Just wanted to mention that Boinc Client works well with Rosetta@home and accepts jobs
on the Raspberry Pi 4GB. 8GB model would be better as it should let all 4 threads run.

Ubuntu Mate 20.04 64 bit beta1
https://ubuntu-mate.org/ports/raspberry-pi/

Boinc Client was installed from command line
sudo get-apt install boinc-client
sudo get-apt install boinc-manager

reboot the bi

setup rosetta@home project with the boincmgr
boincmgr



Mark from vermont.

4 rosetta workunits on 4GB sometimes works, sometimes not (leaving one core unused because the boinc client doesn't switch to another job if one is stuck "waiting for memory"... this is something not well designed in boinc client and I'd like to signal to the developer).
Safe number of Rosetta WUs on 4GB of Ram is 2, but also 3 will usually works (the era of ram-eating "COVID scaffold" workunits has ended). If you are new to Boinc, I suggest you to use 2 or 3 cores for Rosetta and then use the other core with a project that uses a very little amount of RAM such as Tn-Grid. You could also try OpenPandemics but I do not remember exactly how much RAM it takes. Tn-Grid uses really a very small amount of RAM, something around 70MB if i remember well. Considered you are new in the Boinc world, if you want I'd be happy to explain you how to set your Raspi to run 3 rosetta Wus and 1 Tn-Grid wu ;)

Ah, very important things: if you don't use the graphic environment in your RPI, then close it because it takes a lot of RAM. Go in the console and type service lightdm stop or service gdm3 stop or whatever login manager are you using. Be sure there are no other tasks sucking memory and cpu if you run "top". Then set the boinc-manager to use 95% of Ram if your Rpi is dedicated only for Boinc.

You can easily run 4 threads on a pi 4 4GB. Setup ZRam as covered in the other pi 4 thread on this forum.

I currently have 5 4gb pi 4s running 4 threads without issue running a 150% zram configuration.

Lots of info in this thread for the pi 4:
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/forum_thread.php?id=13732&sort_style=8&start=75

I can vouch for zram. I now have four threads running on a 4 GB Pi4, under Debian 10 aarch64 (running with the Raspios kernel). Of course, I also had to tweak my CPU and memory usage settings, with 100% for the number of CPUs and CPU time, and not-in-use memory usage set to 90%.

With basic stick-on aluminum heat sinks on the CPU, memory, and USB controller, and a tiny fan running off the 3.3V supply, I'm getting about 51-54°C for my CPU temperature.

I think my next project will be to try to get this to boot via PXE from my homebrew ZFS NAS box, and if I can get that to work, get the PoE hat and power it from the spare port on my router. No SD card, no power supply, just plug it in and go.

Here's a very nice little script that can set up zram for you: https://github.com/foundObjects/zram-swap

Follow the instructions, and it will seamlessly configure it to start on boot.

Now that I've had this 4 GB Pi 4 running for a while, I'm now seeing its RAC hovering around 430. Not a huge amount in the grand scheme of things, but still pretty surprising for such a tiny, low-power system. I'm running right at the ragged edge of available memory - I recently saw this in the log:

Message from server: Rosetta needs 3814.70 MB RAM but only 3809.64 MB is available for use.

The box is still crunching away happily, though. Once in a while, if I have boinctui running and catch this system finishing up a work unit, I'll see one other unit go into "waiting for memory" status for a few minutes and then resume.

I've also set zram up on a Pi 3B and a 3B+ as well, for use on WCG. I have all four cores on the 3B+ running, and three on the older 3B along with a couple of software-defined radio tasks (which still leaves plenty of room for overhead). I've noticed that the SDR box can crunch work units faster: about 20 hours per work unit vs. 22 on the box with all four cores crunching. The long work units and random validation delays mean it will be a while before I get a handle on what RAC I'll really get with these two.

Also, if you run any ARM aarch64 systems on WCG, they will always get COVID work units - that seems to be the only ARM binary on WCG.

The long work units and random validation delays mean it will be a while before I get a handle on what RAC I'll really get with these two.

Generally you're looking at 6-8 weeks for RAC to settle around it's usual value. And that's without any system or server issues.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

I've since switched my Pi 4 from the vanilla Debian userland back to the official Raspberry Pi version, and put it to work on WCG to compare it to the Pi 3 systems chugging away. One thing I've noticed is the CPU running at about 65-70°C instead of 50-55°, suggesting that vanilla Debian isn't taking full advantage of the Pi 4's CPU. That being said, "vcgencmd get_throttled" on the Pi 4 is showing zero after about 18 hours of crunching WCG,, so there's no throttling or near-throttling going on. Active cooling is never a bad idea on a Pi 3 or 4.

Also, before I've even turned in a full day's worth of WCG work units, it's clear that the Pi 4 is roughly twice as fast as a Pi 3 at processing an OpenPandemics WU, far beyond what the 300 MHz speed boost would suggest on its own. I guess the Cortex-A72 has much better IPC and/or a much beefier FPU than the A53.