Calculating Memory Required?
How do I accurately estimate memory requirements before I submit a session?
When crunching (for others) my 1gb-2gb machines don't get work because they don't have enough ram (according to boinc).
For example, Session 2112 states 1024MB required, which excludes my 1gb client, but when I look at a fairly heavy (1hr) result, I see a "Peak Mem" of under 300MB. Is "Peak Mem" from the result accurate? Is there 700MB overhead for boinc?
Would 512MB (in this case) be a better setting? Last I checked it's a user setting when they submit, then verified by the admin prior to accepting. I would hope that a better estimate would get more machines involved in the session.
Is there a procedure to find the "heaviest frame" to come up with the best memory estimate?
Peeking over at burp/sunflower I see some sessions requiring 5.5GB(!). I'm curious if those are actually that large, or if it's a "safe setting" that is more than double what is needed. I'm worried that future requirements of the service will exclude 80% of the current clients.
I guess I'd rather not be required to have a bleeding edge system to render (in the future).
Is there a "System Requirements" page saying what the best/average/minimum client should be?
Thanks again Gekko, You've been working hard, doing a great job.
If possible, I'd suggest selecting just under your current selections. My 1GB machine only has 902MB available to boinc. So instead of a 1GB limit, 900MB would let me (and other 1GB machines) crunch.
Thanks for the sys requirement link. I was thinking how requirements change so fast, due to the industry, the amount you spend on a computer could be a way to measure. "Spend $500USD minimum, $1250 average, and $2500+ for high performance".
Hm, I guess there is no real reason to use powers of two / multiples of 256 for the memory. I put the next attempt at the robot to 900 instead of 1024.
Thanks (again) Gekko. My 1GB client is happily crunching with 2mb to spare (technically 700mb to spare since the wu only uses 300mb).
Undersizing the estimate 10% or so (at the 1gb, 2gb boundaries) would likely let more clients crunch.
Is "Peak Mem" from the result accurate? Is there 700MB overhead for boinc?
Is there a procedure to find the "heaviest frame" to come up with the best memory estimate?
All of these are my estimates. I generally take a general look at the settings used, then try to find a frame that has a lot of stuff in it, and render. Usually this way I can get the highest memory usage in the animation. Most of the memory is usually some raytrace data, and users can optimize by simply tuning those raytrace sliders down a bit. The memory usage is always the PEAK usage. Quite often the highest peak in memory occurs just before the rendering begins, at the phase where the scene data is being read and occlusion trees / spooky raytrace stuff is being calculated. The limit has to be always set according to the peak usage. A computer might do fine with the 300MB of memory usage for most of the render, but it would crash if the animation used 2GB before the actual render.
Is there a "System Requirements" page saying what the best/average/minimum client should be?
http://www.renderfarm.fi/faq#q7
These seem to be quite rough and outdated. Generally 1GB of memory would appear to be some kind of minimum. A lot depends on what kind of animations the users submit, naturally.
- Jesse Kaukonen, www.jessekaukonen.net