TPU's WCG/BOINC Team

[Nordic]

My sub $100 ARM based media PC does about 800 ppd. It has a rk3288 chip in it. I was pretty impressed.

Is that a true symmetrical 8-core design? I suppose the numbers are there, so perhaps so.

I'm working on getting results in from an Atom Z3735F PC, but am having trouble keeping the battery charged while it runs. Those PCs can be found for sub $100 too, assuming it stays charged. If so, I suspect they'll have the best PPD/watt and possibly PPD/$ for new systems.

Edit: Rockchip has an A53 based RK3368 SoC that looks pretty interesting. Looks like it's going for sub-100 as well.

Interesting. So theoretically, an 8 core android system could get 1200-1600 ppd for what, under 15w? I honestly don't know.

The cheapest 8 core phones I could find were on ebay for $65 from a brand I could find no information on. The next cheapest was $85 from a name brand Chinese phone. It may be too soon to find cheap 8 cores.

Finding a fast and cheap quad core might be more promising but there are so many it makes them hard to sort.

 

[xvi]

for what, under 15w?

About 9.5w measured at the wall on the RK3288 box.

There's a few things I don't like about phones for crunching. One, seems like you're paying extra for screen/battery/cell modems/etc.. Two, there's no guarantee you can charge it faster than the CPU crunching away will drain it.. Three, no guarantees it won't thermal throttle at full load (benchmarks finish before temps get too high).
On the pros side, unfortunately, that's where all the good hardware goes since there's so much interest in phones/tablets. I've found the best compromise seems to be in the "ARM media boxes". That octa-core RK3368 chip seems to be going for ~$70, possibly better if you hunt around a bit. I'm tempted to nab one myself just to compare to the old one.

Edit: Nice article written by CERN here cluster computing with ARM. Linking this here so I can remember to read it when i get home.

Edit 2: RK3368 vs mt6752 Antutu scores (MT6752 wins, 225% more in cpu int, 164% more perf in cpu FLOPS). At 2x the price, it's actually difficult to say. =/

Spoiler: messy in here

RK3368
CPU int: 2267
CPU float: 3289
http://www.arctablet.com/blog/wp-content/forum-image-uploads/oma7144/2014/12/v1.1_antutu_b.png

MT6752
CPU int: 5113
CPU float: 5403
http://i2.wp.com/www.gizchina.com/wp-content/uploads/images/jiayu-s3-antutu1.png

RK3288
CPU int: 3190
CPU float: 5532
http://www.majordroid.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Rockchip-RK3288-tablet.jpg

Edit 3 because omg edits: What should we be paying attention to as an indication of WCG performance? Int? Floating point?

Edit 4: Updated Edit 2 with RK3288 performance. Beats the MT6752 in CPU Float performance. Also, RK3288 vs RK3368 benchmarks. tl;dr: Better CPU Int, worse CPU Float. Keep in mind the RK3288 is a ~700 ppd machine. (Edit 5: Added link to my current ARM box)

 

[Bow]

Back up and running. I have no idea what the problem was, but its running fine now.

 

[[Ion]]

Got some sweet loot. A ~5U eATX case for $10. Also included: a (junky) 500W PSU, which I recycled, and 2 500GB SAS drives. A good home for a new dual-Xeon system I think. Got two more that are complete systems (dual E5410s) that I'll be selling off to help pay for the Haswell E5s later on.

 

[manofthem]

Back up and running. I have no idea what the problem was, but its running fine now.

Great to hear! Sometimes pcs are just crazy

Got some sweet loot. A ~5U eATX case for $10. Also included: a (junky) 500W PSU, which I recycled, and 2 500GB SAS drives. A good home for a new dual-Xeon system I think. Got two more that are complete systems (dual E5410s) that I'll be selling off to help pay for the Haswell E5s later on.

You and all your insane deals, makes me jelly nice score.

 

[[Ion]]

Great to hear! Sometimes pcs are just crazy



You and all your insane deals, makes me jelly nice score.

Sweet deals to the score of several thousand in profit from sales this summer

 

[agent00skid]

I just received an AsRock N3150DC-ITX, and have added it to the crunching farm. Quite interested to see what PPD it can get.

 

[xvi]

Got my USB-powered Atom Z3735F crunching and results are starting to pour in. Excitement!

 

[[Ion]]

Got my USB-powered Atom Z3735F crunching and results are starting to pour in. Excitement!

I'll keep an eye on it
How much do these things cost?

 

[agent00skid]

Got my USB-powered Atom Z3735F crunching and results are starting to pour in. Excitement!

Any idea what clocks it's keeping while crunching?

 

[Nordic]

Got my USB-powered Atom Z3735F crunching and results are starting to pour in. Excitement!

I am going to predict about 850-950 ppd. What kind of wattage does it use?

 

[xvi]

I'll keep an eye on it
How much do these things cost?

Mine is a VENSMILE iPC002, found used on eBay with a Logitech K400, USB hub/Ethernet adapter, and HDMI cable for ~$80. Looks like the VENSMILE one goes for about $120 new, but there are rebranded ones from other "manufacturers" that are physically exactly the same such as this Beelink POCKET P1 for a smidgen over a Benjamin. It's also the same processor that comes in the Intel Compute Stick. Microsoft has a little agreement about tiny PCs being allowed to ship with "Windows 8.1 with Bing" for zero cost to the manufacturer, so these mini-PCs will probably often come with them. I'm guessing there'd be a PPD boost switching to Linux, but I don't know if it's worth losing the Windows install.
Just a sidenote, wireless reception on these things is completely horrid.

Any idea what clocks it's keeping while crunching?

I've got Open Hardware Monitor running for exactly that reason. It's running at full turbo frequencies 24/7 right out of the box!

(Edit 1: Yes, I have steam installed, but this little thing won't play much.)

I am going to predict about 850-950 ppd. What kind of wattage does it use?

Haven't gotten far enough to start pulling wattage readings from the wall, but I think the charger is only about a 5v 0.8A, so about ~4W?. CPU package power, as seen in the screenshot above, is 1.4 watts!
I'm crossing my fingers for over 1k, personally.

 

[agent00skid]

Haven't gotten far enough to start pulling wattage readings from the wall, but I think the charger is only about a 5v 0.8A, so about ~4W?. CPU package power, as seen in the screenshot above, is 1.4 watts!
I'm crossing my fingers for over 1k, personally.

Wouldn't be surprised about it using barely any power. My Atom core based systems mostly suffers from high idle. They seem to use perhaps 1W per core, and that's at 2+GHz speeds.

The PPD might not climb the 1K mark, my J1900 at 2,4GHz does about 1300. Perhaps if you run the right WU's. I just run everything but CEP2.

(Disclaimer: Power measurements might be imprecise due to cheap power checker.)

 

[Nordic]

900 ppd / 4 = 225 ppd/w

Even if you doubled the wattage to 8 it looks impressive with 112 ppd/w. Now I just want the equivalent hardware (ppd) for $35

 

[xvi]

900 ppd / 4 = 225 ppd/w

Even if you doubled the wattage to 8 it looks impressive with 112 ppd/w. Now I just want the equivalent hardware (ppd) for $35

Found four refurbished Insignia tablets that have the Z3735F in them for $55 shipped each. Tiny bit tempted to nab those too. Make a little holder and have a fan blow over them maybe?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Insignia-NS...ablet-Black-/262030581680?hash=item3d023d5fb0

Edit: For about the same price (new), the Atom Z3736F can be had which has a max turbo freq of 2.16 GHz instead of 1.83GHz. Can't find any good deals on anything like that though.

Edit 2: I'd prefer something that can be opened up and have a heatsink glued to it, which is something rarely doable with tablets. =/

 

[Nordic]

$55 is out of my price bracket. If I could get 3 for $100 I would be sold. ~2500 ppd for ~20w would be nice.

The new $50 amazon fire tablet has a Quad-core 1.3 GHz but I don't know what kind.

 

[[Ion]]

My Opty system wasn't nearly loud enough already (yeah, right, with the fans at 17k RPM) so I've overclocked it

Power consumption is up (according to lm-sensors) by about 20w per CPU. Temps are up from about 47c across the board to about 54c. BOINC Whetstone performance is up from about 1850 to 2300 (forget what dhrystone was originally but it's 9324 now). Let's see how it goes

Oh god though the noise this is insane :O

 

[[Ion]]

SR-2 system is down; pump is making a horrible noise. Not sure what's up. Going to take a shot at figuring out later.

 

[Norton]

SR-2 system is down; pump is making a horrible noise. Not sure what's up. Going to take a shot at figuring out later.

Sorry to hear that PM me if you need a pump- I may be able to assist.

 

[[Ion]]

Sorry to hear that PM me if you need a pump- I may be able to assist.

Thanks. I'll take a look at it tomorrow and see what I can ascertain.

 

[twilyth]

The 2687w dual keeps crashing but I think the problem is the hard drive. It's several years old so I guess I'm lucky it lasted this long. 1TB drives are pretty cheap. Got a couple of WD Greenies for $50 each. Will do an image copy next week when I get them and put the other on in one of the rigs still running off old IDE drives.

What's the best free software for doing an image copy? I think the feature is in disk manager but I haven't used it so long I've forgotten. BTW this will be on home server or w7. Forget which.

 

[Norton]

The 2687w dual keeps crashing but I think the problem is the hard drive. It's several years old so I guess I'm lucky it lasted this long. 1TB drives are pretty cheap. Got a couple of WD Greenies for $50 each. Will do an image copy next week when I get them and put the other on in one of the rigs still running off old IDE drives.

What's the best free software for doing an image copy? I think the feature is in disk manager but I haven't used it so long I've forgotten. BTW this will be on home server or w7. Forget which.

The Acronis True Image software available for WD drives has been fine for my stuff in the past.

 

[twilyth]

The Acronis True Image software available for WD drives has been fine for my stuff in the past.

So it's a free download as long as you use it on a WD drive? Iz confoosed.

 

[Norton]

So it's a free download as long as you use it on a WD drive? Iz confoosed.

Free for WD drives:
http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119

 

[twilyth]

Free for WD drives:
http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119

I think I'd rather use something that is not going to be a one use sort of deal. I've owned True Image and other products from them and aside from the constant annoyances trying to sell you other products they're incredibly fickle about when and how they work. I gave up on Acronis a long time ago. But thanks anyway,.