What is the appeal?

MikeHiow

MikeHiow

MikeHiow

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I do not mean this in a facetious manner, but what is the appeal of things like SETI and Folding@Home etc?

It is a genuine curiosity, and I'm sat here trying to figure it out, and to me it seems like an expensive hobby (Must use a lot of electricity!) with little reward?
 
Everyone has different reasons, these are 3 main reasons why I do distributed computing.

1) The science - by doing this you are actively contributing to help find cures for diseases, space research, predicting climate change etc. Some people give money to charity, I prefer this as it's hands on and I also enjoy the other 2 reasons.

2) Community - you won't find a friendlier part of the forum than here, there is some great banter and competitiveness as we try to move up the ranks within the team and banding together as a whole to take on other teams and compete in events.

3) The gear - There are very few things that actually need you to build a top of the line system, by crunching you really are making the most of your machine - how many people on here have i7s to browse the web and play the odd game? With DC the challenge is to build the most cost effective powerful crunching machine that is stable 24/7, even under constant load. I love building rigs and this gives me a good reason too. :)

edit: It can be expensive as you want it to be, some people just use there spare cpu cycles while they've got the machine on for other tasks which they would have done anyway. The more enthusiastic among us will build dedicated rigs, but there is no minimum level, anyone can contribute any amount.
 
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Great explanation - that makes things a little clearer.

Have any of you worked out the energy consumption (and thus cost) between say your machines sitting idle vs. at 100% 24/7?
 
I have energy efficient light bulbs everywhere :D

Also if you have rigs folding 24/7 you often don't need any heating on which compensates a bit as well.

But yes, I've got plug in and at the mains power monitors (just got a free new one from n-power actually!), on average I use about 20kWh per day, according to n-power a family with 2 kids uses 14kWh; there are 3 adults in my house so it's not that much over.

Both my rigs have other uses as well, one is a server and the other is the general use rig. They also like I said contribute towards the heating, and I have a tariff that is very cheap leccy (8.44p).

I try not to work out the cost per year though :p
 
I've never looked at the power consumption figures comparing it to idle, I do it for the science and to make the most of my CPU/GPU as they spend a lot of time idle/not fully utilized.
 
Motivations

Are we alone

I will never accept the argument that we are the only forms of life in the universe, be it intelligent or non intelligent.

Our future is in the stars

Our time on this planet is not infinate, billions of years in the future, when our Sun bloats up into a red giant, it will expand to consume the Earth’s orbit.
All the oceans will evaporate and life will no longer be possible here.
Of course thats a heck of a long time left and I could do what most people do and just carry on watching Eastenders and not worry about it.

Rewards ?

Of course there are no financial benefits but you do get great satisfaction from knowing that you have contributed to the science in question.
Actual discoveries are attributed to the user as recently happened on Einstein@home where an American and a German user were credited with finding a new Pulsar.
Then theres the fun bit, the inter team competition, it never ceases to amaze me how this little team holds its own against entire countries like China :D

The costs

During Seti Classic (which finished in 2005) I wasnt that well off and my output reflected that.
Now I'm at a point in my life were I can afford to spend more money on it.
Last time I checked I had the 5th most powerful host in the world.
I do find this amusing as I only use old tech :D
But there is a price to pay, estimated £35 to £40 per week in electricity. (3 pc's and a laptop)
 
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I fold to help find the cure for cancer that killed off some family members :)

I do all I can to help/make that happen.
 
I am in it for the community aspect more than anything. Though the science of Folding@Home is also very important.

As has been stated, some people give money to charity. Now while I fully believe most charities use the money wisely, there are many who probably waste most of what they get on pointless administration and on advertising that doesn't work, and not on what the charity is actually about.

With Folding@Home we are taking part in actual experiments and modelling. It is a very minute part, but taken together it quickly adds up. Folding@Home currently has around 5.6 native PetaFLOPS of horsepower. That is almost twice what the worlds fastest super computer operates at. Plus that number is always increasing!

The reward I get from Folding is knowing I am helping further science. There is also the competitive side of things. Nothing better than issuing parps and stomps! :D

As for the cost of Folding, or other distributed projects, it is no more or less what you would spend on any hobby. We strive to get the best PPD per Watt or PPD per £, or just go insane and buy an SR-2 setup! :p Gamers will regularly buy the latest GPU for the sake of a few extra FPS. At least we're doing it for the science - even if only by accident! The cost of running these machines is not particularly high, unless you have several.

Personally I probably use less electricity overall than the average non-foldy/seti/climaty type person. The reason being that my PC is my PC [duh!], hi-fi, TV, DVD/BluRay player and gaming machine. And I never need the heating on in my room!

Also, you will probably never see a more stable collection of OC'd CPUs and GPUs than on your average bonkers F@H team. I have found over the years that F@H is far more telling of CPU stability than IntelBurn Test and Prime95.

All in all, there is a lot to this distributed computing malarky and the reasons for doing it range from the science, the community or just the good old-fashioned urge to buy shiny things!
 
SiriusB said:
.....Also, you will probably never see a more stable collection of OC'd CPUs and GPUs than on your average bonkers F@H team. I have found over the years that F@H is far more telling of CPU stability than IntelBurn Test and Prime95....
Click to expand...

I tend to agree here :) whilst i can complete prime or Burn test @ 4.6ghz it wont fold stable for even an hour before i get BSOD.

Most reliable folding speed is 4.2 ghz @1.34v on an i3 under water colling with max temps hitting 48oC :p
 
dekez said:
Also if you have rigs folding 24/7 you often don't need any heating on which compensates a bit as well.
Click to expand...

This is actually the dominant reason for me right now. I'm living up in the loft which can get bloody freezing! My PC is currently an extremely efficient space heater, with the advantage of doing some climate simulations at the same time.
 
To help the science and maybe be part of something thats much bigger than us, the odds must be billions of times higher than winning the lottery but if i were a gambling man i would go for the long shot nearly everytime.

The spirit of the cross project goings on that spring up from time to time, the humour and the help at all hours of the day and sometimes night.
I mean where else could you be discussing an immense scientific project one minute then be faced with a run on "old spanky" the next.
It's a right good little corner of the internet, i feel comfy and at home so i'm here for the long haul, why don't you join us MikeHiow?

Like anything else it might be abit of a pain to fathom but with all the help in the world at hand you'll soon get a taste for it :)
 
I used to do seti on GPU and WCG on CPU

Just do WCG at the moment, not sure if ocuk have a team for that.
If/when I resume Seti I will join the ocuk team.

I think of it as my monthly charity donation, by helping in a small way to medical research, I rotate which ones I do.
 
Well myself i do it because i have a disabaled son and to this date i have never had a full diagnosis of what is wrong with him.
He is now seven and still i cant say exactly what he has.
Im hoping some of the unused cycles of my systems will some day help myself and other parents/loved one's/familiy members etc understand exactly what the friend, son/daughter etc is suffering from and how if anything medical science can do to help aliviate/cure or make their's and their carers lives better.

As part of the experince of helping science there is the healthy inter team competition of who is helping the most AKA PPD
Also within each group/Forum etc there is also the healthy compitition of trying to be the most contrabutive group/forum by being the top of the helpful producers league.

Now that i have an Xbox 360 i do not always use my pc exclusivley for playing games as i did a couple of years ago. so now running F@H makes more sense as i run my systems 24/7.
So when im not using them to say play a game that the xbox cant do justice too or surfing my various forums etc the exta cycles of my cpu and various video cards are made use of by helping science.
lets face it my most upto date video card is a 9800GX2 which ive had repalced twice under warranty

ive recently bought an AMD Phenom II X6 processor for both F@H and being able to use my system for surffing etc with less effect on my F@H oputput.
Also there are a few games coming out for the pc i would like to try without to much impact on my production of F@H
 
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