hi. I installed Houdini 20 on a new PC and I keep getting crashes at random points during caching out bgeo of a pyro sim. I only get this error: "Fatal error: Segmentation fault"
it's not a matter of a corrupted scene - same thing happens on clean one with default pyro shelftool. the scenes also work on an older PC.
I tried reinstalling Houdini, installing other versions, updating drivers, changing HDD/SSD, recreating properties folder, and all other stuff recommended by SideFX for this particular error, like disabling some audio drivers.
I don't have any third-party addons installed. it's a new PC and its as clean as possible.
I doubt it's a matter of resources: I have 128GB ram, cpu intel core i9 14900K, nvidia rtx 4090, Windows 11. only CPU is at 100% during caching.
I also tried disabling E cores in bios.
I'm all out of ideas... any good and bad suggestions are greatly appreciated.
thank you!

Hi,

Maybe this discussion will help you, but 14900K processors seem to have certain issues.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Houdini/comments/197kbgq/anyone_here_with_an_i9_14900k_13900k/ [www.reddit.com]

thank you for your reply.
disabling E cores doesn't solve the issue like it did for the OP. I tested few other solutions from the thread but I guess the cause is something else in my case.
I ran extensive stress tests and tried few other 3d apps. the crashes happen only in Houdini.

an update: I disabled hyper-threading and successfully ran few demanding sims.
I thought I had tried it before. either I was wrong or it didn't work in some combination.
anyway, not exactly a solution but a good work-around for now. dropped from 4.9 to 4.75 GHz on average.
I'll be running some more tests after the deadline.

Disabling parts of the processor probably isn't the right solution here. From what I can gather, the issue comes down to motherboard manufacturers pushing more power into the chips than what it was designed for to extract a little more performance out of the processor. This may work for many workloads, but we've found that Houdini is an excellent way to discovery hardware instabilities. The recommended fix is to lower the power limits to follow Intel's published guidelines. Some motherboard manufacturers have pushed out BIOS updates that allow the user to utilize Intel's power limits, but from what I've read, some of them aren't entirely accurate. Instead, what you can try is following the instructions on this Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/overclocking/comments/1axepvu/optimizing_stability_for_intel_13900k_and_14900k/ [www.reddit.com]

I would be curious to see if this resolves your issue.

This article just came out recently on some data about the stability of the i9 (specifically 13900K and 14900K) processors:
https://www.techradar.com/computing/cpu/intels-woes-with-core-i9-cpus-crashing-look-worse-than-we-thought-team-blue-really-needs-to-act-now-to-fix-this-mess [www.techradar.com]

Another good article on solving instability with the i9-13900K and 14900K processors:
https://www.radgametools.com/oodleintel.htm [www.radgametools.com]

Actually I talked to SideFX´s support and they recommended disabling ECores and it worked for me. Its quite a bummer that I have to do this to use Houdini but at least it fixes it.

I've set Houdini to use only P-cores using Process Lasso and it worked for me. Strangely it only needed for Houdini.

AHAHACKA
I've set Houdini to use only P-cores using Process Lasso and it worked for me. Strangely it only needed for Houdini.

How did you set that up actually?

The proper fix for this is being rolled out with BIOS updates: https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/8/24216054/intel-msi-asus-bios-updates-crashing-13th-14th-raptor-lake-gen-cpus [www.theverge.com]

Check if your processor is affected here [community.intel.com]. The link also mentions possible exchanges.

See here [www.theverge.com] for more on this.

edward
The proper fix for this is being rolled out with BIOS updates: https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/8/24216054/intel-msi-asus-bios-updates-crashing-13th-14th-raptor-lake-gen-cpus [www.theverge.com]

Check to if your processor is affected here [community.intel.com]. The link also mentions possible exchanges.

See here [www.theverge.com] for more on this.

Wow I wasn't even aware of this whole Intel debacle. Thanks for bringing this up!

I updated my BIOS wich is using the new Intel default settings. I hope this fixes my issues... although I have really no knowledge about most of the settings in the BIOS to be honest.

Kareeem

AHAHACKA
I've set Houdini to use only P-cores using Process Lasso and it worked for me. Strangely it only needed for Houdini.

How did you set that up actually?

In the Process Lasso right click on houdini process. From this menu select CPU Affinity -> Always -> Select CPU Affinity. You will see new dialog with P-Core and E-Core cpu. Select only P-Cores there. Like here:

AHAHACKA
In the Process Lasso right click on houdini process. From this menu select CPU Affinity -> Always -> Select CPU Affinity. You will see new dialog with P-Core and E-Core cpu. Select only P-Cores there. Like here:

Nice, thank you!