SETI & Distributed Computing (SETI.USA)

[Aaron Clinton 2,372]

I am not sure if I mentioned it before, but something fun on the side I (well machines) have been doing is contributing to some distributed computing projects through BOINC. BOINC uses the unused CPU time on peoples personal machines, the most famous being SETI. SETI is based out of UC Berkley and is the most popular project. Some of the projects are very interesting and are quite important to science research and development, many dealing with protein folding, quantum mechanics, AI, bio-chem, deep space radio signals, and physics etc. The reason for this topic is a call for help for the team I am on > SETI.USA. For every work unit crunched by a team member, credit is given, and the more work units crunched the better for that team. For an example, here is the graphic of the projects I have attached to and crunched along with how many credits completed in each project:

The German, French, Polish, Canadian, and a few other teams are chipping away at the lead SETI.USA has, and we need more help to stay #1 overall, and take 1st place in or hold onto in many individual projects. SETI.USA, the team, is made up of a great group of people who are very helpful and all like to work together to reach a common goal, plus some have scary computer power.

BOINC is a software that runs in the background and you can configure it to use as little or as much processor power as you want. All you have to do is download BOINC , then just attach to a project or projects you want to help out on, every CPU helps. If you can contribute, that would be awesome, and I can help out on any questions you might have.

Thanks!

[Crazybob's Son @ SETI.USA 1]

I am not sure if I mentioned it before, but something fun on the side I (well machines) have been doing is contributing to some distributed computing projects through BOINC. BOINC uses the unused CPU time on peoples personal machines, the most famous being SETI. SETI is based out of UC Berkley and is the most popular project. Some of the projects are very interesting and are quite important to science research and development, many dealing with protein folding, quantum mechanics, AI, bio-chem, deep space radio signals, and physics etc. The reason for this topic is a call for help for the team I am on > SETI.USA. For every work unit crunched by a team member, credit is given, and the more work units crunched the better for that team. For an example, here is the graphic of the projects I have attached to and crunched along with how many credits completed in each project:

The German, French, Polish, Canadian, and a few other teams are chipping away at the lead SETI.USA has, and we need more help to stay #1 overall, and take 1st place in or hold onto in many individual projects. SETI.USA, the team, is made up of a great group of people who are very helpful and all like to work together to reach a common goal, plus some have scary computer power.

BOINC is a software that runs in the background and you can configure it to use as little or as much processor power as you want. All you have to do is download BOINC , then just attach to a project or projects you want to help out on, every CPU helps. If you can contribute, that would be awesome, and I can help out on any questions you might have.

Thanks!

Excellent description there Denim.

I just wanted to add a bit more clarification.

First, I wanted to add that no matter how large a team is, there is always room for growth. We are the largest US based team (although we are not US only) and one of the largest teams around the world. Although our team name states SETI in the name, we are also not a SETI@home only team. We currently hold a Top 10 position in 65 of the 79 current BOINC projects, 48 of which are Top 5 positions, of those 22 are individual project #1's. We also hold the #1 position for Overall Boinc credit with 2.3 Billion Credits.

A list of all individual projects and a summary of their goals can be found here

The BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) software was actually designed by the University of California @ Berkeley for distributed computing and technically does not run in the background (as you can see an icon in the systray). The applications for each of the projects runs in the background. These applications are designed to run at a low priority (can be viewed in task manager). Since these applications are a low priority and the standard for anything else is "Normal" priority, the operating system will free up any resources that are needed for anything that you may want to do.

I will agree that some of our team members have crazy computing power. (Insert Uncle Ben quote here..) With computers as with anything, the more you have the more eventual problems you have. With the vast number of members and computers that we have aligned to our team, we also have a vast knowledge base for troubleshooting pretty much any problem you may run into.

I think that's all my clarifications/additions there. Hope to see everyone around the team message boards.

- Jason aka Crazybob's Son

[Mark LaFountain 1,054]

I don't think my machine could handle this

[Aaron Clinton 2,372]

Thanks for adding more info Jason (CBS). And Mark, your machine handled it fine before you went quad monitor crazy.

[Crazybob's Son @ SETI.USA 1]

I don't think my machine could handle this

Up until last month when I pulled the guts out to upgrade, my father and I had been running this on a P3 800mhz PC since I got it sometime from 2000-2001. I know my father has an old PII 450Mhz up and running this in his office at work as well. You'd be surprised at the minimal resources necessary (for some projects) to assist in Distributed Computing.

[dem beats 1,223]

I don't think my machine could handle this

Up until last month when I pulled the guts out to upgrade, my father and I had been running this on a P3 800mhz PC since I got it sometime from 2000-2001. I know my father has an old PII 450Mhz up and running this in his office at work as well. You'd be surprised at the minimal resources necessary (for some projects) to assist in Distributed Computing.

Can this use multiple cores? I use Prime to test my machine to get all cores smoking. This might be something else to use, if it can stress all of them

[Crazybob's Son @ SETI.USA 1]

Can this use multiple cores? I use Prime to test my machine to get all cores smoking. This might be something else to use, if it can stress all of them

Yes, this will use all cores. It also takes into consideration virtual cores. (ex: i7 = 4physical and 4virtual cores, would run 8 workunits simultaneously).

[Aaron Clinton 2,372]

When Mark ran it on his i7 for a few days, it had all 8 cores rolling really good. Heck of a machine.

[Aaron Clinton 2,372]

There has to be a few people that can spare some CPU cycles for good causes.

[Aaron Clinton 2,372]

Here is the Project list

ABC@home

[Aaron Clinton 2,372]

I am bumping this topic as we (SETI.USA team) are in serious need of any help we can get. Even if you just attach to one or two projects and have to run over night, it will help big time. The French team could pass us in a matter of a month for #1 over all, unless we can get some more computing power online for SETI.USA. If you can help, that would be awesome, do not matter how old your machine is really. Heck I have an old P2 machine crunching some smaller projects.

[Crazybob's Son @ SETI.USA 1]

I am bumping this topic as we (SETI.USA team) are in serious need of any help we can get. Even if you just attach to one or two projects and have to run over night, it will help big time. The French team could pass us in a matter of a month for #1 over all, unless we can get some more computing power online for SETI.USA. If you can help, that would be awesome, do not matter how old your machine is really. Heck I have an old P2 machine crunching some smaller projects.

I will second that, as well as make note if you have an Nvidia card of 8400GS or higher, or ATI card in the 38xx or 48xx series this could make a HUGE addition to our team.

[Aaron Clinton 2,372]

Bumping again for any possible help.

[Aaron Clinton 2,372]

I am bumping this topic, as we are in a race for Prime Grid, and can use any help we can get to hold of ze Germans!

[Aaron Clinton 2,372]

A few years later, and could still use some help as every little bit counts.

[Julian 641]

Once I have reliable interwebz I'd be happy to help

[Aaron Clinton 2,372]

Once I have reliable interwebz I'd be happy to help

:fing34:

[Julian 641]

Currently using the iPad for the web.. See if boinc will develop an iPad app

[Dan208 23]

I don't think my machine could handle this <img src="http://www.soundsolutionsaudio.com/forum/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="wink.gif" />

I don't think my brain could handle this.

[dvalue 17]

My laptop is now folding as much as it can.

[smashedz28 110]

ive heard about this before.. but still after reading this thread dont exactly understand it.. i get its something running on my machine. What I dont understand is what it's doing, and how it helps. Is there a payoff of any kind? (not that i would need one but im curious). Im going to download it on your recommendation alone but will be checking back tomorrow hoping to understand this more. Please.. dummy your explanation down as much as you can

[NB50 206]

Basically it is just borrowing your computers unused cycles to crunch numbers for different projects. Like a cure for cancer, search for extra terestial life, etc.

[Shogen 325]

It's a way for people to actually put their computers to good use... I mean besides pr0n and music ... I used to do this with an older PS3 for a different community online. I'm pretty sure it was called Folding@Home... It did proteins and stuff... I wish I had internet on my quad in my room but damn ethernet cables keep getting chewed up and I refuse to use wireless... it's just not reliable..

[smashedz28 110]

ive got it up and running now.. kinda feels useless lol. just sits there doin its thing. not sure if i did it right (credit goes to aaron's team or not) but its running :\ ill leave it on all night and see what it says in the morning.

[Crazybob's Son @ SETI.USA 1]

ive heard about this before.. but still after reading this thread dont exactly understand it.. i get its something running on my machine. What I dont understand is what it's doing, and how it helps. Is there a payoff of any kind? (not that i would need one but im curious).

The only payoff is the arbitrary "Credit" value assigned to each workunit as well as the satisfaction of knowing you are helping research. If you are more competitive in nature, there is a payoff when the team beats out the production and overall credit of other teams (currently working on passing L'Alliance Francophone and SETI.Germany for overall credit).

Basically it is just borrowing your computers unused cycles to crunch numbers for different projects. Like a cure for cancer, search for extra terestial life, etc.

This is exactly correct. Most research projects are not-for-profit so they don't have a lot of funding to go out and purchase $10-20,000 in computers/servers to analyze their data for them. So instead they farm out the data analysis to people's home computers which then send the results back to the project when completed. This allows them to review the results at a high level and then focus more on the promising results to quicken the time to a resolution.

ive got it up and running now.. kinda feels useless lol. just sits there doin its thing. not sure if i did it right (credit goes to aaron's team or not) but its running :\ ill leave it on all night and see what it says in the morning.

Yeah, it really doesn't give you too much details with the screen saver which is why most people on our team turn off the screen saver (as this wastes valuable cpu cycles that could be used for crunching more data. To make sure you join the team, you can go to this page as this has the majority of the projects that we participate in. There are a few that are newer and not on that page but those can be accessed on a one-off situation.

Just a note that is not on that projects page is the WUProp@home Project. This project will run alongside your primary project and provide information about each workunit that your computer analyzes giving the distributed computing world valuable information as to which projects can be ran from their PC.

Also, there are quite a few projects that will run on the newer PCI-e x16 video cards. Our team has compiled a list of video cards that will crunch here.

For ATI there is Collatz Conjecture and Milkyway@home

For Nvidia you can also run Collatz Conjecture, GPUGRID, PrimeGrid, or SETI@home. Out of these, PrimeGrid awards the best credit.

Hopefully my information above has answered most of your questions.

- Jason aka Crazybob's Son @ SETI.USA

Edited April 17, 2011 by Crazybob's Son @ SETI.USA