Distributed Computing

[bfrikken]

Does anyone take part in any of these projects. I'm currently running this one:

http://folding.stanford.edu/


The quick and dirty... Is you run their client software on your machine. In this case it furthers efforts in protein folding in hopes of helping find a cure in major diseases such as cancer, alzheimers, etc.

Basically, the software runs in the background without stealing cpu cycles. It runs at a lesser priority and only uses available cycles.

I've read articles reviewing system performance, specifically for the intesive gamers. And they determined that it was not affecting performance.

[25]

I used to do seti, don't really do anything anymore.

[jspelbring]

Folding

I ran SETI long ago on my Linux boxes. I tried out the folding client on OS X for awhile, but I haven't looked at it lately.

[bfrikken]

yeah, i've seen info on the SETI project. Had no interest in it, but saw this as an interesting project.

[Stan]

Used to run SETI and a couple other programs, until I started looking at CPU temperatures and decided I didn't need the extra heat during the warmer months...

[SwingKing]

I've been running this one for a couple years now. I always leave the computer itself on, so I like the idea of it actually doing something useful most of the time.

Another interesting approach is the BOINC framework created at Berkeley. Seti@home uses this now and it lets you choose between a number of projects to support. My server machine splits its idle time between Seti@home and Rosetta@home (another protein folding project).

I figure it costs a little extra in energy costs (computer, cooling, etc.) but I think its worth it.

-- Ken

[rosesunkist]

I have been running SETI as my screensaver for about 7 years now. But the past year I have had SETI running 24/7 on my laptop. I am pretty surprised that my laptop has been running constantly for this long, being that it is aN HP. I never really had much confidence in HP. Well, the CPU fan stopped working after 7 months and the CD burner has issues and sometimes it won't even find CDs. But other than that it has been good, considering running at 100% for so long. Even with me playing my games, I rarely notice a lag from SETI. Takes me 3 hours to run a data set on my laptop, but only 1.5hr on my home PC. The extra memory really makes a huge difference. At first my PC had 512mb PC2100, took 8 hours! Upgraded to 1GB PC 3200 for 1.5 hr a set.

I want to run all of the @home programs. They are all useful and the possibilities are nearly endless if they are proved to actually work and get real world results.