Hi,
Does anyone know if we will be able to run world community grid projects on the Raspberry Pi ?
(i tried searching the forums before posting. Please post a link to thread if this has been discussed before)
Thanks,
Abhi
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abhi.mishra
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Sat Feb 11, 2012 8:42 pm
Re: World Community Grid
Hi,
I am also interested in running boinc on the R-Pi…
My main concern is the ARM processor. I saw some people managed to run boinc on an ARM processor, but did not find anything official on the web until now…
I hope something is to be done here.
I have found DotschUX – a strapped down version of Ubuntu 8 or so meant to run mainly boinc. I have posted on their forum to know if an ARM version would be possible.
PS: Yes, I know, the R-Pi is not meant for number crunching, and it would most probably not be an efficient system. But I am still interested in the concept, so why not give it a try…
edit:
PPS: Boinc discussed on this forum:
Distributed Computing
Idle on Pis put to use?
Boinc in Raspberry? - Quote: It"s part of debian stable so it"s only a
apt-get install boinc-client
away
I am also interested in running boinc on the R-Pi…
My main concern is the ARM processor. I saw some people managed to run boinc on an ARM processor, but did not find anything official on the web until now…
I hope something is to be done here.
I have found DotschUX – a strapped down version of Ubuntu 8 or so meant to run mainly boinc. I have posted on their forum to know if an ARM version would be possible.
PS: Yes, I know, the R-Pi is not meant for number crunching, and it would most probably not be an efficient system. But I am still interested in the concept, so why not give it a try…
edit:
PPS: Boinc discussed on this forum:
Distributed Computing
Idle on Pis put to use?
Boinc in Raspberry? - Quote: It"s part of debian stable so it"s only a
apt-get install boinc-client
away
-
ElectronikHeart
- Posts: 20
- Joined: Tue Feb 07, 2012 4:08 pm
Re: World Community Grid
Boinc should run, it does compile on ARM. And it's a part of Debian packages as you say, so it's not that difficult to install.
But I'm concerned about the lack of huge amount of ram and my bigger concern is about the lack of power of the arm architecture in the floating point department.
The problem is one part because the vfp used is the ARM11 chips are not that great but also because Debian is compiled using softfp (at least the debian version that you can run in the raspberry).
Softfp mean that the floating point operations are to simplify send to something like a wrapper that emulate the floating point unit if your ARM doesn't have one. The Broadcom chipset used by the raspberry does have a vfp so it's not that bad, but on soft fp every time floating point are used you waste sometime (a lot of time in floating point intensive programs like Boinc or POV-Ray).
So to sum up, floating point are not great in ARM and even worst because linux distributions have to support ARM with and without floating point.
It will work, but very slowly if my assumption of heavy floating point usage is true (I think it's true because every supercomputers are focusing on floating point performance). Slower than a Pentium 2 (I will do some benchmarks).
But I'm concerned about the lack of huge amount of ram and my bigger concern is about the lack of power of the arm architecture in the floating point department.
The problem is one part because the vfp used is the ARM11 chips are not that great but also because Debian is compiled using softfp (at least the debian version that you can run in the raspberry).
Softfp mean that the floating point operations are to simplify send to something like a wrapper that emulate the floating point unit if your ARM doesn't have one. The Broadcom chipset used by the raspberry does have a vfp so it's not that bad, but on soft fp every time floating point are used you waste sometime (a lot of time in floating point intensive programs like Boinc or POV-Ray).
So to sum up, floating point are not great in ARM and even worst because linux distributions have to support ARM with and without floating point.
It will work, but very slowly if my assumption of heavy floating point usage is true (I think it's true because every supercomputers are focusing on floating point performance). Slower than a Pentium 2 (I will do some benchmarks).
Re: World Community Grid
Ok, I see…
That is the same answer I got on the DotschUX forum and why they will not make an ARM version of it…
So I will try to run it on Debian and see how it runs – with taking into account the low power consumption.
I keep you posted as soon as I get my hands on one of those ?"s (that"s supposed to be a "pi")
PS: Just stumbled on this. Boinc may be working on ARM, but you need a project that works on it too! I do NOT think that the table is complete, but a clear trend can be seen… Edit: Here is a project that supports ARM with linux
PPS: And stumbled on this.
That is the same answer I got on the DotschUX forum and why they will not make an ARM version of it…
So I will try to run it on Debian and see how it runs – with taking into account the low power consumption.
I keep you posted as soon as I get my hands on one of those ?"s (that"s supposed to be a "pi")
PS: Just stumbled on this. Boinc may be working on ARM, but you need a project that works on it too! I do NOT think that the table is complete, but a clear trend can be seen… Edit: Here is a project that supports ARM with linux
PPS: And stumbled on this.
Re: World Community Grid
One BOINC project that seems like it might be a reasonable match for the Pi is
Quake Catcher Network.
http://qcn.stanford.edu/
It uses accelerometers connected to computers to monitor earthquake activity. Doesn't look like it should have much heavy computing involved.
(Having a compact, low power computer that could be put in the basement seems like a nice option for this.)
No idea if the software would run on the Pi, or what porting would be involved. (Haven't run it myself, and the project web site is not working with my browser.)
Quake Catcher Network.
http://qcn.stanford.edu/
It uses accelerometers connected to computers to monitor earthquake activity. Doesn't look like it should have much heavy computing involved.
(Having a compact, low power computer that could be put in the basement seems like a nice option for this.)
No idea if the software would run on the Pi, or what porting would be involved. (Haven't run it myself, and the project web site is not working with my browser.)
Re: World Community Grid
Even if it is possible to run BOINC on an RPI, the question is if the project you are going to support is working with the given RAM limitations of this device.
I found this old list of system requierements for several BOINC projects.
It is up to you to find a more current list and to decide if you want to join.
A pure solar powered (only running if enough sunlight is available) RPI BOINC-farm would be fun.
Even if it is not solar powered, I would definetely join a raspberrypi community boinc group
I found this old list of system requierements for several BOINC projects.
It is up to you to find a more current list and to decide if you want to join.
A pure solar powered (only running if enough sunlight is available) RPI BOINC-farm would be fun.
Even if it is not solar powered, I would definetely join a raspberrypi community boinc group
Re: World Community Grid
I also used to run BOINC on one of my desktop computers and it made it very very slow. Not because of CPU usage (BOINC handles that very well), but because of memory usage that made my computer swaps all the time.
Re: World Community Grid
Having just acquired my RasPi my first wish was to run BOINC on it.(The main reason for its purchase was to use less power for grid computing than my current old Pentium 4s)
I updated from the Debian Squeeze supplied and the BOINC Manager seems to work fine - except when you try to attach to a project and then it exits.
If BOINC Manager is supplied pre-loaded on Squeeze for the Pi shouldn't it allow for grid project attachment
Any suggestions?
Puzzled.
I updated from the Debian Squeeze supplied and the BOINC Manager seems to work fine - except when you try to attach to a project and then it exits.
If BOINC Manager is supplied pre-loaded on Squeeze for the Pi shouldn't it allow for grid project attachment
Any suggestions?
Puzzled.
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nick.mccloud
- Posts: 804
- Joined: Sat Feb 04, 2012 4:18 pm
Re: World Community Grid
Most likely an out of memory issue - can you run something to monitor memory usage when it launches?FinnDoggo wrote:Having just acquired my RasPi my first wish was to run BOINC on it.(The main reason for its purchase was to use less power for grid computing than my current old Pentium 4s)
I updated from the Debian Squeeze supplied and the BOINC Manager seems to work fine - except when you try to attach to a project and then it exits.
I'm sure there are loads of programs that haven't been tested on the distro's - 1,000's even.FinnDoggo wrote: If BOINC Manager is supplied pre-loaded on Squeeze for the Pi shouldn't it allow for grid project attachment
Re: World Community Grid
Hi.
Read your post and on DotschUx.
Have you managed to get the Boinc Manager supplied with the RasPi's Debian Squeeze to attach to any projects yet?
I got the manager loaded OK, but it won't attach -just dies.
Finndoggo
Read your post and on DotschUx.
Have you managed to get the Boinc Manager supplied with the RasPi's Debian Squeeze to attach to any projects yet?
I got the manager loaded OK, but it won't attach -just dies.
Finndoggo
FloGer wrote:Ok, I see…
That is the same answer I got on the DotschUX forum and why they will not make an ARM version of it…
So I will try to run it on Debian and see how it runs – with taking into account the low power consumption.
I keep you posted as soon as I get my hands on one of those ?"s (that"s supposed to be a "pi")
PS: Just stumbled on this. Boinc may be working on ARM, but you need a project that works on it too! I do NOT think that the table is complete, but a clear trend can be seen… Edit: Here is a project that supports ARM with linux
PPS: And stumbled on this.
Re: World Community Grid
Thanks Nick,
Will have a look at how to do that. Am a complete newby, so may take a while.
But would have thought this would arise at point of attachment to a specific project with high usage demands - not before it's even off the blocks and on to the BOINC project selection menu/window.
FinnDoggo
Will have a look at how to do that. Am a complete newby, so may take a while.
But would have thought this would arise at point of attachment to a specific project with high usage demands - not before it's even off the blocks and on to the BOINC project selection menu/window.
FinnDoggo
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mesamunefire
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Sat Sep 22, 2012 10:09 pm
Re: World Community Grid
I have documented what I got working here: http://michaelchrisco.com/wiki/index.ph ... spberry_pi
Let me know if you have any ideas on how to move forward getting this to work.
Let me know if you have any ideas on how to move forward getting this to work.
Re: World Community Grid
Well you can run WCG (World Community Grid) on Android, so I don't see why we can't run it on the Pi's considering they both have the same processor. I would of expected a compiled version of ARM for the Pi shortly after to be honest since it's already been done.