[XPM] [ANN] Primecoin High Performance | HP14 released!

[xyzzy099]

New version is out!

-hp4 mainly adds L1 and L2 cache optimizations. It removes the performance bottleneck with bigger sieve sizes. Thus it's possible to increase sieve size even further.

I also added a new alternative performance measurement. The client now calculates the number of probable prime chains of length 5 and prints them to debug.log. The printing frequency is also increased.

This version crashes at startup, or very shortly thereafter on my i7-3820.  I have used the other builds without incident as you have released them.

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[n4ru]

Digital Ocean is very good with the low-tier instance. I have 40 instance 2-core.
The solo-core is better but with limited droplet you have to make a choice.

Of course, solo-core is the way to go. But even with my 30 server limit the power would make me less than the 30 8-cores I'm "overpaying" for.

Digital Ocean is very good with the low-tier instance. I have 40 instance 2-core.
The solo-core is better but with limited droplet you have to make a choice.

Did you request more droplet from them?

See above. I am increasing my limits daily, however.

[Krusher33]

Now I'm looking into this "nice" command which is difficult to google by the way.

man nice.

I set:

Code:

sudo nice -n -20 primecoind setgenerate true -1

And I'm still taking a 200khps hit on my GPU mining.  It did improve by 50khps over the old way.

That's normal, because this does not do anything.
What you need is to nice the main process, i.e. when you start primecoind, do "nice primecoind".

Code:

nice -n19 ./primecoind

Also, you were using -20 which is very wrong - it gives the process the most priority (thankfully you did not apply it to the right process, your system would explode).

I couldn't figure out how to turn off my primecoind service so I just rebooted it again.

Starting up I used

Code:

sudo nice -n19 primecoind --daemon

Still not working for me.

[mumus]

New version is out!

-hp4 mainly adds L1 and L2 cache optimizations. It removes the performance bottleneck with bigger sieve sizes. Thus it's possible to increase sieve size even further.

I also added a new alternative performance measurement. The client now calculates the number of probable prime chains of length 5 and prints them to debug.log. The printing frequency is also increased.

Thank you very much.
I can report about 10% PPS improvement with this build. Let's see what the alternative measurements gives us. In general your builds works fine for me with pretty good results (about 10 blocks today with all the computers I could use in my office and home). Some tip is on the way.

[paulthetafy]

-hp4 mainly adds L1 and L2 cache optimizations. It removes the performance bottleneck with bigger sieve sizes. Thus it's possible to increase sieve size even further.

I also added a new alternative performance measurement. The client now calculates the number of probable prime chains of length 5 and prints them to debug.log. The printing frequency is also increased.

Hi Mikael, I'm still seeing some reduction in PPS rate with increased sievesize, though not nearly as pronounced as earlier versions.  Good job!  With that in mind, what's the best way to test for the optimal sievesize vs PPS?  Is it best to use the testnet and, if so, is it fair to use the new metric in debug.log or should I go by number of blocks found?

[markm]

Starting up I used

Code:

sudo nice -n19 primecoind --daemon

Still not working for me.

Does nice use PATH lookup? I would have expected it would be up to you to tell it explicitly what to run.

Thus, for example, if primecoind is in the current directory, you'd normally do ./primecoind since path lookup does not normally look in current directory, but, using nice, I would think nice is looking in the current directory for primecoin since you didn't tell it for example to run /usr/local/bin/primecoind.

So make sure primecoind is where you are telling nice that it is...

primestart.sh

Code:

#!/bin/bash


PRIMECOIND=/usr/local/bin/primecoind
DATADIR=$HOME/.primecoin


nice ${PRIMECOIND} -datadir=$DATADIR -rescan -maxconnections=8 \
        -rpcuser=primeuser -rpcpassword=TopSecretPasswordForRPC \
        -gen=1 -daemon -rpcport=9912

Also, is 19 niceness really necessary? Doesn't the normal plain old nice, which defaults to niceness of 10, suffice? Are you sure you want CPU mining to have the lowest priority of all, behind all normal nice'd processes? It defaults to 10 to leave room for ridiculously low priority things to be given more niceness and to leave room for some things to be nice but not as nice as normal/default nicenss of 10...

Also, why the fuck do you run a coin daemon as root? Isn't it bad enough not running it as a user specially created for that coin so it has no access to other users stuff, without going and giving it root access to your machine, even IF you put it in a virtual machine all to itself? (aka WFT is sudo in there for?!?!?!)

-MarkM-

[xyzzy099]

New version is out!

-hp4 mainly adds L1 and L2 cache optimizations. It removes the performance bottleneck with bigger sieve sizes. Thus it's possible to increase sieve size even further.

I also added a new alternative performance measurement. The client now calculates the number of probable prime chains of length 5 and prints them to debug.log. The printing frequency is also increased.

This version crashes at startup, or very shortly thereafter on my i7-3820.  I have used the other builds without incident as you have released them.

Nm, I was testing with a very large sievesize (10485760).  If I set it to a more sane value it works fine.

[DigitalDoom]

Finally found a block!

First one since the 9th...before everything got crazy.

Got it with hp3 on an i5 machine.

I've been trying to get a build set up on DO, but I'm a complete noob with Linux and keep running into errors along the way. So....I've now installed Ubuntu in a virtual machine and trying to figure it out before wasting any more $$ trying to learn on VPS.

Sure wish this build was available on the 7th when I first started Prime. Of course, I also wish I had taken the time to learn Linux way before block rewards dropped to 12. Block rewards of 20 sure were nice while they lasted.

Thanks much for all of your work on this.

[usahero]

Finally found a block!

First one since the 9th...before everything got crazy.

Got it with hp3 on an i5 machine.

I've been trying to get a build set up on DO, but I'm a complete noob with Linux and keep running into errors along the way. So....I've now installed Ubuntu in a virtual machine and trying to figure it out before wasting any more $$ trying to learn on VPS.

Sure wish this build was available on the 7th when I first started Prime. Of course, I also wish I had taken the time to learn Linux way before block rewards dropped to 12. Block rewards of 20 sure were nice while they lasted.

Thanks much for all of your work on this.

Ups, check private message :p

[Krusher33]

Starting up I used

Code:

sudo nice -n19 primecoind --daemon

Still not working for me.

Does nice use PATH lookup? I would have expected it would be up to you to tell it explicitly what to run.

Thus, for example, if primecoind is in the current directory, you'd normally do ./primecoind since path lookup does not normally look in current directory, but, using nice, I would think nice is looking in the current directory for primecoin since you didn't tell it for example to run /usr/local/bin/primecoind.

So make sure primecoind is where you are telling nice that it is...

primestart.sh

Code:

#!/bin/bash


PRIMECOIND=/usr/local/bin/primecoind
DATADIR=$HOME/.primecoin


nice ${PRIMECOIND} -datadir=$DATADIR -rescan -maxconnections=8 \
        -rpcuser=primeuser -rpcpassword=TopSecretPasswordForRPC \
        -gen=1 -daemon -rpcport=9912

Also, is 19 niceness really necessary? Doesn't the normal plain old nice, which defaults to niceness of 10, suffice? Are you sure you want CPU mining to have the lowest priority of all, behind all normal nice'd processes? It defaults to 10 to leave room for ridiculously low priority things to be given more niceness and to leave room for some things to be nice but not as nice as normal/default nicenss of 10...

Also, why the fuck do you run a coin daemon as root? Isn't it bad enough not running it as a user specially created for that coin so it has no access to other users stuff, without going and giving it root access to your machine, even IF you put it in a virtual machine all to itself? (aka WFT is sudo in there for?!?!?!)

-MarkM-

Easy there now, calm down.  I'm only just starting out on linux.

I was suggested by someone else to do "nice -n19" by someone else.  I'm trying to give it a lower priority since it's dropping my GPU mining hash rate from 700khps to 500khps.  I was told to use "nice" command instead of setgenerate true 7.

The normal steps I learned to do get primecoin going is:

Code:

git clone https://github.com/mikaelh2/primecoin
cd primecoin/src
make -f makefile.unix
mv primecoind /usr/local/bin
cd /usr/local/bin
primecoind --daemon
watch 'primecoind getmininginfo'

If I tried to do just "primecoind setgenerate true -1" instead of "primecoind --daemon", it says something about couldn't connect to server.

Now I'm trying to understand how to use the nice command.  Someone said to use it when I first start primecoind but that didn't do anything.

The sudo is there because when I tried just "nice primecoind --daemon", it gave me a permission error."

[redphlegm]

The windows binary primecoin-qt hp4 is running at roughly half the pps of hp3 on my nehalem i7. Ideas?

[datguyian]

So far, my core 2 duo processor is getting 3-400 PPS compared to 50ish it was getting originally. Of course I still haven't found a block yet... I'm sure global PPS is way up there now. I'll leave it running for 24 hours to see if it's worth it.

[dudeguy]

So far, my core 2 duo processor is getting 3-400 PPS compared to 50ish it was getting originally. Of course I still haven't found a block yet... I'm sure global PPS is way up there now. I'll leave it running for 24 hours to see if it's worth it.

Short answer: Use a pool: http://ypool.net/news.php

[Aggrophobia]

So far, my core 2 duo processor is getting 3-400 PPS compared to 50ish it was getting originally. Of course I still haven't found a block yet... I'm sure global PPS is way up there now. I'll leave it running for 24 hours to see if it's worth it.

Short answer: Use a pool: http://ypool.net/news.php

BS

[DigitalDoom]

Finally found a block!

First one since the 9th...before everything got crazy.

Got it with hp3 on an i5 machine.

I've been trying to get a build set up on DO, but I'm a complete noob with Linux and keep running into errors along the way. So....I've now installed Ubuntu in a virtual machine and trying to figure it out before wasting any more $$ trying to learn on VPS.

Sure wish this build was available on the 7th when I first started Prime. Of course, I also wish I had taken the time to learn Linux way before block rewards dropped to 12. Block rewards of 20 sure were nice while they lasted.

Thanks much for all of your work on this.

Ups, check private message :p

Thanks for the (quite expensive) offer.

However, I'm thinking it would be much greater benefit for me if I figure this one out on my own. The whole..."give a man a fish..." thing, ya know.  

[dudeguy]

So far, my core 2 duo processor is getting 3-400 PPS compared to 50ish it was getting originally. Of course I still haven't found a block yet... I'm sure global PPS is way up there now. I'll leave it running for 24 hours to see if it's worth it.

Short answer: Use a pool: http://ypool.net/news.php

BS

Are you worried people will get a leg up on your 100 servers?

[markm]

The normal steps I learned to do get primecoin going is:

Code:

git clone https://github.com/mikaelh2/primecoin
cd primecoin/src
make -f makefile.unix
mv primecoind /usr/local/bin
cd /usr/local/bin
primecoind --daemon
watch 'primecoind getmininginfo'

If I tried to do just "primecoind setgenerate true -1" instead of "primecoind --daemon", it says something about couldn't connect to server.

Presumably /usr/local/bin is on your path, because linux normally does not include its current directrory in its path so normally you would have to do ./programname when you go to the program's location to run it. So, since primecoind works, there is no need to cd /usr/local/bin

Also, I didn't even know they had enabled double dash commandline switches like --daemon, does that actually work nowadays? Back in the day all those were single-dash, like -daemon.

So maybe try

Code:

cd primecoin/src
make -f makefile.unix
mv primecoind /usr/local/bin
nice /usr/local/bin/primecoind -daemon -gen=1
watch '/usr/local/bin/primecoind getmininginfo'

-MarkM-

[reb0rn21]

So far, my core 2 duo processor is getting 3-400 PPS compared to 50ish it was getting originally. Of course I still haven't found a block yet... I'm sure global PPS is way up there now. I'll leave it running for 24 hours to see if it's worth it.

Short answer: Use a pool: http://ypool.net/news.php

Does the pool worx fine?
I know its hard to do pool with primes, and i hear not match get mined @pool

[SC123]

What sieve size is everyone using?

mikaelh said earlier that he got significantly more blocks (on the testnet) with a sieve size of 2 million instead of 1 million.

[paulthetafy]

What sieve size is everyone using?

mikaelh said earlier that he got significantly more blocks (on the testnet) with a sieve size of 2 million instead of 1 million.

1M, switching to 2M now.

You need to test it out for yourself as its hardware dependent.  I have mixed results but have found that somewhere between 1-3m seems to best