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Boinc lets you help cutting-edge science research using your computer

boinc.berkeley.edu

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Re: Boinc lets you help cutting-edge science research using your computer

#71

Post by redundantly »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #52
_trampeltier wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seti@home started a long long time ago, when computer used the same amount of power, if they worked hard or if the computer was idle. That's why they started as screensaver, it did just not matter.

Yes, I remember. But even then we knew full well the chance of identifying anything via SETI was minute. We were looking at a sliver of a sliver of a sliver of what's out there. A tiny office full of grad students could have come up with a dozen more useful ways to use that many distributed computing cycles, say for medical research. Not only folding@home: imagine what a Wolfram or a Knuth would have achieved with al…

If you're this salty about SETI being a waste Of computing cycles, wait till you learn about bitcoin.

Re: Boinc lets you help cutting-edge science research using your computer

#72

Post by two_handfuls »

wolverine876 wrote: post #61
junon wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electronics do not move the needle at all when it comes to climate impact (in terms of heat dissipation). It's where the electricity is sourced that's the problem.

I understand that; I didn't express my question clearly: Given the electricity used, how efficient are (Boinc + my desktop) at generating heat? For example, is it equally efficient to use Boinc + Desktop to warm my office as it is to use a space heater, or electrical radiated heat?

It’s 100% efficient. All of the power is transformed into heat.

Re: Boinc lets you help cutting-edge science research using your computer

#73

Post by unsupp0rted »

redundantly wrote: post #71
unsupp0rted wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I remember. But even then we knew full well the chance of identifying anything via SETI was minute. We were looking at a sliver of a sliver of a sliver of what's out there. A tiny office full of grad students could have come up with a dozen more useful ways to use that many distributed computing cycles, say for medical research. Not only folding@home: imagine what a Wolfram or a Knuth would have achieved with al…

If you're this salty about SETI being a waste Of computing cycles, wait till you learn about bitcoin.

It's weird people keep comparing this to Bitcoin.

That's like "Oh our best & brightest sunk years and billions into a known-bad type of Alzheimers research? Wait till you hear about Pets.com"

Re: Boinc lets you help cutting-edge science research using your computer

#74

Post by mjochim »

agilob wrote: post #42
ianlevesque wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wait until you hear about Bitcoin

Just wait until you hear about most ecommerce platforms doing `SELECT * FROM` just to display 2 columns.

Even more interesting is the software that does SELECT * FROM just to display two rows.

Re: Boinc lets you help cutting-edge science research using your computer

#75

Post by samatman »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #52
_trampeltier wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seti@home started a long long time ago, when computer used the same amount of power, if they worked hard or if the computer was idle. That's why they started as screensaver, it did just not matter.

Yes, I remember. But even then we knew full well the chance of identifying anything via SETI was minute. We were looking at a sliver of a sliver of a sliver of what's out there. A tiny office full of grad students could have come up with a dozen more useful ways to use that many distributed computing cycles, say for medical research. Not only folding@home: imagine what a Wolfram or a Knuth would have achieved with al…

What makes you think there would have been a folding@home without SETI@home?

Re: Boinc lets you help cutting-edge science research using your computer

#76

Post by underlogic »

mycologos wrote: post #65
underlogic wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look if they want funding for their for profit venture they should just ask for your credit card number then go spend on AWS where the hardware is modern and the energy is efficiently used. But if they were upfront and asked directly for peoples hard earned money in exchange for nothing every sane human would say no, so there's this racket called boinc where they trick you into giving them your money indirectly and t…

The insistence in both of your comments that the people at Boinc are not only taking advantage of people but "laugh[ing] at them" is odd. Why must your boogeyman be as unlikeable as possible?

Well touché yes the truth is somewhere in the middle

Re: Boinc lets you help cutting-edge science research using your computer

#77

Post by samatman »

wolverine876 wrote: post #61
junon wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electronics do not move the needle at all when it comes to climate impact (in terms of heat dissipation). It's where the electricity is sourced that's the problem.

I understand that; I didn't express my question clearly: Given the electricity used, how efficient are (Boinc + my desktop) at generating heat? For example, is it equally efficient to use Boinc + Desktop to warm my office as it is to use a space heater, or electrical radiated heat?

Thermodynamic efficiency is work/heat, so 0%.

But you want the heat, so it's ideal. Electricity goes in, heat comes out. One man's trash is another's treasure. The circle of life.

Re: Boinc lets you help cutting-edge science research using your computer

#78

Post by jhbadger »

ianlevesque wrote: post #69
KRAKRISMOTT wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SETI wasn't a waste of time don't have any good alternatives to it. Folding@home on the other hand probably could have been a lot more useful if they were training transformers on their results instead of just doing pure protein dynamics simulations.

Folding@Home predates the ML approaches to protein folding. Just because it has been eclipsed now doesn’t mean it wasn’t worthwhile.

Well, it predates the deep-learning ML approaches to protein folding like Alphafold. But people have been applying ML methods to protein folding for decades -- that has long been the two camps in the protein-folding bioinformatics world -- whether the best way to get structures was to simulate what the protein was actually doing or if there was a computational shortcut.

Re: Boinc lets you help cutting-edge science research using your computer

#79

Post by squigz »

willquack wrote: post #59

Distributive DCP lets you compute other people's distributed research/workloads and get paid for it (no crypto involved). Compute workloads get run in secure js/wasm compute nodes (which could be your browser, or a screensaver, etc). For instance, my friend built a Blender cycles renderer using it It's cool tech continuing the awesome legacy of BOINC! I work at Distributive, AMA if you're curious

I browsed the website but was unable to find any information on how much credits are worth

Re: Boinc lets you help cutting-edge science research using your computer

#80

Post by ac29 »

s0rce wrote: post #8
gausswho wrote: post #7

Before there was the mining of bitcoins, there was BOINC. Where your spare computing cycles helped cure cancer, find aliens, solve mathematical proofs. And then self-interest trumped altruism.

I've commented this previously but I think the major impact to these applications was that CPUs more effectively idle themselves and reduce the fan speeds. Previously there was no noticeable impact with the PC running 100% all the time. Now the fan will go crazy compared to sitting idle. Not to mention there are computers that basically can't run 100% without some sort of duty cycle to cool back down and they will th…

You can use runtime power limits to put yourself pretty much anywhere on the performance-efficiency curve you want, within thermal limits. Reducing the power limit will reduce heat/fan noise and can improve perf/watt.

On Linux, see: https://github.com/powercap/powercap

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