I would like to only receive work for AVX / FMA apps, not SSE, is that possible?


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Kashra

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Message 8092 - Posted: 3 Oct 2023, 16:29:39 UTC
Hi,

I would like to only receive AVX/FMA workunits, if possible. I am new to the project and noticed that the AVX units are way faster (about half in time compared to SSE ones) if only AVX are active. I assume that my Xeon CPUs "prefer" these instruction sets in terms of efficiency over the SSE ones. After all AVX is there to be an improvement over SSE instructions.

So my question is: Is there a way to only receive AVX/FMA workunits? I tried app_config.xml, but found that all applications are named the same, so I am not able to use app_config to do that.

Is there a way?
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Profile Georgi Vidinski
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Message 8093 - Posted: 3 Oct 2023, 23:18:17 UTC - in response to Message 8092.  
It's been discussed several times in this forum and it is explained in BOINC documentation as well. You just need to dig a bit.

As to the file you mentioned you may want to try the Anonymous platform for which you'll need the app_info.xml file with correct executable name inside. This file needs to be placed inside the project folder and should look like:
<app_info>
<app>
    <name>period_search</name>
</app>
<file_info>
    <name>period_search_10213_windows_x86_64__fma_win10.exe</name>
    <user_friendly_name>Period Search Application</user_friendly_name>
    <executable/>
</file_info>
<app_version>
    <app_name>period_search</app_name>
    <version_num>10213</version_num>
    <platform>windows_x86_64</platform>
    <avg_ncpus>1.000000</avg_ncpus>
    <flops>395282539830.479430</flops>
    <api_version>7.9.0</api_version>
    <plan_class>fma_win10</plan_class>
    <!-- <max_ncpus>X</max_ncpus> -->
    <!-- <cmdline>args</cmdline> -->
    <file_ref>
        <file_name>period_search_10213_windows_x86_64__fma_win10.exe</file_name>
        <main_program/>
    </file_ref>
</app_version>
</app_info>

Or for the AVX app you need to point to this app:
period_search_10213_windows_x86_64__avx_win10.exe

and change the "plan_class" to:
avx_win10

Replace the numbers in "flops" with those from your "client_state.xml"
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Message boards : Getting started : I would like to only receive work for AVX / FMA apps, not SSE, is that possible?