Join the ReCom BOINC team!

[qedx]

UPDATE Thu Dec 14, 2006

http://www.boincstats.com/signature/team_97120.gif

Go to BOINCstats (http://www.boincstats.com/stats/boinc_team_graph.php?pr=bo&id=97120) for more detailed team stats

It has been a while since I ran BOINC (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/) and I guess I just wanted to get the thing started again. Just get a client for your OS (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php) and join any of the projects. It basically uses your computer's idle time to do calculations.

There are Recom.org teams for these projects:
Seti@<hidden> (http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/team_display.php?teamid=113329)
climateprediction (http://climateapps2.oucs.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/team_display.php?teamid=235)
Predictor@<hidden> (http://predictor.scripps.edu/team_display.php?teamid=3324)
Rosetta@<hidden> (http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/team_display.php?teamid=3365)
chess960@<hidden> (http://www.chess960athome.org/alpha/team_display.php?teamid=119)
Rectilinear Crossing Number Project (http://dist.ist.tugraz.at/cape5/team_display.php?teamid=67)
These are projects that I am interested in at the moment. Of course you're free to create teams in other projects that interest you. Just fire me an email/PM so that I can update the list (Make sure you name the team ReCom.org).

You can also get a stats graphic for your projects here (http://boinc.mundayweb.com/).

Further reading:
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boinc)

-----------ORIGINAL POST-----------
BOINC stands for Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. It's sort of like a platform that enables multiple networked computing projects to run on a same computer. More info on that here http://homepage.mac.com/pauldbuck/site-boinc/faq/faq-over.html

Projects that use BOINC include SETI@<hidden> (http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/) and climateprediction.net (http://www.climateprediction.net/index.php). Since my computer is on most of the time downloading animes anyway, I figure why not heh. Might as well help science :P. I've already made teams for ReCom on both SETI@<hidden> and climateprediction so you're welcome to join me.

[masterof_none]

qedx, interesting project!. Tell us more about it , and how Recommers can form the team.

[luke]

I've tried one of those last summer ... it was GIMPS project, which stands for "The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search" ... someone introduced it here at recom (don't remember who but probably the thread is still somewhere here) ... anyway it was really easy to join; just install the program and let it run for the whole period you computer is on ..

but then, I got bored later ... actually when installed the program I was a bit insincere .. it was the $500,000 gift prize for those who find the next prime that attracted me ... and after having the program run for a couple of weeks I lost patience and ended up removing it from my pc ... that's what happened ...

anyway to end this crappy story of mine, let me tell you the moral of the story ... if you ever want to join any of those distributed computing projects, please be sincere about your intention .. don't be like me :) :)

[qedx]

I updated the original post with the latest information. Come and join me la /cry

[Schye]

Bump...

It sounds interesting but too bad I am not at home most of the time now
or should I let it run for the whole summer holidays?

[qedx]

if you want to go ahead! :lol:

[qedx]

I just added a new project: Rosetta@<hidden> The join url is here (http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/create_account_form.php?teamid=3365). Its goal is to develop methods that accurately predict and design protein structure and complexes, an endeavor that may ultimately help researchers develop cures for human diseases such as HIV/AIDS, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, malaria and many other diseases, because most diseases are manifested at the level of protein activity.

The project believes that they are getting closer to accurately predicting and designing protein structures and protein complexes, one of the "holy grails" of computational biology. This requires an enormous amount of computing resources, greater than the world's largest supercomputer. This is only achievable through a collective effort from volunteers. Rosetta researchers are relying on a technique known as distributed computing, which pools the resources of idle computers everywhere. The project already has ~70,000 active PCs (Jun-2006) for ~38 TeraFLOPS sustained cumulative processing power, but is still actively seeking new participants to reach the 150 TeraFLOPS computing speed mark.
And I see (http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/team_display.php?teamid=113329) some one has joined me in the Seti@<hidden> team! Welcome, joshuatj!

Also, if the stats image is only showing Rosetta@<hidden> stats don't worry. I just changed the team names in the other projects from ReCom to ReCom.org and it takes a while for the stats site to update. It'll show all the projects probably within 24 hours.

[Seiryu]

Looks fun. Though i don't know what i'm doing =P

Anyway i downloaded the BOINC and created the project SETI@<hidden> Why is the work done and avg. work still 0.00??

oh ok i get it. . .

Wow. . CPU usage 100% but it doesn't lag. . Cool.

[qedx]

Welcome, Seiryu! Yeah it is kinda fun, and most projects have cool screensavers, too.

About CPU utilization, yes BOINC uses 100% of your CPU to do its calculation, and the reason it doesn't noticably slow down your computer is that it only uses your CPUs "idle" time, meaning a BOINC project is assigned the lowest priority for your CPU. You really shouldn't notice any slowdown during normal usage. However if you're playing video games, you probably should suspend BOINC just to get every extra bit of juice for your game. Just remember to run it again afterwards :p

By the way, have you joined the ReCom.org team? If not, you can find the team page links back in the first post. Click on the appropriate project and you should find a link to "join" our team.

[Seiryu]

Yup i joined the team.

[joshuatj]

I've joined Recom.org team on SETI@<hidden>
But I see only qedx and me on the team.

[qedx]

The team page only shows the members that have completed work units and received credit. his name will show up once he gets the credits on his first work unit

[Shoblast]

I'll start once i get back to melbourne where i have my desktop.

No point getting it on a laptop when i won't use it most of the time when i get back.

I read of something like this in Google as well. Theirs uses computers to calculate protein properties, to find a cure for cancer or something.

[qedx]

yeah, that's folding@<hidden> they're not on BOINC yet. I hear that they are conducting beta tests for a BOINC client. that said, there are several projects currently on BOINC that are also dealing with folding proteins: Predictor@<hidden> and Rosetta@<hidden>

which is why I prefer using the BOINC platform to the different individual distributed computing platforms. you can choose which projects you want to contribute to, and still be part of a group.

[Seiryu]

Yay, my first credit! :lol:

[qedx]

congratulations! keep on going :D

[qedx]

I added another project: chess960@<hidden> (http://www.chess960athome.org/alpha/projectidea_english.php). It is about finding out the variations in the chess 960 chess variant (http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/Fischer_Random_Chess.html). Join the Recom.org team (http://www.chess960athome.org/alpha/team_display.php?teamid=119) in this project.

The work units seem to be very small, only 5-6 minutes on my computer. I'm not quite sure if this is a good or bad thing yet :lol:

[qedx]

Adding the Rectilinear Crossing Number Project (http://dist.ist.tugraz.at/cape5/team_display.php?teamid=67). More info at their info page (http://dist.ist.tugraz.at/cape5/why.html).

[jiinjoo]

anyway to end this crappy story of mine, let me tell you the moral of the story ... if you ever want to join any of those distributed computing projects, please be sincere about your intention .. don't be like me :) :)
Hahaha, funny I didn't know introduced BOINC on recom already. Here's the funny story from this Grid Asia 2007 (http://gridasia.ngp.org.sg/2007/) conference that I just attended last week. There was this "PC Install Fest" as they call it where they wanted all the participants to compete in who can garner the most score in doing rosetta folding thing. The top participant obviously gets some prize (some wine or something) and the top n participants gets a T-shirt. They prepared 30 T-shirts.

But here are the results: http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/team_display.php?teamid=5896

By the 2nd day there were only 3 participants, 1 of which was the organizer, and people have to coaxed to do it, and by the end of the event we got like 10 (today i check got 13). I guess this is precisely what luke mentioned about sincerity, or what the grid computing industry will call "poor man's cmoputing", or what academics called "unreliable computing resource", where people suka suka run, suka suka turn off etc.

So we all got a T-shirt. :)