Soldato
- Joined
- 19 Jan 2005
- Posts
- 2,729
- Location
- Oxford/Bristol
(A Bit) Beyond B0rkley....The Wider World of BOINC
Thanks for all the positive comments about Issue 1 of the BOINC newsletter. It’s very much appreciated. I’ve decided to start Issue 2 with a quick catch up on what’s happening over at the first and mightiest of BOINC projects – Seti@Home…
Seti@Home
For a while it seemed like the whole point of SETI – Searching for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence – had been forgotten, as the team spent all their time fighting bugs and crashes in barely sufficient hardware and trying to supply the vocal hordes of rabid crunchers with enough work to keep them satisfied. I admit I became so despondant with the lack of progress on the search (or at least news of it) that I’ve directed most of my flops towards more deserving (IMO, of couse) projects.
Things have changed a bit since the new year though. There are new, more modern servers:
- sidious: Intel Server (3 x dual core 3GHz Xeon, 16 GB RAM)
- thumper: Sun Fire X4500 (2 dual-core 2.6GHz Opteron, 8 GB RAM)
- bruno: Intel Server (2 x 2.8GHz Xeon, 12 GB RAM)
Which are helping to keep work flowing well enough (still problems a plenty that can be read about in the Technical News, which now has it’s own message board) that there are some updates on progress in the search for possible alien signals.
Firstly there is the science status page. which keeps a total of spikes, gaussians, pulses and triplets recorded as well as the number of WU’s and results held in the master science DB. It also shows the status of the data collection hardware at the Arecibo radio telescope.
A note at the top proclaims that the science status page is still ‘vastly under contruction’ and links to Future Plans. I suggest everyone reads it (it’s short after all) but here’s the gist. There’s a brief description of the more sensitive Seti Enhanced app, a description of the multibeam recorder which will ‘listen’ to more channels simultaneously and a bit about Astropulse (yes it still might happen), a project which interrogates Seti data in a different way to look for evidence of natural phenomena such as pulsars. The really crucial section in my opinion is in the Neartime Persistency Checking paragraph, namely:
Hell, if it works I might even start crunching SETI seriously again.
Finally a word on The Planetary Society (TPS). There is lots of SETI information on this site (in the early days they provided most of the funding), including the progress of Optical SETI. This article on searching skies in the southern hemisphere using clouds of gas that act as natural ‘MASERS’ (I’m not convinced this is technically the correct term) is well worth a read too.
Rosetta@Home
Recent updates mean new screensaver graphics (See screenies below) and added support for predicting RNA structures. There are also plans for using the algorithm to design molecules for use in carbon sequestration. I believe this is called thinking outside of the box by our transatlantic chums and British upper management.
Take a look at the short video made by the R@H team on Youtube. It contains a nice description of the transcription process (which is of course entirely relevant to Folding, Predictor and other protein structure prediction projects) and description of the Rosetta screensaver.
Predictor@Home
Three batches of test units are being crunched to test whether the new dTasser app will require homogenous redundancy or not. ie WU's being sent out more than once and a quorum reached by validation. One set requires 512MB of RAM, the second requires 1GB and the third requires 1.5GB
I assume such beefy requirements will be rewarded with equally beefy credit awards, but this won't be confirmed until dTasser is out of Beta.Leiden Classical
The new app with the crlib library (5.42) has been declared stable and it looks as if the validation problem has been laid to rest.
Maybe with the guarantee of credits at the end we'll see more of the dedicated credit chasers joining up.Also a Java app has been released allowing anyone to construct and release their own work for crunching. The biggest bug in it so far?.....doesn't work with Vista.
WEP M+2
Do you like new projects? Do you like to search for big numbers that mathematicians think are special in some way? Well here’s good news for you then. You can sign up to WEP M+2.
OK, so what does it do?
There is very little information on the project’s BOINC portal apart from that the project is in alpha and account creation is enabled. There are no forums or FAQ and it looks like there are only Mac and Linux clients for now.
A bit of clicking about turned up this page with a bit more info, including:
That explains the M+2. I’m guessing WEP isn’t Wireless Encryption Protocol in this instance, but then again it might be. Very cryptic.
Team Progress:
12/03/07 to 23/03/07
SIMAP AND QMC are missing from the graphic because the team name is slightly different. If Chrislip, who founded those teams, could synch them up our overall total will get a nice little boost. If anyone spots any others that are missing shout below.
Any and all comments, suggestions and feedback are eagerly received, so remember to hit reply and add to any discussion below.
Happy crunching everyone.
Honwards and Hupwards,
Stew
Most recent version of BOINC Client is 5.8.15. for Windows, Mac and Linux.
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ABC@Home, BOINC Alpha Test, BURP, Chess960@Home, Climate Prediction(CPDN), DepSpid, Einstein@Home, Leiden Classical, LHC@Home, Malaria Control, Nano-Hive@Home, Orbit@Home, Predictor@Home, Primegrid@Home, Proteins@Home, QMC@Home, RALPH@Home, Rectilinear Crossing Number, RenderFarm@Home, Rieselsieve, Rosetta@Home, SETI@Home, SETI@Home and Astropulse Beta, Simap@Home, SpinHenge@Home, STZAKI Desktop Grid, Tanpaku, TMRL Rainbow Table Generator, WEP M+2, World Community Grid, XtremLab,
Archive
Issue 1
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