Folding, Linux and You

[dicecca112]

In my continuing crusade to get the most performance out of my computer when it comes to folding I have once again dabbled into Linux. Being a College Senior studying Computer Science, I'm a little more knowledgeable and actually know what I'm doing this time.

Its well known that Linux SMP times are on average 6% faster than Windows, but that wasn't good enough for me. So I decided to compile my own custom Kernel tailored for Core 2 Duo. Now the default kernel for Ubuntu is not well compiled, its more compiled for general systems.

After wrestling with getting NVIDIA drivers installed and running I'm decided to start testing

Specs

2.6.23.14-with-slab Kernel (see here http://symbolik.wordpress.com/2007/11/1 ... sy-gibbon/)

Laptop in Sig


Times old Kernel


Min. Time / Frame : 17mn 09s - 1477.78 ppd


Times new kernel

--You'll have to wait till tomorrow

[martini161]

sounds good to me! if you get this working well will you distribute it? and if you do would it work as well for quads as it would for duals? and btw you should update your sig to say 18-0 new england pats. well you might as well just save time and make it 19-0

[Bwall]

Keep us updated, I will have to watch this thread as I'm going to soon have a few truly dedicated Core 2 Duo folders that are planned to run on Linux. I had planned to use USB flash drives instead of hard drives so if your kernel is improved maybe we could take it to that next level. ;)

[dicecca112]

2 Second Decrease, wasn't much but 3 Minute 20 seconds less over the span of a workunit is better than nothing. I'm trying to dig into kernel compiling and what settings to choose and what not. Isn't really much out there, I think I have 2 settings I know I missed that I should try (intterupt to 1000hz and TICKLESS), and I may try the lastest bleeding edge kernel this weekend. Kernel Compiling takes a while though over an hour in most causes.

My goal is to drop the folding time into the 16 minute 45 second range on Ubuntu. I may even try my own LFS distro at some point.

I'll post the Fahmon times when I get home.

[kenc51]

Compile it yourself using the old fashioned way! It's just as "easy" and you can be sure you have removed all the unwanted junk.
Configuring the kernel is the only "hard" part, as you have to go through all the options one by one, the rest is just typing and waiting for it to compile.

If you use the Intel compiler instead of the GNU compiler (GCC) then you'll get even more performance.

The problem with custom kernels is when you do an update you have to either rebuild the kernel, or reload modules manually a lot of the time afterwards.

[dicecca112]

yeah the Nvidia Drivers gave me an issue, plus I had to recompile ndiswrapper, but it wasn't too bad.

[dicecca112]

x64 really is not stable, I haven't be able to get a working Kernel in 5 or so tries. Not good.

[dicecca112]

Currently on x86 and working on Kernels again. I'll see what I can do. I don't run x86-64 anymore, so most work will be tested in VMs and in an x86 enviroment.