Seti@home

[blobrana]

Seti@home is no more!
It has ceased to be!
It's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! It's a stiff! Bereft of life.
It rests in peace!
If you you remove the mainpage link  it can push up the daisies!
Its Computational processes are now 'istory! It's off the twig! It's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off  its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!!
THIS IS AN EX-SETI@HOME!!

[Cass]

They found extra-terrestrial life at last? :-?
________
GAY TUBE

[Argo]

From Nature.com

Alien search merges with other home projects

"SETI@home is getting a boost in computer power.

Declan Butler

SETI@home, a downloadable screensaver that lets the public donate their unused computer time to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, switches off today. But it is not going away: it is simply joining forces with similar distributed-computing projects on topics from climate models to cures for diseases. The move should boost the number of users, upping the computing power available to search for messages from alien life.

About a dozen projects are now signed up to a common software system, so that they can pool volunteers' computer time and use it more efficiently (see 'All for one'). As a result, each project should get access to more users, more of the time."

"Scientific progress goes BOINC

The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) platform will allow SETI@home to evolve, using data beamed directly from different telescopes, including ones in the Southern Hemisphere, and looking at a wider radiofrequency range. "We designed BOINC to let us do the things that we want to do in the future," Anderson says, including rolling out faster and more complex software."

[Vincent]

The link on the left should be http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/

I pm'd Wayne about it a while ago but just kept forgetting to see if he'd changed it.  Looks like he might've forgotten :-)

[Hyperspeed]

Everyone knows that if you want to make contact you need the following:

· 1x 80's LCD computer
· 1x old record player
· 1x spoon
· 1x umbrella
· 1x coat hanger
· Some rope

If you ask me, RC5 and SETI have deeper, more sinister intentions at heart. You carry on believing they're for beating all other computer teams or finding aliens.

I prefer to think the CPU time is being used to test cryptography for commercial gain, military defence and calculating protein-folding for sinister new bio-weapons.

And let's not forget that Skynet in Terminator 3 was revealed to be a distributed computing program!

[blobrana]

Hum,
The link on the left should be http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/team_display.php?teamid=33303

[Vincent]

There is no link on the left anymore.

When did that happen?

[X-ray]

That's strange, with my old mobo and OS I couldn't get the BOINC client to work, but since upgrading my hardware I seem to have no problems.
Now if only they can iron out the computing errors with the Enhanced Work Units, everything will be sweet. A computing error after 6 hours kind of sucks. On my machine the enhanced units are taking a fair amount of time to compute (about 6 to 7 hours), so I reckon on a modest system like the Sempron I had before, these times must be heading to the 12 hour mark at least  :-o

[Hyperspeed]

I have a feeling we'll find out in 10yrs time that what you lot were computing was not search algorithms for extra terrestrial communication attempts.

Same goes for RC5, but at least SETI had a more interesting 'decoy story'...

EDIT: Oh, I've already spouted off on the conspiracy theory. Sorry.

:-D

[X-ray]

@ Hyperspeed

"...I have a feeling we'll find out in 10yrs time that what you lot were computing was not search algorithms for extra terrestrial communication attempts..."

----------------------------------------------------------------

You're joking, right?

[Vincent]

@X-Ray

Good to see you're back on the project again :-)

With my Sempron 2600+ I average about 3 hours, but the occasional one can easily reach 6 hours.

Although the one that's being done now is 6 hours 55 minutes in and it's only done 54% :-o

[X-ray]

@ Vincent

Yup, its good to put this new PC to some use now.

When you say 3 hours are you talking about the 4.18 standard units or the 5.12 enhanced units? Because I do the 4.18 units in about 2.5 hours but the enhanced 5.12 ones are definitely more than 4 hours on my setup. This is a dual core AMD 4200, so essentially it is like two CPUs at 2,2gHz. I would have thought that beats the Sempron. What units are you processing? I am being given a mix of 4.18s and 5.12s.

Edit: each core is assigned a separate work unit, and it does them simultaneously. Sometimes one core will be doing a 4.18 and the other will do a 5.12. If I display the graphics for both, I get two 3D graphs and the 5.12 will say 'Enhanced' whereas the 4.18 is the same as it always was.

[X-ray]

Okay scratch the enhanced questions, I checked your results and you are doing the mix too. You are averaging the same processing time for the standard units as me (about 7,000 to 8,000 sec) but I have a slight edge on you with the enhanced units: my range is 16,000 to 33,000 sec with most of them being at the 21,000 mark whereas yours is more like 19,000 to 35,000. It seems to me that your Sempron is not much slower than one core of my CPU.

My higher average credit comes down to a 2 cores vs 1 performance difference (unless I have calculated wrong)

Edit: just saw that some of those results of yours for standard units were 14,000 so the Sempron is definitely slower.

[Vincent]

Thankfully I read your second post before answering :-D

Not much difference between your 2.2GHz and my 1.8GHz then.

I would've expected a bit more out of 2.2GHz, but then it could be different to translate as you're running dual core instead of one 2.2GHz chip.

Interesting all the same :-)

[JaXanim]

"The cost of a concerted search for extra-terrestrial intelligence over ten years is about the same as a typical annual over-run on one weapon development budget."
Carl Sagan