[SOLVED] Old Unigine 2.3.1 can't start on 20 cores CPU

[helmut.bressler]

Dear Unigine team.

It is quite some time ago since I have looked into the forum, I hope you all are doing well :-)

We have an interesting issue with older artworks which are based on Unigine 2.3.(1) on an integrated Intel Arc GPU. They are exiting immediately after window creation, without showing anything. It doesn't seems like the software is crashing, just exiting.

I have attached the logfile.

Reproducing the issue is easy (assuming you have the same hardware) - it also shows up in an empty project created by the sdk browser (I created a Unigine script project with float precision). The issue shows up in both opengl and directx. We are running windows 10 on that machine.

Do you have any idea where this is coming from? Or if there is an easy workaround?

Thanks in advance

Helmut

log_2.3.1.html

[silent]

Hi Helmut,

2.3 was released 6 years before Intel Arc release, so there might be anything. Arc drivers are mostly optimized for DX12 apps, but in 2.3 there is no such API available.  I'm afraid there is no currently any workarounds available other than change GPU.

You can also try to switch to OpenGL, maybe that will result in a different outcome.

Thanks!

[helmut.bressler]

Hello Silent,

I guess it shouldn't become such a big issue for us -  as we can hand select (or specify) hardware for our clients typically.

I forgot to mention that this specific Arc GPU successfully runs older and newer ( >= 2.4.1) Unigine projects.

Thank you and kind regards,

Helmut

[silent]

That's interesting observation, thanks for sharing!

Unfortunately, we’re no longer able to build or debug legacy engine versions. Even if we identify the cause of this behavior, we won’t be able to provide a fix for those releases. If you’re able to choose the hardware for your projects, standardizing on configurations known to work well with supported versions would be the most reliable approach.

Or you can migrate to 2.4.x, but that's a whole different story :)

[werner.poetzelberger]

Dear Silent,

hope you are good! :)

We have a kind of similar issue with UNIGINE 2.3.1 with a brand new PC (in NYC, so remote location), where it seems, that the work (software, engine et.al.) behave the same way.

It is a different artwork of our, but usese the same Engine version.

The first thing is, that at startup, we dont get very far, so debugging is really hard (see attached image).

Our man in NYC has done the following: ALL changes with out success starting the work (as well a small emty 2.3.1 testproject)

 

Changed NVIDIA drivers, updated and rolled back to an older version -  USING a RTX 5070

Swopped GPU to a 3090 - driver tests as well

Updated BIOS

Changed OS from Windows 11 to Windows 10

 

Althoughm we already heard from you, that debugging/solving is not possible any more, wwe are kind of clueless from which part (software or hardware), this issue is derived from.

According the PC-report, it is as well using an Intel GPU (onboard) -  we suspected the Intel GPU in the other PC we had here in Vienna.

 

Could it be, that somehow UNIGINE tries to start with the integrated GPU?
(Is there a way to start it dedicated on a specific GPU?), maybe also diabling in the bios might help? (If possible)

Any other hardware components, which could interfere with the start of the Engine..?

 

If you have any hints which can help us investigating further, that might be very helpful.

 

All the Best!

Werner

[silent]

The easiest way to check if engine is actually trying to run on Intel GPU or not is to disable integrated graphics directly in in BIOS/UEFI and connect monitor to dedicated GPU (nVidia). How to do that actually depends on motherboard vendor and model, but there should be user manual with detailed description how to disable iGPU.

That will guarantee that engine is trying to run on nVidia, not on other available GPU.

In 2.3 SDK there is no separate console command to switch between different GPUs (it was added later).

 

[werner.poetzelberger]

Yep.
Will try that next.

Are there any known dependencies ragarding the CPU and reasons why the Engine wouldnt load using specific CPU models, or would that rather be a GPU topic?

Edited September 26 by werner.poetzelberger

[silent]

Hi Werner,

The system requirements for version 2.3 are listed in the documentation, and as far as I can tell, there is nothing unusual there:

• https://developer.unigine.com/en/docs/2.3.1/start/requirements

Currently we have 0 ideas why 2.3.1 may not start on regular PC, other than theory that it's somehow trying to use Intel GPU first and fails for some another unknown reason.

If you can share dxdiag info from your PC - we can try to find similar PC on our test farm and check the same behavior on our side.

Thanks!

[silent]

It's worth also to install DirectX End-User runtimes 2010, just to make sure that it's not some missing old DirectX libraries:

• https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109

And Visual Studio 2010-2013 runtimes:

• https://www.techpowerup.com/download/visual-c-redistributable-runtime-package-all-in-one/

[werner.poetzelberger]

let me do some things here.

yes. dxdiag is a good idea.

Edited September 26 by werner.poetzelberger

[silent]

@werner.poetzelberger@helmut.bressler

The issue is not related to the GPU, but rather CPU. In 2.3.1 there is a limitation on how many CPU threads can microprofile use (32) and on modern CPUs with 10+ CPU cores it can easily try to allocate more than 32 threads and crash.

To avoid this you can start application and limit number of active CPU cores for it. The best would be just to keep 8 (or 4 cores).

How to do it you can check in this forum post about CPU Affinity: https://www.eightforums.com/threads/cpu-affinity-shortcut-for-a-program-create-in-windows.40339/

The main limitation is that the affinity mask needs to be adjusted for each specific CPU, especially if you plan to use the application across different hardware setups. However, this process can be easily automated through a simple *.bat launcher that can be included with the application.

Hope that helps :)

[silent]

I’ve just discovered that the engine does not take the affinity mask into account when calculating the number of threads that Microprofile can spawn, so unfortunately this affinity trick will not work. Also there is no way to set max thread number on engine start-up anyhow.

One possible solution I can suggest would be to physically replace the CPU in that PC with one that has fewer cores. Ideally, a CPU with 6–8 physical cores would be the most suitable.

For reference, I was able to successfully run the 2.3.1 SDK with the current CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (6 cores).

[werner.poetzelberger]

Hi Silent, thanks for looking into that.
So we had a suspicion, that it might be the cpu or something related.

That is a good hint in any case. Lets see if we can get that into play.

Will keep u updated.

 

Edited September 29 by werner.poetzelberger

[silent]

Yes, number of cores is too big on that one :) This CPU have 8 performance cores and 12 efficiency (8+12 cores / 16+12 threads).

You can try to disable all the efficiency cores in UEFI/BIOS and engine should start (in theory). That should give you 8 cores / 16 threads CPU behavior.

If engine will not start after e-cores disable you can try to go even further by disabling HyperTreading (not sure if that's even possible in UEFI/BIOS), which effectively will make your CPU 8 cores / 8 threads.

[werner.poetzelberger]

GOod News Silent.

This seems have fixed the issue!

Thank you so much, without your hints we would not be able to do this!! hero!!!

All the best!

Werner

[helmut.bressler]

Hello Silent,

many thanks for looking into that - as Werner said we never would have thought of that (I tried it on a 13500 CPU which has only a little less CPU cores - all good there).

The good thing is that we have been running tests on a lot of different hardware and we can confirm that our Unigine 2.3.1 software still runs fine there.

All the best,

Helmut