Grid Computing
Well, I pretty much have all of my computers setup with the new BOINC client and connected to the Seti@Home project. Seti is used to search for alien communication from space with data gathered from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. My Mac G3 can’t support it with the version of Mac OS X that I have installed on it. On top of that, the Mac is giving me a few problems by loading up firefox instead of showing my system. (What gives?)
Anyhow, most of the seti services services appears to have just come online today (specifically the scheduler) after a week of downtime. My clients were finally able to connect and identify themselves on the project. Oddly enough, each computer that I have shows up with duplicate entries.
Due to the large amount of traffic, I am having trouble downloading anything from seti with boinc. The statistics on the seti@home project were pretty high today as many overdue work units from other clients were returned for credits.
In the mean time, I have joined up with the Einstein@Home project. I figure that I’ll at least have my computers do something with there idle time. Einstein looks for spinning neutron stars. Data is collected from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (LIGO) here in the states. Data is also collected from the GEO 600 Gravitational wave Observatory over in Germany. As with the seti project, I found that the Einstein project also had a team called “Computer Sciences Corporation“. I joined the team but I will not show up as an active member until my pending credits are granted. You take a look at my einstein@home profile for some information about my participation.
I tried a project called climateprediction.net that downloaded a large amount of files. It is used to predict weather conditions. The work unit was so large, that my boinc client estimated that it would be completed within 60 days. Most of the einstein@home work units take 5 hours on my machine. I stopped the climateprediction.net project and deleted it.
There are many other boinc projects too, but so far Einstein is the most accessable for me. Hopefully seti will work itself out soon. Two other well known project appear to be
LHC@Home and Predictor@Home.
Tags: SETI, BOINC, SETI@Home, Science, Aliens, Super Computers, Distributed Computing, Einstein@Home, Installations, Space, Stars, Observatories, Gravity, Radio Telescopes, Arecibo, Puerto Rico, Weather, Einstein, Grid Computing
September 1st, 2005 at 1:17 am
I took Seti of mine because I was having trouble with my laptop. Eventually, the motherboard died.. and, after six weeks got it back today. Maybe I should put Seti back on and assume it had nothing to do with my problems.
September 1st, 2005 at 2:09 am
I used to have it on my old pentium 100 Mhz laptop. The thing heated up and I’m afraid to keep it running for too long. I think now they have plugins that let you set it up to only use 50% of the CPU so it doesnt’ overheat.