Rosetta goes to full production.

wijata.com
wijata.com
Joined: 11 Feb 05
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Tried rosetta, and fleed. It

Tried rosetta, and fleed.
It took 56M of my system ram per CPU (as opposite to 6M here)
I want to share my idle resources, not the main value of my boxes..

Tern
Tern
Joined: 27 Jul 05
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RE: Tried rosetta, and

Message 17851 in response to message 17849

Quote:
Tried rosetta, and fleed.
It took 56M of my system ram per CPU (as opposite to 6M here)
I want to share my idle resources, not the main value of my boxes..

56MB? And that was too much? The calculator program on my Mac takes that much just to add 2+2! With virtual memory of many gigabytes available on even the smallest machine, if you have even the 256MB of "real memory" that most projects require, something asking for 56MB shouldn't even be a blip on the radar...

I just looked at mine - SETI is taking 61MB, Predictor is taking 92MB, SZTAKI 36MB, Einstein 45MB (not 6, although 'real memory' in use as opposed to total allocated is around 4) - so Rosetta (which I don't run so can't give figures on my machines) if it wants 56MB total is slightly more memory hungry than Einstein, but still not what I'd call even "moderately high" on memory usage. Launch Microsoft Word and see what _it_ wants (146MB with not one letter typed in yet)! The program monitoring my CPU temperature takes 105MB. My web browser is taking 269MB to type this reply...

wijata.com
wijata.com
Joined: 11 Feb 05
Posts: 113
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Yes, E@H takes 6M - i'm

Yes, E@H takes 6M - i'm talking of real (not virtual) memory.
and 56M real memory for rosetta i consider too much to spare...

Tern
Tern
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RE: Yes, E@H takes 6M - i'm

Message 17853 in response to message 17852

Quote:
Yes, E@H takes 6M - i'm talking of real (not virtual) memory.
and 56M real memory for rosetta i consider too much to spare...

Maybe I just don't understand - I'm really not trying to be rude here... If nothing else is running on your machine, what difference does it make how much real memory a BOINC application takes (unless it's more than you have)? Obviously if something else _IS_ running, you don't want something like Rosetta taking up space, but that is the entire point of virtual memory - if it isn't running, it gets swapped out, and the whole BOINC idea is that any app will run at "idle" priority. So the "real memory" amount is irrelevant, only the virtual memory amount matters, and that only because of disk space, or if the amount of virtual memory for a single application is greater than about 1/2 of your total real memory (performance hit)...

This laptop has 384MB RAM - pretty darn little. 378.5MB of that are currently in use. 22 for SETI, 11 for BOINC Manager, and 2 for the boinc daemon itself. Safari (web browser) is taking 94, Mail 38. Meanwhile, Safari is taking 275MB of virtual memory, SETI 61, Mail 141... if I quit all these applications and relaunch SETI, I'm sure it'll wind up using 61MB of real memory instead of virtual. (Well, actually it won't, because most of it isn't needed at any given moment, and the OS itself does need more RAM than I have at times, so there's going to be swapping anyway. It'd stabilize somewhere between 22 and 61, probably.) The total amount of memory requested by an application is what you see when you look at the "virtual" column - the amount that's in the "real" column is up to your OS. I don't know what OS you're running, but any of them should be able to swap processes in and out a lot faster than you can hit a key on the keyboard.

If I were to launch Photoshop right now, which is a definite RAM hog... well, nevermind, rather than guessing, I just did! And opened a 12MB image. Total 222MB of VM in use for PS, 73 real. The OS shuffled everything around - before, I had 5.5MB real memory free. Now I have... 4.5MB free. What the heck, let's load it up - I launched iTunes and iPhoto. Now I have... 6.2MB free. (!!!) Performance is a little sluggish when switching applications, but believe me, that's NOT because of SETI!

I quit everything except Safari (I have to be able to type this...) and BOINC. I now show 129MB free.

Now - if you are running with 128MB of RAM, then yes, 56MB for Rosetta is "too much". I don't know what the minimum requirements are for Rosetta... but I think most projects have a minimum of 256MB. From what I'm seeing on this laptop, my smallest at 384MB, I wouldn't flinch at running Rosetta on it. If performance became an issue at all, I would set the prefs to "not do work when computer is in use", and "swap applications out of memory when not running", and then it should drop to 0...

But - everyone gets to make their own decisions on what projects they run, and why. I don't run Rosetta because they don't have a Mac client, and even though I have a Windows box, I won't support anyone that doesn't treat the Mac as an equal. That's my illogical choice as a long-time Mac developer. If you wish to base your choices on amount of RAM taken, that's just as legitimate!

Paul D. Buck
Paul D. Buck
Joined: 17 Jan 05
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Bill, My PowerMac

Bill,

My PowerMac disagrees with you ... they did not have one that worked with Panther ... but now that is changed too ... so there are clients for Panther and has been one for Tiger ...

Tern
Tern
Joined: 27 Jul 05
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Credit: 93405316
RAC: 822

RE: there are clients for

Message 17855 in response to message 17854

Quote:
there are clients for Panther and has been one for Tiger ...

ACK! My mistake, so why am I not doing Rosetta??? (Other than not enough computers, not enough time, and I was thinking about PrimeGrid when I said that for some reason...) I looked at the download page and I do note that their minimum system requirements are 512MB, so they apparently acknowledge that their software requires more memory than some other BOINC projects.

They said on 10/20 that "The rosetta application has been updated on all platforms. The updated versions should have a smaller memory footprint and the OSX version should also run on 10.3.9+." - so wijata, you may want to give them another try.

David Kim (project director) in the NC forum in September said "512MB is recommended because we plan on doing tests for larger proteins and also plan to include protein design and docking tests, which could take more memory. It is not a requirement, just recommended."

Hm... attaching it would mess up my nice even stats... but it would complement Predictor nicely... I think I'll go join Rosetta! Thanks Paul, one more thing to spend my CPU and brain-time on! :-)

wijata.com
wijata.com
Joined: 11 Feb 05
Posts: 113
Credit: 25495895
RAC: 0

> They said on 10/20 that

> They said on 10/20 that "The rosetta application has been updated on all platforms... you may want to give them another try.
That was just after that ;)

> If nothing else is running on your machine, what difference does it make how much real memory a BOINC application takes
Well, do You buy Your machine just for distributed computing ?
I don't.
I'm taking care of machines in small company. They give me permission to use the CPU power(and memory) as long, as it will not affect normal desktop usage.
Unfortunatelly 56M of real memory is above the bound wher the desktop has 256 - don't You thing?

I guess it would be EOT from my side. Just shared with my opinion...

Tern
Tern
Joined: 27 Jul 05
Posts: 309
Credit: 93405316
RAC: 822

RE: Unfortunatelly 56M of

Message 17857 in response to message 17856

Quote:
Unfortunatelly 56M of real memory is above the bound wher the desktop has 256 - don't You thing?

Yes, I think I said from the start that if you had less than 512MB, Rosetta wasn't a good choice... btw, I have my first credits from there on my Athlon (512MB), three results turned in, about 20-30 minutes each, with other projects suspended so I could see how Rosetta worked out. First one from the Mac Mini (also 512MB) hasn't finished, because it's still doing all five projects...

The Athlon (Windows) is for those rare occasions where I have to do something that Mac OS X won't, so yes, it's 99% a BOINC box. The Mac Mini is my Photoshop and development box, and the Mac laptop (384MB, so no Rosetta) is my email and web browsing machine... So far, I've noticed ZERO impact from any BOINC application on any of my machines. Impact on my 'spare time' however has been considerable, thanks to all the message boards... :-)

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