Any PPD reports for ARC GPU's?

A forum for discussing FAH-related hardware choices and info on actual products (not speculation).

Moderator: Site Moderators

Forum rules
Please read the forum rules before posting.
Post Reply
CaptainHalon
Posts: 62
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2020 11:47 am

Any PPD reports for ARC GPU's?

Post by CaptainHalon »

Local store has some in stock now. Haven't been able to find any folding performance reports on any of them, though.
toTOW
Site Moderator
Posts: 6296
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 10:38 am
Location: Bordeaux, France
Contact:

Re: Any PPD reports for ARC GPU's?

Post by toTOW »

Arc GPU are not supported by FAH for the moment :
- They lack hardware double precision support
- The software implementation of double precision is not reliable enough yet to run FAH
Image

Folding@Home beta tester since 2002. Folding Forum moderator since July 2008.
CaptainHalon
Posts: 62
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2020 11:47 am

Re: Any PPD reports for ARC GPU's?

Post by CaptainHalon »

Ah, OK. Don't know what that means, but good to know.
Joe_H
Site Admin
Posts: 7856
Joined: Tue Apr 21, 2009 4:41 pm
Hardware configuration: Mac Pro 2.8 quad 12 GB smp4
MacBook Pro 2.9 i7 8 GB smp2
Location: W. MA

Re: Any PPD reports for ARC GPU's?

Post by Joe_H »

To explain what that means in practice, folding mostly uses single précision floating point calculations. Those are also called 32-bit or FP32 calculations. A small amount of the calculations need more precision than can be obtained with 32-bits, so double precision 64-bit (FP64) calculations are used where needed.

How this applies to the Intel graphics is that when first supported the iGPUs from their 9th generation supported FP64 in hardware. For whatever reason there was not a designated 10th generation, the 11th generation iGPUs also supported FP64. With the 12th generation GPU architecture Intel removed the FP64 hardware support and added code in the driver to emulate FP64 calculations with software instructions. From early information out on the just released Arc GPUs they are using the same approach to support FP64. Tests done using folding gave inconsistent results, or caused the folding core to crash.
Image

iMac 2.8 i7 12 GB smp8, Mac Pro 2.8 quad 12 GB smp6
MacBook Pro 2.9 i7 8 GB smp3
CaptainHalon
Posts: 62
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2020 11:47 am

Re: Any PPD reports for ARC GPU's?

Post by CaptainHalon »

Ah, interesting. Thanks for the explanation.
Post Reply