NVIDIA GPU working hard on computing results for Golem

We are stoked to present a new major update for Brass Golem — 0.18.0. This new update comes with all kinds of goodies, the most prominent of which is the one all of us have been waiting eagerly for — GPU rendering support. For the moment, GPU support is limited to NVIDIA GPUs only, it requires patience and perseverance to set up and works specifically on Linux and using bleeding-edge NVIDIA drivers (version 396 and up) but once configured, it should be able to give those underutilized graphic cards some work to do.

Note: All requestors can start using this feature “out of the box” without any setup, provided there are GPU-capable nodes on the network. GPU rendering only needs to be enabled on the provider’s end.

To further improve your Golem experience, we have fixed the issue with the VirtualBox driver, that we heard was still affecting some of you during both the initial installation and upgrades on Windows. Furthermore, we were finally able to replace the “Docker Toolbox” suite with a more mature “Docker for Mac”. The equivalent upgrade will be available for Windows users in one of the next releases.

Among the less spectacular updates, we have added a way to render the more complicated Blender scenes that are composed of several `.blend` files by letting you choose the specific file as the input, though at the moment, it’s available only through the command-line interface. We also added a way to specify either a single file or a whole folder when adding tasks through the GUI on all supported OSes.

Last but not least we have been working hard to smoothen the general experience by providing you with various fixes and stability improvements, including our integration with the Concent Service (testnet only).

As always, we encourage you to download and test the new release. We are happy to hear all feedback, but this time especially from those of you running Linux with NVIDIA GPUs as we’re eager to see some usage outside of our limited test environment. For a more detailed changelog, details and troubleshooting information, please visit our official GitHub repository.

And obviously, should you have any comments, feedback, praise or critique regarding Golem in general, please don’t hesitate to contact us through our Rocket channel, Reddit or email. At Golem, we have a “user comes first” approach, and as our product is work in progress, your opinion does help make Golem stronger, better and more efficient.

Upgrading to Brass Golem Beta 0.18.0

You can find detailed information here:

macOS

Since 0.18.0 uses Docker for Mac, the first step is to make sure that all previous Docker instances are removed from your machine. Open terminal and type:

docker-machine rm golem brew uninstall --ignore-dependencies docker docker-machine docker-machine-driver-xhyve

And type these commands below to upgrade Golem:

brew update brew upgrade golem brew cask upgrade golem

Important! Before you run Golem be sure to run Docker for Mac. Cmd + space bar, type Docker and hit enter. Make sure that Docker is running properly. If you encounter any issues with the Docker for Mac please follow instructions on Docker for Mac github.

Ubuntu

Download the Linux installation script. In terminal, run:

chmod +x install.sh && ./install.sh

Windows

Download and execute the installer from here.

If you encounter any errors please let us know in the testers channel at chat.golem.network or write an email to contact@golem.network (please write “Error” in the subject so we can catch it quickly).