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March 9, 2005
SETI @ Home
I've been a SETI@home processor for about two years now. I first started on a very old, very slow computer. A computer that took 48 hours to process one work-packet.
When I bought my new computer last year (Shortly after Unicornucopia.org started claiming bandwidth) I plugged SETI back on the machine. I was quite surprised to find that a machine with 10 times the processor and 4 times the RAM processed packets at a mere 27 hours.
Over the last week and a half, I haven't been able to connect to the SETI servers so I went to their website to determine if my software was out of date or if something else was going on.
The first thing I discover is that they have been suffering random, unexplained, power-outages during the evening hours when no one is there to gracefully shut them down. The second thing I discover is that the program has started functioning on a new client platform called BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing). It is basically a single interface that allows a user to run all of Berkeley's distributed Computing projects via a single client, and participate in multiple projects at the same time.
The Third thing I discover is that SETI no longer knows who I am. None of the Email addresses I've used over the last 4 years seem to ring a bell with it, and my Client indicates I'm logged in as '.'. So I've been sending workunits back and no one knows who's responsible. Hopefully I'm not the one who discovered signs of alien life :).
So I download the new client. It is considerably larger than the 'Classic' client in terms of Disk Space (6 Meg and change compared to the less than 0.5 Meg) required.
But I am now processing work units in about 3 hours. Part of this is a result of the clients functionality to determine the capabilities of the host computer and send packets appropriate to the machine. But part of it, I'm sure, is some hidden bit of code that makes it work better.
See, my wife runs SETI classic on her machine. Which has half the RAM and less CPU available than mine.
And it processes packets in about 3 hours as well.
The only difference is that her machine is an XP home machine, and mine runs XP Pro.
Wierd.
Anyway, if you're the type that likes to leave your computer on all the time, then you, too, can help the scientific community.
The BOINC Website has all the details.
Oh - and the screen saver itself has been updated and is much nicer, using OGL 3D Graphics.
Posted by Shannon on March 9, 2005 9:30 PM
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