SETI@home's transition to BOINC

SETI@home is switching to BOINC, a platform for distributed computing. There are now two separate projects:

SETI@home Classic (the original)
SETI@home/BOINC (the new one)

These projects are doing the same scientific work, though SETI@home/BOINC will evolve to do new science.

Each project has its own account database. Some BOINC accounts are linked to a Classic account, and show the work done (results, CPU hours) by that Classic account.

NOTE: your Classic account will be linked to your BOINC account only if your Classic account has a valid email address (i.e. one where you can receive email) before the final cutover date (see below).

SETI@home en BOINC

Esta versión de SETI@home está basada en BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing). Otros proyectos además de SETI@home usan BOINC. BOINC te permite participar en más de un proyecto y te permite especificar que fracción de tiempo de tu ordenador quieres utilizar en cada proyecto.

Comparándolo con el original 'SETI@home Classic', encontrarás varias diferencias en el nuevo SETI@home basado en BOINC:

Múltiples aplicaciones

BOINC permite ejecutar a los proyectos más de un tipo de programa en tu ordenador. Las nuevas versiones de los programas se descargan automáticamente. SETI@home planea usar esta caracterísitca para realizar nuevos tipos de análisis de radio señales, buscando pulsos en la banda ancha que puedan evidenciar vida extraterrestre, agujeros negros o púlsares rápidos.

Crédito variable por unidad de trabajo

BOINC asigna una cantidad variable de créditos por unidad de trabajo completada, basado en la velocidad de tu CPU y en el tiempo de CPU usado.

Suministro finito de trabajo

Cada unidad de trabajo es procesada un numero limitado de veces (habitualmente dos). Cuando no tenemos trabajo para tu ordenador recibirás un mensaje de 'no hay trabajo disponible'. Te animamos a que participes en otros proyectos basados en BOINC; así, cuando SETI@home no tenga trabajo, tu ordenador se mantendrá ocupado realizando otras investigaciones científicas.

Preferencias altamente configurables

Dispones de más control sobre cómo será usado tu ordenador: por ejemplo, puedes limitar el espacio de disco duro usado, el ancho de banda de red dedicado y las horas de trabajo. También puedes controlar la cantidad de trabajos que tu ordenador descargará cada vez que se conecte a nuestro servidor. Estas 'preferencias' son administradas usando un interfaz basado en web y son automáticamente aplicadas a todos los ordenadores en los que ejecutes SETI@home.

Gráficos basados en OpenGL

Los gráficos de SETI@home tienen ahora una moderna apariencia 3-D. Cuando se ejecutan en una ventana puedes usar tu ratón para rotar y hacer zoom sobre ellos. Incluso puedes personalizar los gráficos usando un interfaz basado en web.

Código abierto

El código fuente tanto de %sSETI@home%s como de %sBOINC%s está disponible. Si tienes un tipo de ordenador poco común o te gusta compilar las cosas tú mismo por cuestiones de seguridad, puedes seguir usando SETI@home.

Transition timetable

The plan for the transition is as follows:

14 May 2004

We made a 'snapshot' of Classic user information (accounts, teams, profiles) and used it to initialize the SETI@home/BOINC database. A BOINC account must be 'validated' (by responding to an email sent to the account's email address) before it can be used. The BOINC accounts created at this time remain linked to the Classic account, even if the email address of either account is changed.

22 June 2004

We made SETI@home/BOINC available for general use.

16 March 2005

We updated the BOINC database with current information from Classic. Classic accounts created since 14 May 2004 were linked to the BOINC account having the same email address, if it existed; otherwise a new BOINC account was created with that email address (see technical details below).

To be announced

Account creation is disabled on Classic.

To be announced

We stop creating workunits for Classic.

To be announced (1 April 2005 or later)

We turn off the data server for Classic. Classic will no longer send workunits or accept results. Functions to update account information are disabled. We update the BOINC account database with current information from SETI@home Classic one final time. At this point the Classic statistics are frozen (though we may continue to eliminate 'cheaters').

Questions and answers

Why is SETI@home switching to BOINC?

Several reasons:

Other distributed computing projects are also using BOINC, and you can share your computer time among projects of your choosing. We strongly encourage you to participate in other projects, since then your computer will do useful work even when SETI@home's servers are down or have no work.
BOINC lets us release new versions of SETI@home's applications without requiring you to download and install new software. It will make it easy for us to integrate new algorithms, such as analyzing our 8 bit/sample reobservation data, or looking for other types of radio signals such as short broadband pulses.
BOINC has a more flexible data architecture than SETI@home Classic. Data can be transferred to and from multiple servers, and can remain resident on PC disks. In the future, we'll use these capabilities to search for ET signals in a much larger radio frequency range.
BOINC distributes work based on host parameters. Work units requiring 512 MB of RAM, for example, will only be sent to hosts having at least that much RAM. This lets us use BOINC for a wider range of computations than the 'one size fits all' SETI@home Classic.

Can I run both versions at once?

If you do this, SETI@home/BOINC won't get any CPU time because it runs at a lower priority. We recommend that you uninstall SETI@home Classic before running SETI@home/BOINC.

What will happen to my workunit totals?

BOINC projects can have workunits of many different lengths, so BOINC keeps track of your computer's work in terms of actual computation performed rather than number of workunits.

Because of this change, BOINC accounts will have separate old and new work totals. The old total is the workunit total from Classic. It won't change, and a section of our web site will show the final leaderboards based on old work totals. New work unit totals will start from zero.

What will happen with SETI@home teams?

All Classic teams, and their membership, were copied over to BOINC on May 14 2004.

What SETIQueue (and related programs) still work?

These programs, which have been very useful with Classic, won't work with BOINC. But some of their functions can be performed by other means:

The buffering of multiple work units is provided by the BOINC client itself - you can specify how much work your computer should get each time it contacts the server.
Hosts that are not directly connected to the Internet, but share a LAN with one that is, can participate in BOINC using an HTTP 1.0 proxy such as Squid for Unix or FreeProxy for Windows.
Hosts that have no network connection currently cannot participate in BOINC. A solution may be developed in the future.

What platforms will be supported?

BOINC supports Windows/X86, Linux/X86, Solaris/SPARC, and Mac OS X.

Can I run multiple instances on a multiprocessor?

Yes, but it's not necessary; BOINC, by default, uses all the host's processors.

Will the format of input and output files change?

Yes. The new format is XML-like (though not legal XML). Programs that display information about the signals found in SETI@home work units will need to be modified to support the new formats. Information about file formats and network communication is here. Work unit and result files will be about the same size as now.

Is BOINC secure?

Public distributed computing involves many security issues, involving threats to both participants and projects. Some of these are discussed here. BOINC uses a mechanism called 'digital signing' to ensure that downloaded executable code is valid.

Technical details

Account records in the Classic database include name, email address, URL, etc.; they also have an integer ID.
Account records in the BOINC database have the above fields, plus fields 'seti_id', 'seti_nresults', and 'seti_total_cpu'. If this account is linked to a Classic account, these fields contain the ID and work totals of that account.

The database update of March 16 2005 worked as follows.

    for each Classic account X
        if there is a BOINC account Y linked to X
            if Y is validated
                update Y.seti_nresults and Y.seti_total_cpu
            else if there is a BOINC account Z with Z.email = X.email
                link Z to X
        else
            if there is a BOINC account Z with Z.email = X.email
                link Z to X
            else
                create a new BOINC account with email = X.email,
                and link it to X