Techie Blogger

The Significance of GPU has sky rocked to a level that its even required for running an Operating System. Windows Vista made this impact and made GPU more significant, which was otherwise required for only gaming and video editing. Nowadays  every user not only looks at CPU and Memory configuration, the GPU is also considered with equally importance. Even thought  the use of dedicated GPU is limited its fast rising.

Intel’s plans to introduce its new architecture, Sandy Bridge, which has 2 integrated GPU’s and that run at about 1-1.4Ghz may be a challenge for the GPU developers. Even though  these may not seem so dangerous for now. Intel’s plans to improve it much higher grade in the future.

Intel wanted to  integrate all the computation into a single device which was the CPU. GPU was introduced to give some extra bandwidth for image processing. And now with the introduction of Intel’s Nehalam processor and GPGPU, things have have become a bit interesting for whom is to survive this race. GPU has replaced the CPU in many roles which was otherwise performed by the CPU. The power to price ratio of CPU is no where near that of the GPU, even though a GPU is capable of doing computation limited to vectors it may be such that such developments may significantly decrease the role of CPU to a drastic level. CPU will be limited to do just the basic computation purpose and the rest may be done by the GPU. There will be time when we may ask “Whats the specs of your GPU?”, instead of asking for the CPU.

It may seem clear to say that the GPU will rise over CPU, but Intel’s proposed new Larrabee architecture has raised hope for intel to power its graphic power and compete with the GPU vendors in the future. Its not a question of who will survive? But its a question who will dominate?

Popularity: 52% [?]

Hope you have read about the Overview on setting up Virtual Computer Using Boinc.

So now I will explain the technical details behind setting up of a super computer in the academic campus.

There are four main steps involved in this:

• Setting up a BOINC server.
• Creating grid of trusted nodes.
• Setting up volunteer computing segment.
• Integration and Finalization.

1) Setting up BOINC server:

We need a server dedicated to manage the virtual super computer. Intel dual Xeon or AMD Opteron will be a nice choice. Internet connection should be reliable and server must have a static IP. At least 2 GB of RAM, and 40 GB of free disk space, UPS power supply, RAID disk configuration, hot-swappable spares, temperature-controlled machine room, etc and do everything  to make it secure. A midrange server computer like dell poweredge will do. Put the entire system behind a firewall. Switch of ports like ftp and telnet that are not in use.

Software requirements:

• VMware Player
• BOINC Server Virtual Machine

VMware Player is a freeware virtualization software product from VMware, Inc. (vmware.com). The player can run virtual machines, ie, it will create a virtual environment in the system. For example you can virtually run windows in Linux or vice versa provided you have appropriate virtual machines. You can download the BOINC server virtual machine from boinc.berkely.edu. Download and run the BOINC VM(847MB) in VMware player in the server to get started.

So now that we have a server with BOINC virtual machine running on it, its time to move on to the grid creation part.

2) Creating grid of trusted nodes

Although BOINC was originally designed for volunteer computing, it can be configured to work for grid computing.

The steps in creating a BOINC-based grid are:

• Modify preferences of workunit (computation to be performed) from th BOINC server to disable redundant processing. Since a grid will contain only trusted nodes, redundancy is not necessary.
• Create an account with the general preferences enforced for the desktop grid. Clients can be remotely monitored and controlled if necessary.
• Configure project to disable account creation. New account creation is for the volunteer computing segment and we do not require it here.
• Create a custom installer that includes the desired configuration files.
• Deploy the installer in each system in the lab and other trusted computers.

So now we have setup each the node in grid segment. Note that our Economic virtual campus supercomputing facility combines the benefits of both Desktop grid computing and volunteer computing. We connect the trusted systems (like lab) to the desktop grid part and other non trusted (student laptops and misc PCs) system to the volunteer computing segment. Now we move to setup the volunteer computing segment.

3) Creating the volunteer computing segment

As BOINC is specially designed for volunteer computing, much change is not necessary to be made to BOINC client.

Following similar procedure setup another custom installer with

• Account creation enabled
• Redundancy set up to a desired value
• Other preference parameters setup to suit specific needs.
• Ask students and faculty to install this custom client.

4) Integration and Finalization

Connect systems to form, desktop grid. Let lab systems be ON whenever computing power is desired. Distribute the volunteer client to all non- trusted units in VCSF ( Eg: Student laptops). Let them connect when they power on their systems. The whole network is connected by wired or Wi-Fi LAN.

THE CLIENT SIDE

The volunteers who are ready to contribute to the project should be aware of their CPU usage of BOINC.

First pic is the screen shot of CPU usage of my system before installing BOINC. The average CPU usage of your computer will be less than 20% approximate in windows vista and less than 5% in windows XP. Since this processor idle time is used for processing supercomputing tasks this will rise up.

Second shows the CPU usage graph after installing BOINC.  You can notice that the CPU usage rise to 100%. I was contributing my CPU to SETI@home project, the search for extra terrestrial intelligence.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Don’t hesitate to play just because you are not familiar with your controllers. Do you have the real life experience in doing the same? Then that would be more than enough when the new revolutionary gaming technology codenamed Project NATAL is released by Microsoft. So rather than just playing FIFA with your controllers you could just get on to the field and start dribbling with your ball.

When Tom Cruise aka John Anderton in the Minority Report used a computer by waving his hands in the air, the world never expected the creator behind this film Steven Spielberg has really got to do something with the new Controller Free Gaming. Now when Project Natal has been announced by Microsoft, reports have been confirmed that Steven Spielberg is being a part of it.

The Next-Gen Controller Gaming Experience to be offered by Microsoft for Xbox 360 video game  platform. With Project Natal *addons* to your Xbox 360, you can just Fire at your enemy or Kick the ball without the need to touch the controllers. So it has got voice recognition, 3D motion capture and face recognition made possible with no hand held conrollers or wires. To be released as Christmas present for the Gamers from Microsoft, it has been one of the most widely awaited products of Microsoft. Steven Spielberg did meant it when he was quoted saying “This is a pivotal moment that will carry with it a wave of change, the ripples of which will reach far beyond video games”.

Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard, Bethesda Softworks, Disney Interactive, Electronic Arts are just a few among the Top Game Creators who account for more than 70 percent of third-party software sales has accorded their support for this revolutionary gaming Technology.

For more updates regarding Project Natal check out http://www.projectnatalgamer.com/

Popularity: 26% [?]

For all the freedom loving computer users it has become even more tempting to shift to the Open Source Computing with the latest high-end distros released with performance at par with the Windows Operating System and sometimes even more better with increased Security Options and Performance Charts. Also for many commercial groups struck by the Economic Meltdown this would be a cheaper option when each penny in the budget counts.

For these enlightened ones the major reason for stepping back is the difficulty in finding suitable alternatives for their favourite Linux applications. The web has made their search even more easier with many websites providing free search engine for finding the best alternatives of their favourite applications. Though the migration would definitely require time and patience, when compared with the large sum they spend for the User Licenses, this would turn out to be a wiser option.

Here are a few websites which provide the Open Sources alternatives of Windows applications at finger tips.

1. Osalt.com
This website gives you not just the alternate option for you but assists you in knowing about other siblings of the same category. This website even provides a comparison of a jack-on-both side.

2. Linux App finder
This communtiy website provides is not just for Windows users but even MAC OS X fans can use this as their guide for shifting to Open Source.

3. The Linux Alternative Project
This is yet another website for the same purpose specified above.

Popularity: 29% [?]

Weeks ago when I was trying to setup Ubuntu in my pc for the first time, installing new software you need in your new pc would be a impossible process without internet or any Repository DVDs. I managed to get a few resources from net and here I will explain it as a step by step procedure. First you should have another computer which is well connected to the internet or you should have an APTonCD created by someone. Once you install the required softwares with the help of internet connected PC, you could backup all the packages into a CD for using next time.

Popularity: 66% [?]