so i have a question for you guys. just as a TEMPORARY measure, would seti be better off if some people quit crunching and instead donated the saving they see on their electricity bill to seti so they can get that gigabit pipe done? just thought i would throw that out there....

I don't think that would be a good idea. SETI needs our computer power and the cost to replace it by getting a supper computer is huge both in terms of hardware and power consumption. What we really can do is to get the people in charge "i.e politicians" to get some money to fund SETI.

Remember that whatever the government spends ultimately comes from the governed (i.e. Taxes!) so I'd just as soon they didn't.

We can all donate directly if we wish.

If work is not plentiful, and someone wants to save the power and donate the cache, I think it's a good idea.

I look at what I could spend on a cheap CUDA card or a months worth of power for another cruncher, and think "this money might be better spent at the server-end" and ship it off.

Donations are donations. If you can kick in clock cycles, that's good. They can also use money. If you can do both, that's very welcome.

Whatever you're comfortable with is fine.

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Maybe the Project should pay us based on credits instead ? ......OR JUST BE THANKFUL WITH WHAT THEY GET FROM US FOR FREE.

You might want to read this paper, particularly the goals under 2.1.

SETI has never been particularly well funded -- that means that projects like SETI@Home, the Allen Telescope, and others are always scraping for funds.

In other words, they can be thankful as can be, but still not have the money to keep the power on and staff operators at anything like a reasonable level.

SETI@Home is the flagship BOINC project mainly because of the (nearly nonexistent) funding. They're doing amazing work with hand-me-down servers and a short staff.

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Well, unfortunately, there aren't any other projects I want to share my time with unless I jump ship altogether and begin Folding@Home instead.

I am here to crunch Seti WU's....and nothing more.

If I was garunteed exclusive server useage, better support and an overall better experience as a user, I would be more than happy to donate money to the project and even pay a monthly subscription to be a part of it.

But untill the time comes when my semi-MONSTER cruncher stops being punished for being efficient and I stop being p1$$ed off all the time by all of the happy Pentium3 users that more or less are rewarded for being SLOW on the network - I will not donate a dime other than my computing resources.

Punishing the quickest makes the most sense - OBVIOUSLY, since after the Top 10% of users jump ship over to another project, Seti@Home will be stuck in the stone age with a stable of inneficient and OLD PCs that are not quick enough to get the job done in a timely fasion......meaning MORE money wasted by staff, because jobs take LONGER to accomplish than if people just pulled their heads out of the butts and realized that WE, the Top 10% are doing 90% of the work - so make it easier for us......NOT CHASE US AWAY.

Allan.

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I am TCP JESUS...The Carpenter Phenom Jesus....and HAMMERING is what I do best!
formerly known as...MC Hammer.

Well, unfortunately, there aren't any other projects I want to share my time with unless I jump ship altogether and begin Folding@Home instead.

I am here to crunch Seti WU's....and nothing more.

If I was garunteed exclusive server useage, better support and an overall better experience as a user, I would be more than happy to donate money to the project and even pay a monthly subscription to be a part of it.

But untill the time comes when my semi-MONSTER cruncher stops being punished for being efficient and I stop being p1$$ed off all the time by all of the happy Pentium3 users that more or less are rewarded for being SLOW on the network - I will not donate a dime other than my computing resources.

If the project runs out of money, it is absolutely guaranteed that we'll all run out of work.

If you want to spend money on hardware, and not put a dime toward making sure the project is here to send you work, well, that's your choice.

If you want to spend money, and then be "p1$$ed" because a project you won't help fund doesn't have the money to meet your expectations (and not their own commitments -- they say they'll have trouble, and they will run out of work), then I guess that's your choice too.

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If I was garunteed exclusive server useage, better support and an overall better experience as a user, I would be more than happy to donate money to the project and even pay a monthly subscription to be a part of it.

????

That's a bit like saying to a bank:

"I'm not going to put any money into a savings account until I can withdraw the cash I haven't put in yet, THEN I will save the money I have already withdrawn"

GOOD LUCK

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Flying high with Team Sicituradastra.

If I was garunteed exclusive server useage, better support and an overall better experience as a user, I would be more than happy to donate money to the project and even pay a monthly subscription to be a part of it.

????

That's a bit like saying to a bank:

"I'm not going to put any money into a savings account until I can withdraw the cash I haven't put in yet, THEN I will save the money I have already withdrawn"

GOOD LUCK

Error: Stack underflow.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

<snip>
Here's another a naive thought: Another savings could be if SETI detects it has more computation power than it needs (I don't know if this is ever the case) perhaps it can be configured to allow those systems to go idle so that the ones that are left on are run at 100% capacity. Or maybe it biases towards the newer, more efficient systems since the technology is constantly providing more MFLOPS/Watt, or simply refuses to run on systems that have especially poor MFLOPS/watt (get those gas guzzlers off the road!). Because as mentioned, it's not watts we're concerned about but possibly MFLOPs/watt.

Anyway... just a few thoughts.

Cheers,

Steven

I noticed my notebook would throttle up and down while processing seti wu's. Since then I'm made sure to change the settings to disable speed step on it.

As I found my notebook to have almost the same processing/per watt as my E8400 Core2Duo. Yes it's 5 times slower but used 5 times less power.

It would be great to see some power and benchmark numbers from some of those really low powered systems like the Atom or Via cpu machines. It could be they have a higher performance/watt then the latest i7 or amd cpus.

Think it would be great if we could come up with a standard way of evaluating a systems seti performance and for those that can measure the power used. Then an estimated processing/watt list could be made. With that those that are looking to make dedicated crunching farms would have access to data for the best per watt crunching platforms.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

If I was garunteed exclusive server useage, better support and an overall better experience as a user, I would be more than happy to donate money to the project and even pay a monthly subscription to be a part of it.

????

That's a bit like saying to a bank:

"I'm not going to put any money into a savings account until I can withdraw the cash I haven't put in yet, THEN I will save the money I have already withdrawn"

GOOD LUCK

Error: Stack underflow.

ROFLMAO

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If I was garunteed exclusive server useage, better support and an overall better experience as a user, I would be more than happy to donate money to the project and even pay a monthly subscription to be a part of it.

So you're essentially creating a catch .22 for the project: they don't have the type of funds to provide you with the service you desire, and you refuse to donate money to them because they can't provide you with the service you desire.

But untill the time comes when my semi-MONSTER cruncher stops being punished for being efficient and I stop being p1$$ed off all the time by all of the happy Pentium3 users that more or less are rewarded for being SLOW on the network - I will not donate a dime other than my computing resources.

You most certainly have a unique view on things, I'll give you that.

Part of the project's view is that they do not want to punish anyone at all, and this includes excluding potential volunteers simply because they happen to own an older, slower machine. SETI is a worldwide project, and there's people in other countries that have machines donated to them (read: older machines) and they cannot afford to upgrade. In fact, if BOINC didn't cut support for Windows 95 and NT 4, I'm sure SETI would still support them too. In fact, Dr. Eric Korpela himself provided a work-around to users still running Windows NT 4.0 by using an older (but still valid) science app and a custom app_info.xml file.

Punishing the quickest makes the most sense - OBVIOUSLY, since after the Top 10% of users jump ship over to another project, Seti@Home will be stuck in the stone age with a stable of inneficient and OLD PCs that are not quick enough to get the job done in a timely fasion......meaning MORE money wasted by staff, because jobs take LONGER to accomplish than if people just pulled their heads out of the butts and realized that WE, the Top 10% are doing 90% of the work - so make it easier for us......NOT CHASE US AWAY.

Wow. Simply wow.

So what you're saying is, "bend over backwards for your top 10% because I believe we're doing 90% of the work", which is actually false because all the slower machines not in the top 10% return far more work than even the top 10% combined. The top 10% at SETI contribute a very small percentage over SETI's overall returned results. This goes to show the power of distributed computing, and the base concept behind using volunteer resources to harness more power than a supercomputer combined.

So, if the project were to take on the attitude you suggest, that it should cater to those who return the most results, then in fact it should cater to the lower 90% and not the top 10%. It would almost be true that they should "chase away" the top 10% - but SETI doesn't cater to anyone. They are here for people to donate their CPU time, regardless of what type of hardware they run.

Personally, I wouldn't want to participate in a project that caters to anyone, especially the top 10%. Such elitism creates a "glass ceiling" that is hard to break through unless you have money - and that's not the point of distributed computing or the science in general.

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I just want to clearly state that Overlord Xenu does not speak on behalf of all Canadians, or represent typical Canadian viewpoints and manners.

And, more seriously, thanks to OzzFan and others for keeping us on the straight and narrow.

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I just want to clearly state that Overlord Xenu does not speak on behalf of all Canadians, or represent typical Canadian viewpoints and manners.

Wait....There are Canadians here? Who let them in? :D

And, more seriously, thanks to OzzFan and others for keeping us on the straight and narrow.

I can't support that message.

I say thanks to everyone involved for helping in any way they can.

On another note related more to the subject of this post. I wonder how much power Arecibo uses to detect all these signals.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

Arecibo is both a radiotelescope doing astronomical research and a planetary radar. It also researches the ionosphere. SETI is a piggy-back project which exploits only a small part of Arecibo capabilities.
Tullio
An example of Arecibo astronomical research is the Binary Pulsar Search whose data I am now crunching at Einstein@home.

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Arecibo is both a radiotelescope doing astronomical research and a planetary radar. It also researches the ionosphere. SETI is a piggy-back project which exploits only a small part of Arecibo capabilities.
Tullio
An example of Arecibo astronomical research is the Binary Pulsar Search whose data I am now crunching at Einstein@home.

[joke]So, the intent of SETI was just to take unused portions of the Arecibo capabilities, without building huge purpose-specific power-sucking crunchers - er, receivers? Why does that sound familiar?[/joke]

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Maybe this link can explain what Arecibo is better than my poor words:
Arecibo
Tullio

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If I was garunteed exclusive server useage, better support and an overall better experience as a user, I would be more than happy to donate money to the project and even pay a monthly subscription to be a part of it.

But untill the time comes when my semi-MONSTER cruncher stops being punished for being efficient and I stop being p1$$ed off all the time by all of the happy Pentium3 users that more or less are rewarded for being SLOW on the network - I will not donate a dime other than my computing resources.

Punishing the quickest makes the most sense - OBVIOUSLY, since after the Top 10% of users jump ship over to another project, Seti@Home will be stuck in the stone age with a stable of inneficient and OLD PCs that are not quick enough to get the job done in a timely fasion......meaning MORE money wasted by staff, because jobs take LONGER to accomplish than if people just pulled their heads out of the butts and realized that WE, the Top 10% are doing 90% of the work - so make it easier for us......NOT CHASE US AWAY.

Allan.

Allan---I'm sorry but have you read any of what we've posted lately??? There's *3 people* running the whole project and they're strapped bigtime financially.

If you want "exclusive server useage, better support and an overall better experience as a user", they need to have the money upfront in order to setup to do that. They can't guarantee that kind of a situation until they have the resources to do so.

How about contributing to a solution and not punishing the staff who are working as hard as possible on an extremely difficult situation?

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If I was garunteed exclusive server useage, better support and an overall better experience as a user, I would be more than happy to donate money to the project and even pay a monthly subscription to be a part of it.

But untill the time comes when my semi-MONSTER cruncher stops being punished for being efficient and I stop being p1$$ed off all the time by all of the happy Pentium3 users that more or less are rewarded for being SLOW on the network - I will not donate a dime other than my computing resources.

Punishing the quickest makes the most sense - OBVIOUSLY, since after the Top 10% of users jump ship over to another project, Seti@Home will be stuck in the stone age with a stable of inneficient and OLD PCs that are not quick enough to get the job done in a timely fasion......meaning MORE money wasted by staff, because jobs take LONGER to accomplish than if people just pulled their heads out of the butts and realized that WE, the Top 10% are doing 90% of the work - so make it easier for us......NOT CHASE US AWAY.

Allan.

Allan---I'm sorry but have you read any of what we've posted lately??? There's *3 people* running the whole project and they're strapped bigtime financially.

If you want "exclusive server useage, better support and an overall better experience as a user", they need to have the money upfront in order to setup to do that. They can't guarantee that kind of a situation until they have the resources to do so.

How about contributing to a solution and not punishing the staff who are working as hard as possible on an extremely difficult situation?

The beatings will continue until morale improves! :D

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

Well, I guess it's like this:

When people get paid to go a job, they should just do it and deal with the backlash and responsibility - otherwise, quit.

I don't get paid to be here and neither do any of you....so, am I supposed to direct my frustration at you guys ? or the project ? EXACTLY.

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I am TCP JESUS...The Carpenter Phenom Jesus....and HAMMERING is what I do best!
formerly known as...MC Hammer.

seti is a volunteer project. we dont get paid however none of us are forced to contribute. we do it out of passion for the process and the real possibility of finding an et signal.

that's why i have dedicated machines crunching and also why i try not to complain about all the problems seti is facing. i would rather have seti how it currently is then have no seti at all.

The sadest part of it all - BOINC is the best distributed Computing software available - Folding@Home is clunky......lol

I guess in short, regardless of how much I complain, I am partially thankfull to the developers for making decent software - I am frustrated that I am typing this message from a machine with over 800 completed WU's trying to upload.

Software=great......hardware=crap......people=hands tied...but trying hard, from what I can tell from reading.

Me=never satisfied........

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I am TCP JESUS...The Carpenter Phenom Jesus....and HAMMERING is what I do best!
formerly known as...MC Hammer.

Dear God, after reading this post I decided to check my own power consumption. Last time I had done it it was 240 Watts. Power Factor close to Unity so VA was like 255 Watts while crunching. GPU then was a Radeon 3870 so it didn't get used.

I since upgraded to a 280 GTX and a 9800 GT as a secondary so I can run 3 monitors....490 Watts now (screens off), power factor still 0.98.

This machine was built as a workstation with gaming in mind as a secondary.

At that rate I burn off ~12 kwh a day and at 11 cents per kwh I'm burning $1.32 a day on one machine. I try to justify it by having an apache web server on the machine and remote access, but realistically that never gets used, so the only reason it gets more than 6 hours a day use is SETI....so 18 hours at 11 cents *365 = $354 a year to SETI on one computer (Canadian Dollars). they really need to make GPUs more efficient.

Machine Stas:

Q6600 @ 3.0 Ghz
5 SATA 3.5" @7200 RPM
2 DVD-R
BFG GTX 280 OC (no manual OC)
EVGA 9800 GT Reference (no OC)
Enermax Galaxy 850
Cooling Fans up the Ying Yang



The old Pentium D takes about 190 watts monitors off, no crunching GPU.


I should take them all to work and use their power....lol.

Razz