Parallella, Raspberry Pi, FPGA & All That Stuff

stfn
stfn
Joined: 7 Jun 21
Posts: 25
Credit: 91672277
RAC: 20934

Hi, it's me again! This

Hi, it's me again!

This time I tested if using an NVMe HAT on a Raspberry Pi 5 makes it crunch BOINC faster.

And for Einstein@Home it does, switching from an SD card to an NVMe drive makes the Pi5 crunch around 30% faster.

Here's the blog post with the benchmarks:

https://stfn.pl/blog/50-pi5-nvme-performance-in-boinc/

Ian&Steve C.
Ian&Steve C.
Joined: 19 Jan 20
Posts: 3958
Credit: 47041382642
RAC: 65091380

stfn wrote:Hi, it's me

stfn wrote:

Hi, it's me again!

This time I tested if using an NVMe HAT on a Raspberry Pi 5 makes it crunch BOINC faster.

And for Einstein@Home it does, switching from an SD card to an NVMe drive makes the Pi5 crunch around 30% faster.

Here's the blog post with the benchmarks:

https://stfn.pl/blog/50-pi5-nvme-performance-in-boinc/



you should try running the FGRP5 CPU project. they r-released an linux aarch64 app for that since last you tested (need to enable beta too). but be aware it uses a good amount of RAM. might not be able to run all 4 cores.

would be cool to get relative performance numbers for that app vs the BRP4 app you ran now. same with SD vs nvme

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stfn
stfn
Joined: 7 Jun 21
Posts: 25
Credit: 91672277
RAC: 20934

Didn't know that. I started

Didn't know that. I started crunching on the SD card with two FGRP5 tasks, and a few minutes after starting RAM usage is 1.7GB. I'll leave it at two cores for now, maybe the RAM usage will rise as the tasks continue. If not, I'll later switch to more cores.

Keith Myers
Keith Myers
Joined: 11 Feb 11
Posts: 4964
Credit: 18752106859
RAC: 7113079

Yes, I'd like to see FGRP5

Yes, I'd like to see FGRP5 tasks on the Pi4 and Pi5 also. Here are my Pi4 and Pi5 tasks for comparison on FGRP5.

Pi4 FGRP5 tasks

Pi5 FGRP5 tasks

No NVMe drive though.  The tower cooler precludes fitting a NVMe Hat device.

 

mikey
mikey
Joined: 22 Jan 05
Posts: 12693
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stfn wrote:Hi, it's me

stfn wrote:

Hi, it's me again!

This time I tested if using an NVMe HAT on a Raspberry Pi 5 makes it crunch BOINC faster.

And for Einstein@Home it does, switching from an SD card to an NVMe drive makes the Pi5 crunch around 30% faster.

Here's the blog post with the benchmarks:

https://stfn.pl/blog/50-pi5-nvme-performance-in-boinc/

I also run some R-Pi's though am very much the novice at it but with Keith Myers help I too am crunching along very nicely. I have R-Pi model 4's though and noticed you didn't try running yours thru an SSD instead of just the SD card. I know they don't make a "hat" for one but do you think it would make any difference or is the throughput limited thru the USB ports sooo much that it's not a worthwhile test?

I think what you did is extremely helpful to the crunching community and want to say "Thank you" for doing it!!

Keith Myers
Keith Myers
Joined: 11 Feb 11
Posts: 4964
Credit: 18752106859
RAC: 7113079

Write speeds comparing USB

Write speeds comparing USB 2.0 and MicroSD cards are about equivalent.  Only when using the USB 3.0 ports on the Pi4 would there be an advantage.  Would like to see that experiment also.

The main reason why it makes sense on the Pi5 is the the two lane PCI Gen. 2 interface on the Pi5.

 

Ian&Steve C.
Ian&Steve C.
Joined: 19 Jan 20
Posts: 3958
Credit: 47041382642
RAC: 65091380

stfn wrote: Hi, it's me

stfn wrote:

Hi, it's me again!

This time I tested if using an NVMe HAT on a Raspberry Pi 5 makes it crunch BOINC faster.

And for Einstein@Home it does, switching from an SD card to an NVMe drive makes the Pi5 crunch around 30% faster.

Here's the blog post with the benchmarks:

https://stfn.pl/blog/50-pi5-nvme-performance-in-boinc/

I looked at your NVMe hat from your blog. Does it power the NVMe hat and drive from only the PCIe ribbon cable? I didn’t see any other connections from the board to the hat. 

_________________________________________________________________________

Keith Myers
Keith Myers
Joined: 11 Feb 11
Posts: 4964
Credit: 18752106859
RAC: 7113079

From the mounting

From the mounting instructions and pictures of the hat, it looks like power and data is only through the ribbon cable.

 

stfn
stfn
Joined: 7 Jun 21
Posts: 25
Credit: 91672277
RAC: 20934

mikey wrote: I think what

mikey wrote:

I think what you did is extremely helpful to the crunching community and want to say "Thank you" for doing it!!

Thank you :)

Keith Myers wrote:

From the mounting instructions and pictures of the hat, it looks like power and data is only through the ribbon cable.

Yes, the NVMe hats do not require additional power, everything comes through the ribbon cable.

stfn
stfn
Joined: 7 Jun 21
Posts: 25
Credit: 91672277
RAC: 20934

OK, I crunched FGRP5 tasks

OK, I crunched FGRP5 tasks with and without the NVME HAT... and there's basically no difference

SD Card (all runtimes in seconds):

AVG   18976
MIN    17601
MAX   21378
TPD    9.106 (tasks per day with two cores running)

NVMe:

AVG   18701
MIN    17050
MAX   21780
TPD    9.240

I was crunching FGRP on two cores. In light of this, that 30% for the Arecibo tasks seems implausible. Or maybe it shows up only when all four cores are stressed? I would need to do more testing. And what is more, yesterday the NVMe drive died, so I need to get a new one.

https://stfn-public.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/blog/benchmarks/einstein_benchmark_data3.ods

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