Thank you both for your prompt replies.

I looked for projects that use OpenCL and so I enlisted in Albert@Home. The status for all tasks are "running" and discrete GPU is not being used.
Maybe it didn't get any tasks that use GPU? If so, would there be a way to enforce it to get such tasks?

When the GPU is not being detected by BOINC, project science applications can't use it either. If this is on a Macintosh with some form of OS X, then the drivers for the GPU should be included in OS X. But whether or not those drivers make the GPU seen is something I don't know.

Else state what kind of system and OS you run.
Or post the first 20-30 lines of your BOINC start-up messages.

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Maybe it didn't get any tasks that use GPU? If so, would there be a way to enforce it to get such tasks?

You can specify to run only GPU tasks or only OpenCL tasks on some projects, but Albert@home is not one of them. (Although it allows you to select which applications to run, all of them have both GPU and non-GPU versions.)

To do this, select the desired project in the Simple View or in the Projects tab of Advanced View, and select "Your Account" or "Your Preferences" under Project Web Pages. Then edit your computing preferences for that project. Again, note that on the MacBook Pro running BOINC 7.0.35 and later, you cannot currently run CUDA applications, only OpenCL.

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Charlie Fenton
BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer

As asked elsewhere, could we have a BOINC option to allow/disallow CUDA detection (until NVIDIA/Apple help - if ever).

For example, i have a MBP with the intel on-chip GPU, and a nvidia 300M. The 330M is only OpenCL 1.0, where most OpenCL apps require 1.1, or even 1.2. Therefore i require CUDA in order to utilise my GPU. I am in the minority here i expect, as i really don't care about battery life on my laptop any more (but i know how to force GPU, or quit BOINC, when i need longer life).

I am now stuck on 7.0.31 in order to keep my CUDA - not far behind yet, but still…

Cheers, Andrew

I know how to force GPU, or quit BOINC, when i need longer life

Are you saying you know a way to force the OS to shut down power to the NVIDIA GPU and switch to the Intel GPU while BOINC is running? Can you tell me how to do that? If I could add code to BOINC to do that, it could solve this entire issue.

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Charlie Fenton
BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer

Apologies, no, i was meaning the gfxCardStatus utility mentioned above. This has allowed switching of the GPU in previous versions (it has stopped allowing it in newer versions while there are dependancies - i assume due to applications misbehaving when having their graphics card forcibly swapped under them).

gfxCardStatus does however list applications causing the discrete GPU to be used however. I am unsure how it can tell, but hazard a guess at the loaded Frameworks (OpenGL.Framework, OpenCL.framework maybe?)



Found this Apple Doc article:
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#qa/qa1734/_index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS40010791

Probably won't help me because it specifies 2011 and later machines (where i'm 2010).

Hmm, just found you post on the Apple Dev forums Charlie. Bit sad they stopped responding.