To the end

Smokes and Mirrors

In my class today, the professor was telling us how her daughter wanted a $600 prom dress because her friends said they were getting $600-800 dresses. The professor obviously was not going to drop that much on a prom dress, the most she would give her daughter was $300. That’s still quite a bit of money in my opinion. Anyway, it just made me think how people can feel significantly better about themselves just by what they wear. It’s interesting that a piece of clothing can be given so much value and that value becomes attached to its wearer. What is the actual difference between a $600 prom dress to a $300 one or a borrowed one? Nothing, except to those who know the monetary value, which is pretty arbitrary in most cases.

These thoughts led me to ponder how we easily identify ourselves externally, as opposed to internally, in our culture. It creeps up on us without us realizing it. Our self-esteem is proportional to all these external factors: how we look, the stuff we have, the things we do, etc. I want to identify myself by who I am without these outside definitions. I want to be free of external controls and begin to live life from the inside outward. Sometimes it’s hard to see what is true about myself, the layers of external influence can be quite imbedded. But God knows who I truly am, He lives inside me and He believes in me. Internal control. When I come to know Jesus, I see as He sees.

“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12.

Warning: Nerd Post II

After my first post about overclocking my new computer, I spent some more time testing the system. This time I was interested in seeing the relationship between the increase in CPU frequency and the needed increase of core voltage on the CPU. The new Sandy Bridge Intel processors have made overclocking ridiculously easy. Overclocking is basically increasing the speed of the CPU in performing calculations, or making the computer faster. The Core i5 2500k is rated to run at a stock frequency of 3.3GHz. The FSB is set to 100 MHz, and the default multiplier is 33 (33 x 100MHz = 3.3GHz). Overlocking is as easy as changing the multiplier, eg. from 33 to 45 (45 x 100MHz = 4.5GHz). However, as the frequency of the CPU is increased, the CPU requires more voltage to remain stable. In turn, the increase of voltage also raises the temperature of the chip and so there is a limit to how much it can be overclocked before it overheats. Thus, overclocking is a procedure of trying to achieve a higher CPU frequency (more GHz) while raising the CPU core voltage as little as possible.

Through a lengthy process of testing, I was able to find stable settings (3+ hours of prime95) for 3.3, 3.6, 3.9, 4.2, and 4.5GHz. I compiled the information into the two figures below. Fig 1 uses the CPU core voltage settings from the BIOS. Fig 2 uses the actual CPU core voltages while under load taken from CPU-Z (a monitoring program). For example, even though I set the CPU core voltage (Vcore) to 1.025V in the BIOS, the actual Vcore drops to 1.008V when the CPU is working at 100%. This is because the system automatically lowers the Vcore when under load to lower the chip’s temperature and prevent overheating.

Fig 1: The Vcore setting in the BIOS vs CPU frequency

Fig 1: The actual core voltage while under load vs CPU frequency

The black dots in the Fig 1 and 2 are the empirical data that I took. To predict the kinds of core voltages I would require in order to overclock the CPU above 4.5 GHz, I used quadratic, cubic (3rd degree polynomial) and exponential approximations. The cubic fit was the closest with an error of 0.0030 and 0.0019 volts with the Vcore setting and actual core voltage respectively. The quadratic fit was not far behind with errors of 0.0033 and 0.0032 volts. The exponential fit was the worst with an error of 0.0137 and 0.0150 volts.

The conclusion is that I would have to set the core voltage to ~1.5V in the BIOS (which would be about 1.475V under load) in order to run a stable overclock at 5.0 Ghz. Since the safe 24/7 core voltage for the core i5 2500k is said to be around 1.350V, the max stable overclock that I would be able to achieve with my system is around 4.6GHz. My results do corroborate with what I have read online that it becomes inefficient to overclock above 4.5GHz as the voltage step needed to bump up the CPU frequency grows at a constant rate with respect to frequency (first derivative of a quadratic fit is linear).

Anyway, it’s been a week of putting my new computer through its paces and now it’s time for me to actually use it.

Warning: Nerd Post

This week, I am on winter break and came back to the Bay Area and upgraded my desktop computer. It had been pooping out on me and there were some incredible deals that were just too tempting. Currently, the build is a MSI Z68A-GD65 (G3) motherboard, Intel Core i5 2500K processor, Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+, and 8GB of G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3 RAM. I don’t normally overclock my computer because I don’t really need to nor is it worth it. However, like a kid with a new toy and plenty of time to play, I took it for a spin. I took some baseline tests at the stock 3.3GHz and then overclocked to 4.5GHz to compare and there was about a 25% improvement in performance. This made me curious about the relationship of overclocking and the increase in performance. I decided to do some tests.

Test Methodology

HyperPi - Calculates Pi to 1 million digits, the less time it takes the better.
PassMark Performance Test 7.1025 - A series of tests for the CPU, higher score is better

Starting at the stock frequency of 3.3GHz of the Core i5 2500K, I raised the clock by 0.1 GHz and ran HyperPi and PassMark three times. I then took an average of the three results. This took awhile because I had to restart my computer each time I changed the CPU frequency.

Results

Table 1: Data from all the trials

To get a better idea of what all the data meant, I plotted the values in MATLAB and noticed they all lined up fairly nicely. So I did a least squares approximation using a linear fit and plotted them together to see how close the linear fit was to the experimental values.

Fig 1: Plot of HyperPi data and the least squares linear approximation

Fig 1: Plot of PassMark data and the least squares linear approximation

I thought it was interesting that the performance increase of the CPU was linear, I initially guessed it would be exponential or maybe quadratic because of the jump in performance from 3.3Ghz to 4.5 GHz. From the linear approximation, I calculated that for every 0.1GHz increase of the CPU frequency, there was about an 1.77% and 2.71% improvement in HyperPi and PassMark respectively. After overclocking by 1.2GHZ, that’s a 21.2% and 32.5% improvement in HyperPi and PassMark respectively, an average of 26.9%. For about a 36% increase of the CPU frequency, you get about 27% increase in performance. That’s actually not that bad.

The bottom line is that it’s pretty pointless to overclock when I spend 75% of my time surfing the web and using Microsoft Office, but it’s cool just because I can. These numbers that I generated are not definitive and there’s probably a margin of error to it. However, I found it interesting and other geeks out there will probably too. When I did the tests, I had my core voltages set at 1.35V because I knew that it was stable for sure up to 4.5GHz. After slight tweaking, I have found that I can run 4.5GHz stable set at 1.33V with low Vdroop (after 3 hours of prime95).

Light has no plan.

Imagine if light needed to have a plan in order to shine. Light is supposed to just shine. I think I’ve been considering the topic of what I want to do with my life more since I’ll be graduating in spring. I realize I have held many paradigms that have limited myself. What does it mean to burn for Jesus? I think growing up in church culture, I have accepted that to be spiritual is to do ministry. Even though doing marketplace ministry is encouraged, but it’s second rate to full-time ministry. To drop everything, and follow Jesus (in full-time ministry) is what it means to be a burning one. Such crap.

I feel like there hasn’t been many good examples of what it means to step into shining as who we are created be. Even when people go do things outside of the church in so-called marketplace ministry, there’s some kind of “plan.” Like, a Christian musician might go with the idea of writing songs that have subliminal messages of Jesus or a businessman may put bible verses on the bottom of their products or something. That’s cool and all, but if Jesus really lives inside me, I don’t need to “plan” a way to shine. Like a musician should be able to write simply excellent music in the most secular sense, without strings of Christianity, and it would naturally reflect Jesus and the glory of God. We are created so beautifully to be ourselves. There has to be this understanding of our calling and who we carry inside us so that we can run full-heartedly.

I am still coming to terms of what it means to be spiritual. I am a spiritual being and so everything I do is spiritual. When I am doing my engineering homework, I am burning for Jesus just as much as when I heal the sick. When I rest, I am just as close to the Father as when I am reading my Bible. Full-time ministry is necessary, and pursuing things outside of it is not second-rate. There is a new breed of lovers that will dare to find a place for their light outside the church.

What does it mean to bring heaven to earth? A Christian doctor’s ability to heal with medicine is not second-rate to supernatural healing. He should be allowed to walk in the fullest extent of both. The vaccine for polio eradicated a widespread crippling disease in a generation. Yes, one could pray for healing, but you can’t pray for everyone. Some people won’t even let you pray for them. I haven’t completely thought this through, but I believe that this is a way of bringing heaven to earth. This is only one example that I can think of, there are seven mountains of influence to be tackled. Each person is so uniquely designed by God; it’s like each person is made to carry a payload of heaven and we have an order to deliver it somewhere. We need to run our own race, to reach our own target. Who are we to categorize and rank each person’s magnificence? I dare to dream without having to answer to Sunday school questions of how I am glorifying Jesus.

All I know to do is be myself and be the fullest extent of myself because I trust who Jesus designed me to be. “I shall know just as I also am known.”

Truth

I am awesome.

I am not forgotten

¹⁵ “Never! Can a mother forget her nursing child?
      Can she feel no love for the child she has borne?
   But even if that were possible,
      I would not forget you!
 ¹⁶ See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands.

-Isaiah 49:15-16a

One of the roots of orphan mentality is the fear of being forgotten. It causes one to constantly search for assurance that he is remembered and is accepted. The truth is that I am never forgotten. My Father always remembers me. I’m included in His plans and designs, I’m never left out. Living from this truth changes the way I interact with people. I no longer have to be constantly present to assure myself of acceptance for fear of being forgotten or losing my place in people’s lives. I am free to pursue my passions because I know true family trusts in its bonds of love and family transcends time and space. Yes, if I could, I would spend love to spend all the time in the world with those I love, but I am also sent. I am sent to enlarge the house and build additions, to achieve God-sized dreams in my lifetime. I cannot afford to play in the house all day.

Pondering

What does it mean to be broken? I think it means to be poor in spirit, but to have everything. To be completely satisfied, but yet desperately hungry. To be broken means that I can allow myself to feel and be a person. It is to allow myself to not have everything together or figured out, but trust that Jesus holds it all together.. as a beautiful masterpiece. I begin to discover another paradox; that the more broken I become, the more whole I truly am.

Being broken seems counter-intuitive, since our natural predisposition is to have everything in working order. No one likes the uncertainty of the solemn realization that something may be wrong. However, allowing myself to be broken creates this space for God and people to come in and fill in those fundamental needs of love and identity. It requires true family, a good Papa and people that are committed to my well-being.

It can be so hard to trust sometimes, but He is more determined in earning my trust than my attempts to distrust.