Images generated by RastaConverter

[+Stephen]

Been running a conversion using 24 cores for over an hour.  It's averaging 60,000 per second using 45% of CPU.  The CPU temp is 55C (ambient temp 21C).  I guess the other image that locked the CPU to 100% happened because it had done almost 4 billion iterations and was no longer improving.

 

Not sure this one will turn out good enough to post but I'll let it keep running in the background.

[Sheddy]

There definitely seems to be diminishing returns on just adding more threads to process a single picture. 

I wonder now how sane it is to default the GUI to the number of threads of the CPU especially for a 32 bit program. The memory usage continues to slowly grow too the longer it runs (which is slightly concerning, but may be the expected caching behavior). In another year or so CPUs will have thread counts that will easily eat the max 4GB.

Edited April 16 by Sheddy

[+Stephen]

Brandi Rhodes - 49 colours.  I was not seeing any visible changes at this point - I rarely ever go above 2 billion iterations.  My CPU did manage to hit 78C towards the end of the conversion.  The water cooler is doing its job still, as 2 minutes after shutting the conversion down, it had dropped to 55C, and a minute after that it's down to 51C.

 

Stephen_BrandiRhodes.xex

[Sheddy]

RastaConverter Beta8 Release 2

 

Recompiled Windows version for largest possible 32-bit program memory usage

Arsoft RCGUI.exe fix for CPUs with more than 16 cores (threads)

 

 

RastaConverterBeta8R2.zip

Edited April 16 by Sheddy

[ilmenit]

Dear friends and users of Rasta Converter,

 

After almost 11 years I am thrilled to announce a new official release or Rasta Converter - Beta 9, available now on GitHub.

https://github.com/ilmenit/RastaConverter/releases/tag/Beta9
This update has been made possible thanks to the incredible contributions of our community, particularly the significant efforts of @Sheddy who successfully convinced me to revive this project. 

This release includes a number of exciting new features and improvements, including:

- A fix for the sprite repositioning bug, thanks to the hard work of @Sheddyand @phaeron.
- The removal of the dependency on the Allegro 4 library, replaced by the more modern SDL2. This allowed to prepare a 64-bit version of the software for improved performance and memory space.

- The use of the LLVM compiler for extra speed and efficiency, thanks to @Sheddy.

- The removal of the thread limit for the /threads parameter, allowing for even more parallel processing.
- The addition of default auto-save functionality, which will save your work every 100K iterations.
- Improved build processes for Linux, thanks to the efforts of @dmsc and @polluks.
- An updated help file, courtesy of @snicklin.

- Conditional compilation with NO_GUI directive that removes dependency on SDL2 (for developers who want to run RC on GUI-less devices).

Thank you for your continued support of Rasta Converter. I hope you enjoy these new features and improvements, and I look forward to hearing your feedback.
Please note that the code for this release has undergone a significant rewrite, so it is possible that some bugs may have been introduced. If you encounter any issues while using Rasta Converter Beta 9, please let us know by reporting them on GitHub so we can address them as soon as possible.

Enjoy!

Edited April 17 by ilmenit

[snicklin]

31 minutes ago, ilmenit said:

 

- The addition of default auto-save functionality, which will save your work every 100K iterations.

 

Wow, you have put a lot of work in here, as well as others.

 

Just to say though, this auto save option is not a good idea for people who have SSD's. Writing to SSD every few seconds will damage them, with each bit having limited write counts. It may be an idea not to use this...

 

Is there a way that by default this is switched off for people with SSD's if you can detect them over HDD's? 

[+Stephen]

1 hour ago, ilmenit said:

Dear friends and users of Rasta Converter,

 

After almost 11 years I am thrilled to announce a new official release or Rasta Converter - Beta 9, available now on GitHub.

Thanks!!!  Can't wait to check this out.  Been using this since day one, and I continue to churn out better images, especially with my new 850 watt space heater

[+MrFish]

1 hour ago, ilmenit said:

Dear friends and users of Rasta Converter,

 

After almost 11 years I am thrilled to announce a new official release or Rasta Converter - Beta 9, available now on GitHub.

Yeah, wow!... and thanks! (to you and all the contributors)

 

[+MrFish]

1 hour ago, ilmenit said:

Thank you for your continued support of Rasta Converter. I hope you enjoy these new features and improvements, and I look forward to hearing your feedback.

- Appreciate the larger process-status font

- Missing the parameters list in the title bar

 

[+MrFish]

If there's any interest and it's not too much trouble, I have a request for making the preview screen a little larger.

 

Something like this could be done:

 

- All the images would be 2x magnified

- Window area needed for the images and text would be 1280 x 960 (most moderns screens can easily accommodate this)

- Space for an even larger font and/or more information/data (for instance the current input-parameters list) would be available.

 

 

[+MrFish]

3 hours ago, ilmenit said:

...I look forward to hearing your feedback.

On Windows 7 64-bit, using the 64-bit version of RastaConverter, the original and destination images have disappeared and won't reappear when I hit "s" (save). Only the output image is displayed (and all process-status text is still there). I don't recall if the window was just covered by another window or if it was covered sometimes and minimized sometimes. I just know I was shifting around various windows on my desktop; and I am running two monitor; and the RastaConverter window was moved from one screen to the other one or more times.

 

[ilmenit]

5 hours ago, snicklin said:

Is there a way that by default this is switched off for people with SSD's if you can detect them over HDD's? 

Yes, you can set /save=0 to turn it off or set it to preferred value. I will change the default auto-save to be time-based (like each 30 seconds) to avoid SSD burning.
I have tried also setting 1280 x 960 but it does not work well on my screen. I use high-resolution one and the SDL2 window is automatically scaled for me, so the 1280x960 leads to a huge out-of-screen window. In the current version of RC you can resize the window and make it full-screen. Can it solve the small window size problem for you?

[ilmenit]

5 hours ago, snicklin said:

Is there a way that by default this is switched off for people with SSD's if you can detect them over HDD's? 

Yes, you can set /save=0 to turn it off or set it to preferred value. I will change the default auto-save to be time-based (like each 30 seconds) to avoid SSD burning.

@MrFish - I have tried also setting 1280 x 960 but it does not work well on my screen. I use high-resolution one and the SDL2 window is automatically scaled for me, so the 1280x960 leads to a huge out-of-screen window. In the current version of RC you can resize the window and make it full-screen. Can it solve the small window size problem for you?

[GravityWorm]

16 hours ago, drpeter said:

Meanwhile, I plod along with my trusty 11-year-old Sony Vaio Duo 13 with i5-4200U CPU @ 1.60GHz, 2295 Mhz, 2 Cores, 4 Logical Processors. At ~10-20,000 solutions/second 😬 😄

Lol my fastest device is a teen or almost a teen years old...

[GravityWorm]

7 hours ago, ilmenit said:

Thank you for your continued support of Rasta Converter. I hope you enjoy these new features and improvements, and I look forward to hearing your feedback.
Please note that the code for this release has undergone a significant rewrite, so it is possible that some bugs may have been introduced. If you encounter any issues while using Rasta Converter Beta 9, please let us know by reporting them on GitHub so we can address them as soon as possible.

Enjoy!

Thank you for your continued support of Rasta Converter.

[GravityWorm]

11 hours ago, Stephen said:

Brandi Rhodes - 49 colours.  I was not seeing any visible changes at this point - I rarely ever go above 2 billion iterations.  My CPU did manage to hit 78C towards the end of the conversion.  The water cooler is doing its job still, as 2 minutes after shutting the conversion down, it had dropped to 55C, and a minute after that it's down to 51C.

 

Stephen_BrandiRhodes.xex 21.99 kB · 2 downloads

Dutch artist Martin Sjardijn could use this work?
He sometimes makes mixed art. He is pro, he sells his art...
Martin. Do you like this work?

Martin:
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Sjardijn

[+MrFish]

1 hour ago, ilmenit said:

@MrFish - I have tried also setting 1280 x 960 but it does not work well on my screen. I use high-resolution one and the SDL2 window is automatically scaled for me, so the 1280x960 leads to a huge out-of-screen window. In the current version of RC you can resize the window and make it full-screen. Can it solve the small window size problem for you?

Oyyy... I completely missed the inclusion of that feature; in fact, I still don't see it on the list of features you've provided (although it's late here, so maybe I'm not squinting enough). Anyway, the window resizing works great. The only problem I see (aside from the problem I posted about where the source and destination images disappeared) is that when I scale the window, the source image gets flipped upside down; the other two images stay properly oriented.

 

[Rybags]

I'd not worry too much about SSD writes.  I went to all SSD about 4 years ago (just have a 4 TB spinny in a removable bay that I occasionally turn on).

My current setup is 500 GB nvme drive and 2 x 1 TB SSDs, one mainly for games/emu and the other for torrents/general storage.

 

The storage one is the older and is a Samsung QVO (quad level cells = somewhat lower # of write cycles)

Current state is 35,000 power on hours, 93730 GB writes, health at 100% - I think these are good for ~ 300-360 write cycles so it's just under 1/3rd through it's useful life.

And this is a computer that for the most part is only powered down for cleaning, upgrades or if I go away for more than a couple of days.

 

[ilmenit]

FYI, I just implemented proposed previously Diversified Late Acceptance Search https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.09328.pdf and to my surprise it works worse than LAHC in case of RC. The reason is that with multi-threading in LAHC all threads modify the same "best picture", while in DLAS each thread modify a own "non-best picture" (Diversified part of the algorithm). However, because of diversity the CACHE_SIZE_LIMIT kicks leading to mitigation of performance gain. I then tried to reorganize the code in a way that all threads will modify a shared "non-best picture", however this requires extra synchronization of threads to use common array of past solutions, which again leads to mitigation of gain. Additionally, the multi-threading code for it is even more hard to read and would probably prevent further improvements. There are some new algorithms like https://www.uni-due.de/mvmo/ that should work better in multi-threaded optimization, so are to be tested in the future. 

On the other hand I found out that the cache can be reduced to 1/4 (16MB from 64MB per thread) without speed decrease, and even could lead to increase if /s number of solutions is small. For big ones (over 5K, 10K) the bigger cache could be more beneficial. I'll make it configurable from the command line, but by default lowered to 16MB.

 

Edited April 17 by ilmenit

[drpeter]

4 hours ago, ilmenit said:

For big ones (over 5K, 10K) the bigger cache could be more beneficial. I'll make it configurable from the command line, but by default lowered to 16MB.

I think most people on the forum are using 8K solutions upwards, and using the GUI, so this may not be a good move...

[GravityWorm]

2 hours ago, drpeter said:

I think most people on the forum are using 8K solutions upwards, and using the GUI, so this may not be a good move...

Wait a minute. RC uses only 16 MB and still crashes a lot?
Why not 128MB?

[+Stephen]

@ilmenit - tiny request.  Would it be easy to make the command line parameters be visible in the title bar like with previous versions?  I've got in the habit of just snapping an image of my progress window and it lets everyone see what options I used during the conversion.

 

1st attempt with beta9 - great results!  Bald Eagle, 71 colours.  Settings were jarvis, strength 3, randomness 0.8, 8192 solutions, gamma 0.7

Stephen_BaldEagle.xex

[Sheddy]

Great you got a 64 bit version working!

 

I'm testing beta8 version with 8 threads and 100000 solutions (yeah, that probably is dumb) on a picture that's been running days now. It did start around 1GB memory usage, but it's surpassed 3GB now. However, with /continue it is no big deal from previous experience if RastaConverter stops - The memory use starts off low again and continues with no seeming issues.

 

7 hours ago, ilmenit said:

FYI, I just implemented proposed previously Diversified Late Acceptance Search https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.09328.pdf and to my surprise it works worse than LAHC in case of RC. The reason is that with multi-threading in LAHC all threads modify the same "best picture", while in DLAS each thread modify a own "non-best picture" (Diversified part of the algorithm). However, because of diversity the CACHE_SIZE_LIMIT kicks leading to mitigation of performance gain. I then tried to reorganize the code in a way that all threads will modify a shared "non-best picture", however this requires extra synchronization of threads to use common array of past solutions, which again leads to mitigation of gain. Additionally, the multi-threading code for it is even more hard to read and would probably prevent further improvements. There are some new algorithms like https://www.uni-due.de/mvmo/ that should work better in multi-threaded optimization, so are to be tested in the future. 

On the other hand I found out that the cache can be reduced to 1/4 (16MB from 64MB per thread) without speed decrease, and even could lead to increase if /s number of solutions is small. For big ones (over 5K, 10K) the bigger cache could be more beneficial. I'll make it configurable from the command line, but by default lowered to 16MB.

 

Not Ilmenit's problem but RCGUI may behave weirdly with beta9? Will fiddle to see what works nicely or not (apart from renaming executable to RastaConverter.exe)

[+Stephen]

12 minutes ago, Sheddy said:

Not Ilmenit's problem but RCGUI may behave weirdly with beta9? Will fiddle to see what works nicely or not (apart from renaming executable to RastaConverter.exe)

We have a buildable source, so I'd be willing to make any updates required.  I've so far ran into 2 issues.  As you noticed, have to rename the generator due to 64 in the filename.  Also, when I ran it, it was not outputting files to a Generator folder, but in the root where the exe was ran.

[+MrFish]

21 minutes ago, Sheddy said:

Not Ilmenit's problem but RCGUI may behave weirdly with beta9? Will fiddle to see what works nicely or not (apart from renaming executable to RastaConverter.exe)

I've been using it with the GUI. I haven't experienced any problems or differences yet.