SETI/ Astropulse question

reply to post by Vanitas


I have closed the documents and checked BOINC: no difference.

The thing is still racing towards the 84th hour of CPU time left like there is no tomorrow...





[edit on 16-10-2008 by Vanitas]

Originally posted by Vanitas

I have closed the documents and checked BOINC: no difference.

Opening or closing documents should make no difference.

The thing is still racing towards the 84th hour of CPU time left like there is no tomorrow...

How many Astropulse units have you completed before, if any?

reply to post by Cadbury



I didn't think so! (About the documents, I mean.)

This is my first Astropulse unit.

Originally posted by Vanitas
This is my first Astropulse unit.

Would you mind if I ask how many GHz your processor runs at? I could be wrong here, but the actual crunching of the unit could be slowing it down so much that it can't properly estimate the time remaining, so it ticks up slowly as it goes along.

Or is the problem now resolved?

reply to post by Cadbury


I am glad you asked... because I wouldn't dare update you on this one.
It's too awkward.

Yesterday evening, I terminated the process (simply exited it, NOT aborted).
I do that all the time, to give my PC a break.
I know YOU are aware of this, but someone else reading this might not be, so let me just say that exiting the process does not affect the computation in a permanent way. The next time the PC is turned on, it simply resumes where it stopped.

So, I did what I did countless times before.
Then, much later, my PC suddenly rebooted - it must have been the temperature (57 C). After it was on again, I exited SETI/Astropulse again (and I checked the device manager, as I always do, to make sure it wasn't running in the background), and continued my work.

I always turn off the PC overnight.
Today, when I turned it on, I checked how the Astropulse was coming along... and found Astropulse gone. Instead, there was a SETI unit running, and apparently more than 4 hours of CPU time had elapsed.

Of course I checked the messages, but since they only show the activity since the last time computation resumed, there was nothing that could enlighten me as to how and what had happened to the Astropulse unit - or when was the new SETI unit downloaded.


Oh, right: my processor runs 2.00 GHz.


Anyway, I really appreciate the attention.






[edit on 17-10-2008 by Vanitas]

It has to do more with stock astropulse app, now I'm not sure what kind of CPU you have, but astropulse will always take longer then the regular Older WU's that SETI used to send to us.. But there are optimized apps of astropulse avalible, but that means you need to treak it in the app_info.xml way, but all these apps are available in the forum at the seti page, including even optimized regular SETI app, and when i mean by Optimized is instead of like the stock from SETI website, which uses older SSE, and well if you have PowerPC CPU, most likely doesn't use Altivec to its extreme, but use's it in some way.. the Optimized apps will! to get a better understanding of how astropulse works compared to the "narrowband" SETI@home stuff, look here www.planetary.org... I use a Intel dual core on my MacBook pro and heh PowerMacG4, the MBP CPU capabilities are SSE SSE2 and SSE3 amonst other things, and well the PMG4 has Altivec.. and on both SETI@home regular work units are way slower then optimized SSE3 apps for instance, and full Altivec ones as well at least for Altivec about 10-20% x's faster and on my MBP 40-50% faster.. Astropulse well since I dont use that on my PowerPC mac, all i can say is right now let me look, 29:39:40 52.900ish% done adn 26:32mins left to do or so.. with SETI@home Astropulse Version 5 @ version 5.03 it will go up and down faster with optimized apps compared to the stock apps..now of course, you must learn how to use the app_info.xml file in order to make this work.. and usually you can find all this at the SETI@home forum site.. but since i use the optimize app for astropulse i must say, there a 10% increase at least using the SSE3 optimized app.. and really it doesnt matter if ur surfing as well or whatever.. Just be sure you have ya boinc prefs for CPU usage set at 100% Unless ya scared of the heat.. which i often do especially, during spring summer.. so I do bring that down abit to min max, 50%-70% depending if im using my Mac for other things.. the PPC mac tho i dont worry too much about that..

Originally posted by mac2010
It has to do more with stock astropulse app, now I'm not sure what kind of CPU you have, but astropulse will always take longer then the regular Older WU's that SETI used to send to us.. But there are optimized apps of astropulse avalible, but that means you need to treak it in the app_info.xml way, but all these apps are available in the forum at the seti page, including even optimized regular SETI app, and when i mean by Optimized is instead of like the stock from SETI website, which uses older SSE, and well if you have PowerPC CPU, most likely doesn't use Altivec to its extreme, but use's it in some way.. the Optimized apps will! to get a better understanding of how astropulse works compared to the "narrowband" SETI@home stuff, look here www.planetary.org... I use a Intel dual core on my MacBook pro and heh PowerMacG4, the MBP CPU capabilities are SSE SSE2 and SSE3 amonst other things, and well the PMG4 has Altivec.. and on both SETI@home regular work units are way slower then optimized SSE3 apps for instance, and full Altivec ones as well at least for Altivec about 10-20% x's faster and on my MBP 40-50% faster.. Astropulse well since I dont use that on my PowerPC mac, all i can say is right now let me look, 29:39:40 52.900ish% done adn 26:32mins left to do or so.. with SETI@home Astropulse Version 5 @ version 5.03 it will go up and down faster with optimized apps compared to the stock apps..now of course, you must learn how to use the app_info.xml file in order to make this work.. and usually you can find all this at the SETI@home forum site.. but since i use the optimize app for astropulse i must say, there a 10% increase at least using the SSE3 optimized app.. and really it doesnt matter if ur surfing as well or whatever.. Just be sure you have ya boinc prefs for CPU usage set at 100% Unless ya scared of the heat.. which i often do especially, during spring summer.. so I do bring that down abit to min max, 50%-70% depending if im using my Mac for other things.. the PPC mac tho i dont worry too much about that..

and just to be sure you guys understand, earlier -> 26:32mins i meant 26hours:32mins

reply to post by mac2010


Sorry, I never replied to this message because I never saw it (until now); in fact, I was absent at the time it was posted (and for a long time afterwards).

Thank you for the detailed account.

In the meantime I have bought a new PC and haven't installed SETI yet.
To be quite frank, I am not sure whether it's worth it...

Any opinions?