Performance of Folding@Home and Distributed Folding cleints

From: User Ernie (ernie_at_qbic.eis.net.au)
Date: 11/29/03

  • Next message: Martin Nilsson: "Re: Performance of Folding@Home and Distributed Folding cleints" 
    To: freebsd-performance@freebsd.org
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 08:20:51 +1000 (EST)

    A question for the folks familiar with the Folding@Home protein folding
    project.

    I have been doing some performance testing of FreeBSD vs Linux in a couple
    of the Distrbuted Computing projects particulary Folding@Home and
    Distributed folding. The one that I am curios about is Folding@Home where
    their is no specific FreeBSD client, instead it runs as a Linux client using
    the linux_base-8 libraries from the ports collection. Under straight linux
    redhat, CRUX, gentoo it takes about 13hours on a P4C 3.0Ghz for complete a
    gromacs WU, the same hardware running either FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE or
    5.1-RELEASE is takes about 26hours to do the same task. The only think I
    have noticed is that under Linux the client says it's using the SSE
    instructions, where under FreeBSD and the linux_base-8 libraries it does not
    say that. The cleint runs multi threaded under Linux or FreeBSD.

    I have also noticed quite a performance difference, though not as extreme,
    between the OS's in the distributed folding project where there is a native
    compile for FreeBSD. The benchmark suite says that FreeBSD is spending more
    time in sys (I/O) releated ativities than Linux but is still takes more
    hours to get through set of 250 generations than Linux does, the significant
    figure is the Foldtraj/ Usr time which seems to relate how long it will take
    to complete a generation.

     Linux Benchmark P4C 3.0Ghz
     Summary
     -------
               Usr time Sys time
               -------- --------
     Maketrj 2.670 0.710
     Foldtraj 28.930 11.000

     FreeBSD Benchmark P4 3.16GHz.
     Summary
     -------
               Usr time Sys time
               -------- --------
     Maketrj 5.789 0.234
     Foldtraj 36.867 1.523

    I am curious if there are any performace tweaks for FreeBSD, other than
    client settings or nice levels, to get more performance out of
    either Folding@home or Distribute Folding clients?

    I have asked this question on the respective forums, but the people there
    are generally not FreeBSD gurus.

    - Ernie.

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