I've just started SETI@home and have quite a few questions:

1. If I add multiple projects like SETI@home and Einstein@home would the amount of calculations done for SETI@home be less now that I am also running Einstein@home, or can I add as many projects as I want without affecting the calculation time.

2. What exactly are tasks?

3. Tasks are done automatically. Correct?

4. How do you know when a task has been verified?

5. How long does it take for a task to be verified?

6. Can you add more tasks or do you receive them automatically?

7. Do you only receive credit once a task has been verified?

8. When you go into advance view there is a heading titled, "Transfers". What are those?

9. When on the simple view at the bottom of the screen there is something that says, "Work done for this project". What is this work?

10. How do you gain more work?

11. What is RAC?

12. How do you receive more RAC?

13. What are teams about?

14. What are the advantages of joining a team?

15. How do you join a team?

Thanks a lot for the help.

1. If I add multiple projects like SETI@home and Einstein@home would the amount of calculations done for SETI@home be less now that I am also running Einstein@home, or can I add as many projects as I want without affecting the calculation time.

BOINC honors a resource share setup by you, the user. If you give SETI a resource share of 100 and Einstein a resource share of 100, BOINC will attempt to split the amount of credit crunched for each project a 50/50 split. Since BOINC works on a debt system, this 50/50 split will work much more like a pendulum rather than an even split.

This has no bearing on calculation time, but rather an aggregate amount of CPU/GPU time.

2. What exactly are tasks?

Tasks are the pieces of work a project sends you to be mathematically "crunched".

3. Tasks are done automatically. Correct?

Yes. They are received automatically and their results are returned automatically.

4. How do you know when a task has been verified?

Depending on the project, not all tasks need to be verified. Here at SETI@home, each task is sent out to at least two users. If the results closely match, then they are considered "verified" and each user is given credit. If the results do not closely match, another workunit is sent out as a tie breaker of sorts. This will keep happening until there are approximately 10 re-sends (I've never seen that happen yet).

5. How long does it take for a task to be verified?

Again, assuming we're talking about SETI@home, it completely depends on many different factors: how long your quorum partner leaves their computer on; how many times the workunit needs to be sent out; if the quorum partner never returns, etc. On average, most work is verified within weeks if not days. But it isn't unheard of for some work to go on for over six months of re-sends.

6. Can you add more tasks or do you receive them automatically?

BOINC will automatically download enough work to keep each CPU/GPU busy in your system. If you want to hold a cache for extra tasks, you can set that in your preferences. BOINC will then attempt to keep your cache full.

7. Do you only receive credit once a task has been verified?

Correct.

8. When you go into advance view there is a heading titled, "Transfers". What are those?

That allows you to see any pending downloads from a project or uploads to a project. If it is empty, you have nothing pending, which is a good thing. If you have a backlog of pending tasks to be downloaded or uploaded, it either means a traffic jam on the servers or on your ISP.

9. When on the simple view at the bottom of the screen there is something that says, "Work done for this project". What is this work?

Those are your total credits for the project selected.

10. How do you gain more work?

By completing more tasks.

11. What is RAC?

Recent Average Credit. It is a 4 week decaying average of the amount of work you do per day.

12. How do you receive more RAC?

By completing more tasks.

13. What are teams about?

For competition.

14. What are the advantages of joining a team?

Allows you to compete against other teams.

15. How do you join a team?

Find a team you like and if you are not a member, you will see a button that reads something to the effect of "Join team".

Alright, thanks much for all of the answers.