BOINC grid processing

Silencer

Silencer

Night Watchman
Staff member
Admin
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

Seems like a great idea. After all, how much CPU power is allocated when I'm browsing this forum? A tiny fraction. But my machine wears down just as much, the discs are spinning, the power supply is humming with it's 300 watt capacity. So by linking to a processing grid I could put some of this virtually wasted processing power to good use. The chaps from CERN or cancer researchers then don't need to spend money on building or contracting their supercomputers, because they have an immense reservoir of processing power to sustain their voracious appetites.

Chunks of data are sent to computers around the world, and return processed, already giving benefits that couldn't be accomplished by other means.

And if I'm going to run something CPU or memory-intense, I can always suspend the program.

Also, the top participant of the SETI programme is some Croatian. I suspect Ratty ;)

What are your thoughts?
 
the power supply is humming with it's 300 watt capacity
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Not true. If you use less processing power, it consumes less power. Hence why laptops usually have special processors which vary their clock speed depending on the workload.
 
Sander said:
Not true. If you use less processing power, it consumes less power. Hence why laptops usually have special processors which vary their clock speed depending on the workload.
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like duh :p

and an idle PC will have a higher MBT
 
The general idea is good, but - come on, SETI? Isn't it a better idea to contribute your computer's processing power to something more useful, like that medical research SuAside mentioned? Methinks we should be worrying about our humanity's survival and betterment rather than waste time and resources analysing cosmic noise.

Oh, and I'm not surprised that top contributor is from Croatia - that damn SETI thing was ultra-popular here for a couple of years, all thanks to our leading IT magazine BUG that all of a sudden started promoting it like it's the Next Big Thing™.
 
Sander said:
Not true. If you use less processing power, it consumes less power. Hence why laptops usually have special processors which vary their clock speed depending on the workload.
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Yeah, but there are other components running - the hard disks, the CD, the monitor, which consume large amounts of energy regardless of how much processing is being done. You can of course power them down, but only if you're not doing anything, not even reading from the disks every ten minutes, let's say. So that's why I regard letting the processor be occupied at all times - economical.

Ratty:
Silencer said:
The chaps from CERN or cancer researchers
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I feel disregarded :(
 
Yeah, but there are other components running - the hard disks, the CD, the monitor, which consume large amounts of energy regardless of how much processing is being done. You can of course power them down, but only if you're not doing anything, not even reading from the disks every ten minutes, let's say. So that's why I regard letting the processor be occupied at all times - economical.
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All that really matters very little: the main power consumer is the display, secondary to that is really the processor if you have it on full-processing power. Seriously.
 
Ratty said:
The general idea is good, but - come on, SETI?
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Well didn't you hear? The aliens are going to give phat lewt to the chap who processes the lucky workunit! :lol:

Sander said:
All that really matters very little: the main power consumer is the display, secondary to that is really the processor if you have it on full-processing power. Seriously.
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Whatever, Sander, but still, all the components of the PC will wear and age as you keep in online. So you might as well make the most of it.
 
Whatever, Sander, but still, all the components of the PC will wear and age as you keep in online. So you might as well make the most of it.
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However, processors won't wear as much if you don't utilize them to the fullest, and all those calculation programs are exactly that: calculators. They don't utilise the hard drive, only the processor, the processor cache and the memory. Hence, that's still no good reason.
 
Ratty said:
The general idea is good, but - come on, SETI? Isn't it a better idea to contribute your computer's processing power to something more useful, like that medical research SuAside mentioned?
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Yeah, but I've checked and the Predictor@home (BOINC biological research) is down, as is the black hole project. The only ones active are: climate prediction, SETI and CERN research, which do you think is most meaningful?

Maybe I'll join Folding@Home, like SU said.

Sander said:
However, processors won't wear as much if you don't utilize them to the fullest, and all those calculation programs are exactly that: calculators. They don't utilise the hard drive, only the processor, the processor cache and the memory. Hence, that's still no good reason.
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But the hard drives, the power supply, the main board resources, they independently "work" and wear out nonetheless (albeit they will wear and use up energy slightly more than if I weren't grid computing.) My point is, that by allowing your computer to participate in a grid programme, you maximise the gain from the energy and resources your computer uses up while working. The

Besides, my processor is probably going to "age morally" and I will sell it to some ass before it fails (I hope).
 
SuAside said:
i always run Folding@home.
medical science thingy, helping them unfold proteins.
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Actually they help fold proteins, mostly. This is one of the great problems in molecular biology- proteins have so many ways of folding that it is nearly impossible to predict the exact pattern. If it could be predicted all sorts of medical breakthroughs could occur.

/pimping Folding@home
 
Murdoch said:
Actually they help fold proteins, mostly. This is one of the great problems in molecular biology- proteins have so many ways of folding that it is nearly impossible to predict the exact pattern. If it could be predicted all sorts of medical breakthroughs could occur.
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Hey, Murdoch, you should join the discussion about FEV and supermutant genetics on General Fallout Discussion forum. We would love to hear thoughts of a mad biological weapons designer.

Yeah, but I've checked and the Predictor@home (BOINC biological research) is down, as is the black hole project. The only ones active are: climate prediction, SETI and CERN research, which do you think is most meaningful?
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Ummm... World od Warcraft?
 
What does Folding@Home do? Folding@Home is a distributed computing project which studies protein folding, misfolding, aggregation, and related diseases. We use novel computational methods and large scale distributed computing, to simulate timescales thousands to millions of times longer than previously achieved. This has allowed us to simulate folding for the first time, and to now direct our approach to examine folding related disease.


doesnt matter to me really. F@H helps scientists and could one day MAYBE help us understand proteins better. don't need to know more :)

i have my pc running 95% cpuload constantly (even keep it on while i game). there really isnt a big downside to it, when i'm home & awake, my pc is on anyway... (for irc, leech & school mostly)
might as well donate some unused CPU cycles.
 
On the topic of saving power: almost all computers have features to trun down/off HDDs, CDROMs. Also, CPUs consume power relative to their use; someone constantly running a benchmark will use up far more power than the same person with the computer idle, or even more so asleep.

Also, CPUs rarely just 'die' from normal use. Unless you overclock/volt, it should last a hearty 5-6 years. I have a PII-450 as a server at my house, and it still runs fine after I bought it in '99. Note: it has been running constantly or near-constantly since I got it. I have come to believe that HDD's last longer when they are on 24/7, but fans do not (I've gone through 3 fans, but have never had to replace the main HDD)

*I couldnt read the article because - get this - it is blocked by my school. It would seem that Berkely has too much non-school stuff on it, unliky study sites like newgrounds (which is not blocked). Or maybe it has too much adware?
 
Also, CPUs rarely just 'die' from normal use. Unless you overclock/volt, it should last a hearty 5-6 years. I have a PII-450 as a server at my house, and it still runs fine after I bought it in '99. Note: it has been running constantly or near-constantly since I got it. I have come to believe that HDD's last longer when they are on 24/7, but fans do not (I've gone through 3 fans, but have never had to replace the main HDD)
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Heh... In my school they have machines with Motorola MC68000 CPU... Since the day they were first set up, they have been running steadily 12 hours a day, five days a week... And they are older than most of the lab assistants...
 
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