BOINC 7.20.7 slows down E@H WUs on Mac
19 May 2023 13:50:13 UTC
Topic 229561
(moderation:
Has anyone noticed the recent release of BOINC 7.20.7 actually slows down E@H crunching...? My crunch time increased from 2.75hrs to 3.5hrs, while CPU temp decreased from 60 to 50 degrees C... Restart didn't do the trick...
After downgrading to 7.20.2 crunch time went back to the normal 2.75hrs...
MacBook Air M1 here...
Elphidieus wrote: Has anyone
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Well that's not a good thing!!
Elphidieus wrote: Has anyone
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Elphidieus, thank you so much for sharing your observation. I wonder if this is an issue that is specific to Macs, Mac CPU applications, or Mac M1 CPUs. I haven't upgraded any of my Macs to 7.20.7, but I will check on this when I get some time next month.
"I was born in a small town, and I live in a small town." - John Mellencamp
Elphidieus wrote:Has anyone
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Same here. After upgrading BOINC to the v 7.20.7 I noticed that tasks are processed slower. In my case it is about 5% but it's not only an E@H problem. Currently from time to time I also do tasks for Denis@Home and situations there is similar. I didn't change my local settings nor account settings for these projects. When I'll got some tasks for World Community Grid (ARP) I'll see how situations looks for it.
Anybody bother to raise a
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Anybody bother to raise a BOINC issue at Boinc's Github. Seems not some isolated case here with multiple crunchers reporting the same issue.
https://github.com/BOINC/boinc
Keith Myers wrote: Anybody
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Hello Keith,
Right. For everyone with the same problem, I opened the issue described here.
I don't have an account with
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I don't have an account with GitHub but I would appreciate if you can relate my answer to Charlie Fenton's question - No, the slowdown persisted despite closing/hiding BOINC Manager into the background...
Elphidieus wrote:I don't
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Hello Elphidieus,
No problem, added.
Thank you very
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Thank you very much...
Further response to Charlie Fenton:
Use at most 45% of the CPU
Use at most 50% of CPU time
Effectively I am crunching at only 3 out of 8 cores at 50% capacity all the time. And I'm only processing E@H WUs, no other projects at play so there's no switching amongst tasks.
Another question to Charlie, why can't BOINC be set to crunch at a steady half capacity instead of running 1 sec and pausing 1 sec in my CPU case usage...? Won't this pausing-and-running scenario actually shortens CPU lifespan...?
Elphidieus schrieb:Another
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It's not Mac-specific. The Windows client has the same behaviour (1 sec full load then pausing 1 sec). External tools for throttling BOINC tasks (e.g. TThrottle) throttle CPU usage more fine-grained (possibly shorter time slices... tens or hundred of msec).
Throttling cores (reducing voltage and core frequency) as well as stopping cores; powering them down for some dozen or hundreds of milliseconds is the normal operation mode of todays CPU's thermal management to minimize heat. [Or is power/thermal management part of the operating system's kernel? I don't know. I'm no expert.]
I don't think this reduces the lifespan of the CPU - on the contrary, lower heat production extends the lifespan.
Elphidieus wrote: Another
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Because there's no application level option to overrule the OS/CPU on what clock speed the core runs at to slow it down. That leaves turning it on and off.
You don't need to worry about your CPU wearing out like a mechanical switch, most applications generate bursty work loads not sustained full loads.