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Performance looks similar to a raspberry pi 4These are the results from the Rock Pi X. Can't say I'm incredibly impressed with the performance. This is running a standard Linux Mint install, would it be likely to boost the PPD if I installed a Linux distro without a GUI? If so, any suggestions on what distro? I was thinking of throwing on Ubuntu Server(last time I used it, it didn't come with a GUI by default) and see what happens.
View attachment 305972
4.7-4.8 watts according to my Killawatt. That's with a random USB C phone charger I had sitting around so I have no idea what the efficiency of that power adapter is.how much power is that Rock Pi using for those points?
Having given this some thought, that actually is fairly impressive. It's not far off in cost from a 4GB Pi 4, and you don't need to add storage so there's no micro sd cost. Power usage is similar, performance is similar, but you get access to all X86 projects/programs not just ones that have been ported to ARM. I might have to think about building a little cluster with a couple more of those and a 5 port switch just to sit in a corner and run WCG. The performance is low enough I won't be tempted to move them to other projects every time a competition comes up. With that said, the Optiplex 9020 SFF with an i7-4770s I picked up used on eBay a couple years ago cost about the same as one Rock Pi X and probably has similar performance to a few of them combined just with higher power usage. Maybe I should run some WCG with that thing plugged into the Kill a watt before I make any decisions, but that's probably not something for the Raspberry Pi/BOINC SBC thread I'll probably still grab a Pi 4 to mess around with too. I've owned a couple of Raspberry Pi's but not anything recent.4.7-4.8 watts according to my Killawatt. That's with a random USB C phone charger I had sitting around so I have no idea what the efficiency of that power adapter is.
I think the pi 4 is doing more work for less power than the Rock Pi in WCG OP. I also think you’re onto something in regards to using them in projects where there is no arm port though. The pi 4s are about the same power efficiency as a thread ripper 3990x, but just a much smaller slice. As newer hardware comes out, both the Rock pi and raspberry pi will start to lose out in efficiency though.
Thanks for the update on the 4770. My guess was the pi 4 would crush haswell in efficiency, but I was only able to verify against core 2 quads, old APUs, and a i5-2500k. I’ve replaced half of my old gear with pi4s at this point, but I have a few systems where a pi isn’t the right option.I might need to start Kill-a-watt'ing more stuff, now I'm curious. I just tested it and the i7 4770s machine uses about 75w from the wall. Honestly, not bad for a 4 core/8 thread 7 year old processor and an old Dell PSU of questionable efficiency, but not even close to Pi 4 or Rock Pi level. That's with 2 4GB sticks of DDR3 and a solid state drive. Probably should order a Pi 4 though to mess around with as well. When I have time I'll try to install a stripped down Linux distro without a GUI on the Rock Pi X and see what the WCG PPD is like without the extra overhead.
pi@raspberrypiXX:/var/log $ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
192.168.mm.nn:/srv/nfs/rpi4-7a123456 32122688 8190424 22277480 27% /
devtmpfs 1867780 0 1867780 0% /dev
tmpfs 1999876 0 1999876 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 1999876 8580 1991296 1% /run
tmpfs 5120 4 5116 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 1999876 0 1999876 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs 399972 0 399972 0% /run/user/1000
pi@raspberrypiXX:/var/log $
Yes, there is an ID tied to each Boinc client. Installation is fast enough I just scripted the installation and project association and didn’t worry about cloning it.Finally I have a PXE installed and run one Pi without SD Card.
its a bit geeky but works . Very first time one need to run a regular OS on the Pi to change the boot sequence and allow net boot.
But after that it get the files mapped over network.
On my 8GB with ESXi I run an Ubuntu 64bit Server with dnsmasq etc provinding the storage to the SD-less PI over ethernet. And run BOINC.
Is this needed ? No. Is it cool ? Oh yeah. Two more Pi's are on the way without SD Card and they will complete the proof of concept. Hopefully I can just clone the already installed BOINC image direct to the new devices.
What is a best way to ensure uniqueness of each BOINC instance ? As I don't want to reinstall the boinc-client ? there is some hardware id ? Isnt it?
NFS ...Yes, there is an ID tied to each Boinc client. Installation is fast enough I just scripted the installation and project association and didn’t worry about cloning it.
are you using iscsi or nfs for the remote storage?
For multiple boinc instances/clients, I run the linux command "hostnamectl set-hostname [your instance name]". Below is one example where all the 3 instances are on the same physical machine but differentiate between the host versus boinc2 and boinc3 other than the unique BOINC host ID (580196, 580202, etc). Not sure if this is what you ask.What is a best way to ensure uniqueness of each BOINC instance ? As I don't want to reinstall the boinc-client ? there is some hardware id ? Isnt it?
I’ve been having issues with centOS myself. Perhaps it’s an OS issueNFS ...
first tried with centos but dnsmasq / tftp was not working well. Might have been too old.
Unfortunately Redhat/Centos changed their intention and centOS become the development release for RHEL. Centos 8 got an earlier EOL :-(I’ve been having issues with centOS myself. Perhaps it’s an OS issue
Is that a 12 stack pi frame, or can you attach a 8 with a 4 stack? Have you done any power optimizations on the pis?Settled for a new rack and power supply
the cooling is quite good with those big fans; much better compared the little one in the simpler cases or racks.
View attachment 310870
And better visibility on power consumption
View attachment 310871
Running out of USB A to C cables
It’s a 12slot pi frame, half used. And not yet any optimization done like turn off wifi etc. but with 1A under full computational load I’m ok with already. I saw the suggestions made earlier in this thread and might apply some.Is that a 12 stack pi frame, or can you attach a 8 with a 4 stack? Have you done any power optimizations on the pis?
I might change my mind and will start learning about kubernets. Or another way for better software distribution on the cluster. It’s a bit cumbersome to make sure the bunch of pi run the same software and config. and to avoid excessive scripting. And still need to SSH in anyway.If you’re into or want to learn the crazy world of containers, I can’t think a better way to do it than raspberry pis. You can build a 4 node kubernetes cluster for peanuts compared to pretty much anything else.
Key exchange and remote shell commands not working out well?I might change my mind and will start learning about kubernets. Or another way for better software distribution on the cluster. It’s a bit cumbersome to make sure the bunch of pi run the same software and config. and to avoid excessive scripting. And still need to SSH in anyway.
like installing the node_exporter for prometheus/Grafana is pain in the butt on those loosely couples pi.
nah, it would work once setup. no doubts. I also just learned that I could use systemctl remotely. Which is actually useful to make the scripts.Key exchange and remote shell commands not working out well?
Medical research, such as Covid antivirals and cancer treatments, physics and astronomy like mapping the Milky Way, Math such as finding prime numbers, and more.New to the world of distributed computing...What are some potential applications for this?
Got my first set of numbers in. Stock and with PBO enabled, Pis destroyed the power efficiency of the 5950. With PBO enabled and set to motherboard the 5950 whole system pulls 301-306 watts Roughly 68 pis worth of power but “only” 240,682 average points per day over 3 days, which is roughly 40 pis worth of points.Just got my 5950x running WCG. Time to find out which is more points per watt - 5950 or Raspberry Pi.
This is fantastic!I made a measurements setup based on the ESP8266 controller and INA219 digital current/voltage sensor.
Tested with some resistors, down to 22Ohm and the measurements were inline with expected Ohm's law results. Safe to assume an accurate 0.01W and 0.01A resolution.
Pic of wiring attached.
I'll be editing this post and adding more measurements as I go along.
1. Default config as provided by Raspberry PI OS, all packages updated.
No tweaks yet.
No peripherals.
32GB microSD card.
Cooling is a 60mm slow-moving fan but powered independently.
Linux littlepigboy 5.10.17-v7l+ #1414 SMP Fri Apr 30 13:20:47 BST 2021 armv7l GNU/Linux (4GB version)
Idling, boot to console, wired 1gbps ethernet, no wifi
0.49A 2.45W
Idling, boot to console, disconnected ethernet, no wifi
0.38A 1.92W
Off, ethernet connected.
0.34A 1.73W
Off, ethernet disconnected
0.24A 1.20W
Idling, boot to console, ethernet+wifi
0.49A 2.45W / 0.53A 2.63W ~
Idling, boot to console, wifi, but no ethernet
0.38A 1.93W
Idling with GUI, ethernet, no wifi
0.50A 2.52W
Full load (4 Einstein tasks, "always on" mode, GUI, VNC session)
0.95A 4.74W (a 60-second average)
Full load (4 Einstein tasks, "always on" mode, no GUI, SSH session)
0.95A 4.70W (a 60-second average)
2. The tweaks (as outlined by Endgame in the OP and other guys in this thread)
2.1 Ethernet speed reduced to 100mbps
Idling, boot to console
0.41A 2.08W (0.08A 0.37W less)
Full load (4 Einstein tasks, "always on" mode, no GUI, SSH session)
0.87A 4.3W (0.08A 0.4W less)
Feel free to drop anything you'd like tested! I'll be playing around with this for a few days. I'll be focusing mostly on power consumption and not performance/memory savings, though, as there'd be a host of additional variables.This is fantastic!
I’ve got a stack of additional tweaks I’ve been making to my pi build. I’ll quick skim the thread and see if I’ve already posted them. If not, I’ll go ahead and add a reply with the extra modifications, if you’re feeling in the mood to test with tweaking.
post 82 has what to do, but no details. I can provide shell commands to do all those tasks if they would be useful to anyone.
I’m not aware of any projects that use the pi video card.Feel free to drop anything you'd like tested! I'll be playing around with this for a few days. I'll be focusing mostly on power consumption and not performance/memory savings, though, as there'd be a host of additional variables.
Also, no idea yet about the GPU part... can the VC even compute in any of the DC projects?
I’m not aware of any projects that use the pi video card.
is there any power savings by dropping to 10mbit?
I'll check that out along with the tvservice off setting, LEDs and all that good stuff.I’m not aware of any projects that use the pi video card.
is there any power savings by dropping to 10mbit?
Writing from /dev/zero to a file on the microSD gives me 0.62A 3.08W (so around 0.5W). I'll add it to the results list. Just a quickie lol.I’ve toyed with limiting network availability, but it doesn’t work in my case since I’m using Network storage. I also have heard, but not tested, that writing to flash is higher energy use than network.
A fair comparison would probably be to also write to a network share from /dev/zero.Writing from /dev/zero to a file on the microSD gives me 0.62A 3.08W (so around 0.5W). I'll add it to the results list. Just a quickie lol.
Did some more checks, including writing to NFS. Turned out more demanding than writing to microSD, but do note the transfer speed difference.A fair comparison would probably be to also write to a network share from /dev/zero.