 and onwards have moved towards the NVidia behaviour. Is that a change which the people who monitor such things can corroborate?

Even with the 9.x drivers, I could not install in service mode and have BOINC see my video cards. Same with the 10.x and 11.x versions.

[Richard Haselgrove]

OK folks, stand down - false alarm. The OP has come back and re-posted in the thread I linked, explaining clearly what he means this time. Appears to be a BOINC client problem with restarting after a reboot, with 11.7 or later drivers.

[Raistmer]

BUT (!) ATi claims that starting from SDK 2.5 OpenCL can be used in service mode...

[Jason G]

BUT (!) ATi claims that starting from SDK 2.5 OpenCL can be used in service mode...

'can' and whether Boinc fully implements the required new procedures are two different things.  Cuda apps 'can' too, but there is required a protected part & a user mode part for those.  If AMD found a way to make it work completely transparently then good show, but I do expect some code gymnastics would be required even then.

Jason

[Ghost0210]

BUT (!) ATi claims that starting from SDK 2.5 OpenCL can be used in service mode...

Is that like ATI saying they will resolve the high CPU usage in Cat 11.8 & SDK2.5 

'can' and whether Boinc fully implements the required new procedures are two different things.  Cuda apps 'can' too, but there is required a protected part & a user mode part for those.  If AMD found a way to make it work completely transparently then good show, but I do expect some code gymnastics would be required even then.

Jason

I've just tested this out of idle curiosity, and with Boinc installed in protected execution mode, and Cat 11.8 SDK2.5 installed, Boinc mngr can't connect to the client let alone see the GPU
I'd love to be able to run Boinc as a service, but think there's a way to go before it gets there

[Jason G]

Is that like ATI saying they will resolve the high CPU usage in Cat 11.8 & SDK2.5 

Pretty much.  That statement would imply they will rewind 2 years of OpenCL (& GPU compute in general) development.  I'd say more likely that's some default template response to complaints.  GPU supercompute & the technologies they rely on are changing too quickly to maintain outdated methods. 

The way to 'fix' the new drivers, bearing in mind they aren't really 'broken' as such (at least not in that respect), would be to provide better / clearer documentation & api for synchronisation, which of course requires application modifications.   Maybe they'll cock-up some legacy mode or some such, but the old methods of blocking synchronisation are simply outdated, and fundamentally incompatible with future tech... [Too many interrupts in too short of a time frame, and getting worse with every newer faster model, amplified by packing more cards into the same machine.  Desktop multithreaded OSes are designed to work  with time slices around 1ms... not fast enough for 1 card using blocking syncs & small kernels even! ]

 This Includes the blocking syncronisation used in current Cuda applications, and the modifications needed moving forward are the subject of heavy research by many, e.g:

http://www.gputechconf.com/content/GTC/posters/2010/P01-GPU-to-CPU-Callbacks.pdf

OpenCL 1.1 has some of that stuff already.... I could use it on Cuda now, if it existed... I'm hoping it will appear in Cuda 4.1 (or else I'll have to roll my own using OS primitives)

Jason

[Richard Haselgrove]

I've just tested this out of idle curiosity, and with Boinc installed in protected execution mode, and Cat 11.8 SDK2.5 installed, Boinc mngr can't connect to the client let alone see the GPU
I'd love to be able to run Boinc as a service, but think there's a way to go before it gets there

If you read Jorden's latest addition to the BOINC thread, it seems that the Manager can't connect to the Client because the client isn't running. And the client doesn't run because of some problem between boincsvcctrl.exe and the new ATI software (I won't categorise it as a 'driver', because that would have no purpose living in the same space as a service control manager). In any event, that's well outside our sphere of interest - Jord has forwarded it to the BOINC developers.

[benool]

After some time running Catalyst 11.8 and now going back to 11.6 I can confirm that the 11.8 driver are facing performance issues with OpenCL (at least with my 6670).

With 11.8 I would get constant and continuous 100% CPU usage (of one core) as soon as a GPU task was running.

With 11.6 I get the described 80% of one core usage with times where the CPU usage is much lower.

[arkayn]

285.27 has been released in beta
http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-285.27-beta-driver.html

[Frizz]

With 11.8 I would get constant and continuous 100% CPU usage (of one core) as soon as a GPU task was running.

This seems to be fixed with 11.9RC. But not for multi-GPU setups. ... %$!?@# AMD/ATI 

[Ghost0210]

This seems to be fixed with 11.9RC. But not for multi-GPU setups. ... %$!?@# AMD/ATI 

Thanks for this pointer Frizz. Got the 11.9RC drivers working on my 5670, with only a couple of % CPU usage on r365 Finally it looks like ATI are getting there. Will test later that it's the same with ATI AP tasks

[Raistmer]

This seems to be fixed with 11.9RC. But not for multi-GPU setups. ... %$!?@# AMD/ATI 

Thanks for this pointer Frizz. Got the 11.9RC drivers working on my 5670, with only a couple of % CPU usage on r365 Finally it looks like ATI are getting there. Will test later that it's the same with ATI AP tasks

Anyone can confirm CPU usage reduction with 11.9RC for HD6xxx GPUs ?

Also, link to drivers would be nice...

[Ghost0210]

Anyone can confirm CPU usage reduction with 11.9RC for HD6xxx GPUs ?

Also, link to drivers would be nice...

Here's a link to Guru3d who have the drivers http://downloads.guru3d.com/AMD-Catalyst-11.9-RCx-Win7-Vista-download-2783.html

[Raistmer]

Anyone can confirm CPU usage reduction with 11.9RC for HD6xxx GPUs ?

Also, link to drivers would be nice...

Here's a link to Guru3d who have the drivers http://downloads.guru3d.com/AMD-Catalyst-11.9-RCx-Win7-Vista-download-2783.html

LoL, now we will use stealed ATi drivers and AMD can wash its hands if they will not work

[Claggy]

285.27 has been released in beta
http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-285.27-beta-driver.html

Anyone know if CPU usage has been reduced on OpenCL apps with this driver?

Claggy