Thanks edward and zarti. It looks like the cause of this issue was created by a faulty 24 pin extension cable. I had another one on hand, replaced it and all seems to be working fine so far -fingers crossed-

Cpu temps are staying in the low to mid 40s. Two of the 16 cores have maxed at 54 degrees (Air cooling). Both Graphics cards are sitting at 82 degrees, which is somewhat normal as these cards have a tendency of running hot. Currently 35 of 240 frames of a high res pyro sim. Still running so far on Windows 7. Will report back with outcome.

Correct. I've tried several different hard drives as well. It's acting as if the cpu temps are too high and does a hard reboot. I have real temp up right now. I'll do another render and log the temperatures this time.

I installed apprentice on Windows7 and tried rendering. Same thing happens, computer does a hard reboot. It has to be hardware related then I suppose, but I'm not sure what would cause this to happen.

Hello,

I just started trying to render out a sequence of tif files to disk on my new linux (Ubuntu) workstation recently. I have noticed that about half way through (between frames 60 to 70 out of 240) my computer does a hard reboot with no error messages whatsoever. This happens on any and all hip files/test scenes that include pyro. I am in the process of testing FLIP and Rigid bodies to see if those restart my machine as well. Every other application I use, realflow, maya, mudbox, nuke, mari, seems to work just fine.

I haven't seen any indication of hardware failure. Is there something specific I should look at that may cause an issue like this? I have dual 8 core 2650s, 64GB of Ram, Quadro 4000/tesla c2075 setup. Any suggestions/help would be greatly appreciated. This happens on every version of houdini 12 I have tried. Works fine on my mac pro. Cpu and Gpu temps are reasonable, nothing in the 90c and above range. I have a dual boot setup, so I will install apprentice on Windows and see if I get similar results.

Thanks,

Kev

You might want to have a look at this particular topic:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=22368&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=50 [sidefx.com]

I had a mac pro and like you once I upgraded to lion the Houdini help function was broken. I tried many things listed online to resolve the issue, but nothing helped. I'm not sure if you can downgrade and keep everything in tact as I've never tried it personally.

Something very strange just started happening. I was running a simulation (PyroFX Volcano tutorial) and the resolution would increase/decrease every frame in the viewport, almost like a blurring effect on one frame and then back to the original resolution on the next frame. Driver issue? I tried switching the scene renderer, but that just made it worse….

-update-

My card is running a little hot (low 80s). That may be an issue, not sure.

It's working. Running a smoke sim @ 400^3 and I've used about 62% of the memory. I'll try to optimize the scene more and push the GPU to the max.

Thanks for the response.

I went ahead and set the environment variable and confirmed through hconfig -a that it was set to the appropriate value of 1. I just started running a basic shelf tool flames sim and set the uniform div to 400 and made sure OpenCL was checked. Frame 38 took about 12 seconds to cook.

I am running the nvidia-smi terminal command and it shows the Quadro using 28% of its memory (566MB) and the tesla at 16% (878MB). This indicates that they're working (I think :? ) . I guess I was expecting a little more performance wise. Is there anything else I can check just to be sure?

Thanks for the help!

I just recently built a new workstation, installed Linux Mint on it and just completed installation of Houdini. My setup is as follows:

2x Intel E5 2660
48gb Ram
Quadro 4000 & Tesla c2075

I'm having difficulties seeing if my tesla card is actually working the way it's supposed to in Houdini. This is what I get in the About tab:

OpenGL Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL Renderer: Quadro 4000/PCIe/SSE2
OpenGL Version: 4.2.0 NVIDIA 295.40
OpenGL Shading Language: 4.20 NVIDIA via Cg compiler
Detected: NVidia Professional
2048 MB
295.40.0.0

It does not show the Tesla card at all, although the Nvidia X Server settings shows it as the second gpu. Is there a terminal command that must be ran to enable the functionality between the quadro and tesla?

Hmmm….I received a fairly good deal, so I went with the quadro 4000 + tesla c2075 setup. It actually ended up being almost a $1000 dollars cheaper than one quadro 6000 and both were brand new. I kind of figured the tesla wouldn't blow through sims, but I was expecting to hear great reports about it. Nevertheless, this will be my setup. Hopefully I find ways to optimize scenes to really get the most out of the card. I'm also curious as to what role nvidia maximus will play.

I'm currently putting the final touches on a new workstation and I'm left trying to decide which route to go graphics wise. I'd like to know the ideal setup between the following two choices:

Quadro 4000 + Tesla c2075 or just a quadro 6000 (any other recommended setups?). I'll be running dual 27" displays. I've read that Houdini utilizes nvidia Maximus technology, which would make the first choice seem a bit obvious. However, I have no experience with Maximus or its level of enhancing Houdini simulations. Any insight on it and it's benefits within Houdini would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Kev

What would be more ideal a quadro 4000 plus Tesla c2075 or just one single quadro 6000?

Sorry for the lack of responses. I had family issues, which sidetracked my computer build. I'm back at it again though. I still plan on doing the quadro/tesla setup as described earlier. I was wondering if I should go with 8 core slower clock speed or 6 core faster clock speed. I was always under the impression the more cores/threads/buckets the better.

I have dual 2650s in the cart now and as you mentioned, can be upgraded at a later date. I should have everything in by next week and the computer up and running. Hopefully it's a vast improvement over my Mac Pro, which hasn't been playing nice with Houdini for some time now. Thanks for the suggestions. I will be running either Fedora or Mint.

Looks great! Looking forward to seeing the finished result.

Rob,

I ran the code you mentioned and still receive the same error. Version of Xcode is Version 4.3.2 (4E2002). Sorry for the length:


Kevin-MItchells-Mac-Pro:include kevinmitchell$ Could not initialize the help server:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “<stdin>”, line 1, in <module>
File “/Library/Frameworks/Houdini.framework/Versions/12.0.603/Resources/houdini/python2.6libs/houdinihelp/__init__.py”, line 40, in <module>
from houdinihelp.wiki import WIKI, page_to_html, string_to_html, string_to_xml
File “/Library/Frameworks/Houdini.framework/Versions/12.0.603/Resources/houdini/python2.6libs/houdinihelp/wiki.py”, line 10, in <module>
from wikiparser.filters.trees import (block_attribute_elements, color_syntax,
File “/Library/Frameworks/Houdini.framework/Versions/12.0.603/Resources/houdini/python2.6libs/wikiparser/filters/trees.py”, line 20, in <module>
from pygments.lexers import get_lexer_by_name
File “/Library/Frameworks/Houdini.framework/Versions/12.0.603/Resources/python/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pygments/lexers/__init__.py”, line 21, in <module>
from pygments.plugin import find_plugin_lexers
File “/Library/Frameworks/Houdini.framework/Versions/12.0.603/Resources/python/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pygments/plugin.py”, line 39, in <module>
import pkg_resources
File “/Library/Frameworks/Houdini.framework/Versions/12.0.603/Resources/python/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pkg_resources.py”, line 657, in <module>
class Environment(object):
File “/Library/Frameworks/Houdini.framework/Versions/12.0.603/Resources/python/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pkg_resources.py”, line 660, in Environment
def __init__(self, search_path=None, platform=get_supported_platform(), python=PY_MAJOR):
File “/Library/Frameworks/Houdini.framework/Versions/12.0.603/Resources/python/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pkg_resources.py”, line 55, in get_supported_platform
plat = get_build_platform(); m = macosVersionString.match(plat)
File “/Library/Frameworks/Houdini.framework/Versions/12.0.603/Resources/python/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pkg_resources.py”, line 187, in get_build_platform
plat = get_platform()
File “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/distutils/util.py”, line 98, in get_platform
File “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/distutils/sysconfig.py”, line 537, in get_config_vars
File “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/distutils/sysconfig.py”, line 405, in _init_posix
DistutilsPlatformError: invalid Python installation: unable to open /usr/include/python2.6/pyconfig.h (No such file or directory)

hodrop
I tok a shot with gtx580 figured i could always go with quadra 4000 later if it dident worked, so far very good, somtimes after long running without restart(days) the small yellow help popup text in houdini wash out , running latest release 295.40 of driver which is not always the best thing to do.

quadro 4000 with Tesla C2075 i think is a good solution.

would like to see some test AMD Opteron 6282 SE against
the Xeon E5-2687W is avalible now

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xeon-e5-2687w-benchmark-review,3149-8.html [tomshardware.com]

I was thinking of going with the quadro 4000, tesla c2075 setup. Almost ready to push the button. I have to figure out what processors to go with now. I may go with the 2660 for now.

kwejk

kjmitch

protozoan

..using Houdini on linux. Should I go radeon..

You will die screaming, if you try this.
Go Nvidia.

Figured that lol. Just thought I'd ask nonetheless. Is it worth dishing out the money to get a workstation card? Or just go with the gtx 500 600 series card?

From what i have read on the forums the gtx 580 will work better then a Quadro 4000. More brute force speed. And for the price a much better choice.

Thanks. I think I have the majority of my new build mapped out.

protozoan

..using Houdini on linux. Should I go radeon..

You will die screaming, if you try this.
Go Nvidia.

Figured that lol. Just thought I'd ask nonetheless. Is it worth dishing out the money to get a workstation card? Or just go with the gtx 500 600 series card?