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The IT guy in me thinks that's a waste of FLOPS.

• Folding@Home
• SETI@Home
• Rosetta@Home
• Bunch of stuff at grid.org

In this financial climate? Only if those projects are willing to pay you (hah!) or you really believe in supporting what they do.

The wanna-be businessman in me thinks its probably a waste of money as well.

You look like you're in a position to use virtualization to create X application servers over Y machine servers ... but you'd need all the IT staff and customer support, etc. to get that going. It's too bad you can't sell your CPUs to Amazon for their cloud computing since it's all pretty much anonymous but I guess either way I think about it you would need a pretty hefty internet connection.

There's really hardly any money to speak of in plain old CPU cycles. Amazon does OK out of it, but their model relies on being really big. Most of us don't operate at that size.

OTOH, if you can offer some sort of value-add, you can charge more. For example, you might run and support specialist applications for small businesses; there's a reasonable amount to be made in that area, but you need to be thinking then in terms of not just having computers but support staff too and, indeed, a whole business. You can't do it half-assed; this isn't the tech bubble.

Have you thought about just selling the servers?

As others have explained, that may well be a solid suggestion. Right now, better to have cash in hand than servers you don't need.

The IT guy in me thinks that's a waste of FLOPS.

• Folding@Home
• SETI@Home
• Rosetta@Home
• Bunch of stuff at grid.org

The wanna-be businessman in me thinks its probably a waste of money as well.

You look like you're in a position to use virtualization to create X application servers over Y machine servers ... but you'd need all the IT staff and customer support, etc. to get that going. It's too bad you can't sell your CPUs to Amazon for their cloud computing since it's all pretty much anonymous but I guess either way I think about it you would need a pretty hefty internet connection.

Have you thought about just selling the servers?

I think this part of the computing timeline is going to be
one that is well remembered. I know I find it fascinating.

This is a classic moment when tech takes the branch that
was unexpected. GPGPU computing will soon
reach ubiquity but for right now it's the fledgling that is being
grown in the wild.

Of course I'm not earmarking this one particular project
as the start point but this year has gotten 'GPU this' and
'GPGPU that' start up events all over it. Some even said
in 2007, that it would be a buzzword in 08.

And of course there's nothing like new tech to bring out
a naysayer.

Folding@home released their second generation
GPU client in April 08. While retiring the GPU1 core in
June of this year.

I know I enjoy throwing spare GPU cycles to a distributed
cause and whenever I catch sight of the icon for the GPU
client it brings the back the nostalgia of distributed clients
of the past. [Near the bottom].

I think I was with United Devices the longest.
And the Grid.

Now we are getting a chance to see GPU supercomputing
installations from IBM and this one from MIT.
Soon those will be littering the Top 500 list.

I also look forward most to the peaceful endeavors the new
processing power will be used for... weather analysis,
drug creation, and disease studies.

Oh yes, I realize places like the infamous Sandia will be using
the GPU to rev up atom splitting. But maybe if they keep their
bombs IN the GPU it'll lessen the chances of seeing rampant
proliferation again.

Ok, well enough of my musings over a GPU.

-AI

Until you figure out which nice-to-have services you want to provide students, give back by dedicating some of the unused server resources to research projects.

http://grid.org/ comes to mind. I'm sure others will be able to suggest a long list of great organizations that need help!

http://www.grid.org/projects/cancer/proj_news_2004 1116.htm http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/cancer/AACR_UPAposter.pdf

I've been running the UD cancer project and related softwares for over five years. I didn't mind donating my computer time, but all that changed a couple of days ago. I signed up for their forum at http://forums.grid.org/ just to browse. I didn't even post anything. I left the site and came back an hour later, only to find my username and password didn't work. I tried to register again using a different username but the same email address, and discovered my email address was banned.

When I emailed United Devices to find out why I was banned, my email was returned by the Mailer Daemon, with relaying denied from my address. About this time yesterday, I filled out a form on their website and told them I resented their shabby treatment of a longtime cruncher, and I want an apology, or at the very least an explanation that makes sense, of why I was banned from the forum and why they are bouncing my emails. I have yet to hear back from them.

"As you can see by their actions, rather than their words... Notably at Stanford University, Washington University, Munich University, Scripps Research Institute, Oxford University etc.

http://folding.stanford.edu/about.html
http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/rah_about.php
http://boinc.bio.wzw.tum.de/boincsimap/project.php
http://predictor.scripps.edu/about_team.php
http://www.grid.org/projects/cancer/index.htm

So... Who are you again? Yeah, you're a guy reading Slashdot... Getting much research done?"

Grr....I can't let this go.....

I'm a guy who was once associated with one of labs/projects mentioned above. I was working on the problem for years, and have a great deal of expertise in the area.

I can also tell you that the project is complete and utter crap, from a scientific perspective. The PI routinely misrepresents the project goals, claiming "possible" results that could never, ever come from the type of research performed. In general, the "science" is poorly-conceived and improperly controlled, and most of the "experiments" are methodologically flawed. I can't post my name here...it would be career suicide.

As one of the authorities to whom you seem so desperate to appeal, let me assure you: if you are devoting your resources to this project, the world would be a better place if you simply turned your computer off.

As you can see by their actions, rather than their words... Notably at Stanford University, Washington University, Munich University, Scripps Research Institute, Oxford University etc.

http://folding.stanford.edu/about.html
http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/rah_about.php
http://boinc.bio.wzw.tum.de/boincsimap/project.php
http://predictor.scripps.edu/about_team.php
http://www.grid.org/projects/cancer/index.htm

So... Who are you again? Yeah, you're a guy reading Slashdot... Getting much research done?

Personally, I always felt SETI was not very philanthropic - more like an amusing experiment in grid computing.

I have been running grid.org for many years. They focus on medical research. They provide great features for managing all your computers that run the grid projects. You can even choose which research to participate in. And, to satiate a geek's lust for power, they have rankings for your aggregate compute time.

http://www.grid.org/

No unix/linux clients, but then I don't really want my linux boxes running at 100% anyway.

Better yet download the client and throw some spare CPU cycles into the mix.

How about we do something that's a little more pratical and useful such as finding new drugs that will cure cancer.

Because I download stuff and I like to receive my instant messages. Plus I like not having to turn it on. I use flat panels, which turn off automagically after 20 minutes.

The computer uses a nominal amount of electricity compared to my washer or dryer or subs or whatever. And in any case, I don't care. I run United Devices(that's my team page, I'm cbenard) 24/7 as well on all the computers.

As much as I hate the money-burning project SETI, I hate the cycle-burning project SETI@Home. It's a shame that people put stress on their computers to do something that is sooooo unlikely to change anything. Use them on real science instead, like the einstein project, or the world largest grid - http://www.grid.org/ who participates in cancer research and proteome folding. Slashdotters of all people should not be victims to stupid beliefs like finding aliens.

I've been running the United Devices client for a year or so now. I just switched to the Rosetta project and joined the slashdot team there last night. What's the difference between the grid.org thing and this new version?

Current Project: Human Proteome Folding

United Devices has begun a new and exciting research project -- the Human Proteome Folding Project -- in collaboration with the Institute for Systems Biology, the University of Washington, and IBM Corporation.

So the burden of creating and testing other platforms lies with the makers of the grid software, in IBM's case this is United Devices (incidentally, I work for United Devices). And since the ROI on a non-window client is just very low (there are only few non-windows machines possibly joining these types of grid vs. the enormous costs of testing the correct working of such a client), there will not be any non-windows client anytime soon. Do not forget it's not just the client that has to work, the actual task module that does the work (the Human Genome program) also needs to be available on other platforms

There's also a commercial product that United Devices sells (see its product page), which is based on the same codebase that runs the World Community Grid and also grid.org and cellcomputing.jp, and this product has a windows, linux, aix, solaris and macosx client.

Disclaimer: my views are my personal ones and not necessarily endorsed by my company!

The differences between the Human Proteome Folding (HPF) project and Folding@home have already been mentioned. The differences between HPF and the recently completed Distributed Folding (DF) project should also be mentioned. HPF and DF attempt to predict the 3-dimensional, or folded, structure of protein sequence data. Both projects are well suited to parallelization. DF used an in-house algorithm to predict the structures of small proteins (which may or may not be in the human genome) with known structures and of proteins with previously-unknown structures in the CASP5 and CASP6 structure prediction contests. HPF uses the Rosetta software package, developed by The Baker Laboratory at the University of Washington, to predict protein structures for proteins which occur in the human genome.

DF is currently redesigning its folding algorithm using the results from its first project, and may begin another project in the future. See my summary of DF for a quick history of the project.

But this is run by United Devices, the same people who brought us the Cancer cure. Or did they? If you glance at the forums, you might notice one of the biggest gripes is that UD provides a minimal amount of feedback and status updates. They do little to nothing to promote the projects they have running, although they let you think there are some sort of prizes to be had by amassing the most points.

The truth is, I don't care whether they're in it for a profit or for posterity, but if someone's using my resources, I'd at least like to know how they're being used, and what effect, if any, it has had. The SETI project might be futile, but at least someone lets us know what's going on occasionally, which is far more than I can say for the UD projects thus far. For all I know, the cancer distributed computing project has been abandoned in favor of more promising avenues of research. Personally I'll stick with SETI.

grid.org and World Community Grid are the same project. See this discussion thread from grid.org.

grid.org and World Community Grid are the same project. See this discussion thread from grid.org.

Is the cancer research they mention part of the United Devices effort or is this something different? The article confused me a bit on that count. It would be a shame to duplicate efforts.

"--
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer."

Alternatively, switch off your PC to fight global warming.

How about a cure for cancer? http://www.grid.org/projects/cancer/

I've heard that one of the big drivers for the development of more powerful computing hardware is games. Like it or not, with games constantly pushing the envelope of what users demand from machines we are left with rapidly accelerating development of powerful personal computing hardware. One beneficial side effect is that we have ridiculous computing power that is only beginning to be tapped by United Devices, Folding at Home, climate prediction not to mention SETI and all the other distributed projects out there.

So in its way, games forcing the development of PC hardware is contributing to the advancement of science. If fully realized, all that computing power could change the world.

And Microsoft could build software into its desktop version of Windows to harness the power of PCs, letting companies get more value from their computers. It's a technology that's applicable to tasks such as drug discovery and microchip design.

sounds a lot like seti@home, folding@home, or the grid project. Another example of embrace and extend. It's definitely going to be interesting when pc's are networked for spare cpu cycles as a normal everyday event. Maybe the can use all that cpu power to get some AI to rewrite windows code so its bulletproof.

Apple should give a set away to United Devices (Profit) or Grid. Both of these ventures specialize in distributed Cancer/Drug simulations. Let's find a cure for breast and prostate cancer!!!! Go Go Go!!!

Team 2ch is the team of the 1st place in UD Agent.

Their Wiki site(is a Japanese site.)

Team 2ch is the team of the 1st place in UD Agent.

Their Wiki site(is a Japanese site.)

A link to the distributed cancer project (Windows only)

Perhaps the prize money and CPU time might be better spent searching for a cure for cancer? I know there's a distributed computing project out there that does just that (no link right now, I'm lazy), and this *is* a case where the computers are just as good at calculating numbers for cracking encryption as calculating numbers for saving lives.

Thaat would be www.grid.org. You can download it from this page. It does several projects, including the cancer one. For me, it seems to switch between smallpox and cancer research mostly.

Perhaps the prize money and CPU time might be better spent searching for a cure for cancer? I know there's a distributed computing project out there that does just that (no link right now, I'm lazy), and this *is* a case where the computers are just as good at calculating numbers for cracking encryption as calculating numbers for saving lives.

Thaat would be www.grid.org. You can download it from this page. It does several projects, including the cancer one. For me, it seems to switch between smallpox and cancer research mostly.

I take my old hardware and push them to the side table and install US Agent on them and let them do more work in the last two years of their life than they did in the first two. Machines I considered unstable typically stay up more than 8 months at a stretch, with their CPUs maxed-out virtually the entire time.

I also run it as a background process on my current machine. Keep the priority below the normal process priority and it's totally transparent to any other operation.

I've contributed over 5000 work units to SETI and even found one of those "interesting" signals. I stopped a while ago. Why? a few reasons:

1. I realized that the amount of time a civilization would use anything recognizable over radio waves would probably be pretty short. From the invention of radio until every signal is compressed and/or encrypted would probably be a few hundred years at best. compressed and encrypted data would just look like noise and probably wouldn't stand out. So it's either no-radio or unintelligible radio signals for billions of years with a small "hearable" window. not too promising that we'd be able to catch that.

2. There are better or at least more interesting causes out there for CPU donators. Folding@home has the potential to contribute to a nanotechnological or medical revolution. United Devices is a project to test cancer drugs and the results go to Oxford in case you're wondering about the for-profit nature of the company behind it. Finaly, the climate prediction project is contributing to a better understanding of planetary climate dynamics.

My side interest is Mars exploration and terraformation which is a pretty much just consists of reading literature on the subject. However, with contributing to nanotech, cancer drugs and climate prediction, I am making a small dent in the effort to adapt both ourselves and technology to making a new world.
I realize that last part was a bit offtopic but I thought I'd at least give a little reasoning behind why I choose to run those ones.

I learned this the hard way. I had the United Devices cancer research agent running on my laptop. I unfortunately did not realize the power penalty of running this app in the background until I was on an airplane and ran out of battery in
In terms of wear and tear on your hardware, I would suspect it would be minimal, if you compare it to leaving the machine on running idle.

BTW, I know SETI paved the way for this technology, but feel something like UD research has far more potential benefit to society than SETI.

If you want to know more about the lawsuit and UD there is a pretty good thread on the UD Forums

The TeraGrid is the NSF flagship for grid computing - be it good or bad.

The Grid.org people are some of the former SETI@home people gone more general purpose.

And of course, there is The Global Grid Forum which is meeting in Chicago in a week or so. GGF is the standards behind the Globus enabled grid.

We could ask why CERN/etal couldn't have come up with a slightly more imaginary name?

We can also ask why NSF are such suckers for the last 20 years of hype from the people who have run the national supercomputer centers in the USA? Ditto congress. But that is a (sad) story for a different day.

And finally we can ask what Top500.org is going to do when people begin reporting HPL benchmarks using these things? That HPL became the standard that people are designing supercomputers around argues just how totally screwed up high performance computing really is at the moment.

-- Multics

...but, there's other programs that people might find more socially useful/productive than SETI.

How 'bout...this from United Devices? They do a variety of biologically related projects, the most popular one, as far as I can tell, being cancer research...I've been running it for almost 2 years, and I have 100,000 points...how many points do you have?

The projects that the grid is best at are pretty much the areas that already have 'grid' projects, biochemistry, genetics, SETI and some maths problems. In which I include one of the most appropriate maths problems for the grid, is brute force password attack. How long before the US Gov. starts a Patriot@home grid to brute force any encrypted files it wants to see, in the name of homeland security...of course.

Yeah, me too. But I have started doing something a little more sporting. Break the "you cant touch this computer. You gotta watch this demo" protection on the l4me b0x3n down at the local CompUSA/Best Buy/whatever and trying to get a copy of UD a distributed computing client running. Fun and useful. More useful than wasteing clocks on demos. I have tryed to get them to run this stuff on their own, but all I got was blank looks... and they are supposed to be a computer store. Cracks me up... So I help 'em along.

I realize the parent comment was a joke, but..
Check out United Devices if you're interesting in a distributed project that is fighting cancer.

I prefer grid.org to grub.org. There the cycles are going to cancer or smallpox research. Currently over 2 million machines are participating.

Altruism has its place, but since I'm more likely to die of cancer than of not having the complete www indexed I think I'll be selfish and work towards a cure for something that may affect me.

I prefer grid.org to grub.org. There the cycles are going to cancer or smallpox research. Currently over 2 million machines are participating.

Altruism has its place, but since I'm more likely to die of cancer than of not having the complete www indexed I think I'll be selfish and work towards a cure for something that may affect me.

Past Projects:
Seti@home 4400cpu-hours
Presently:
United Devices 5400cpu-hours
Anthrax - completed
Cancer & Small Pox - running

Or, alternately, UD Cancer Research -- pretty much the same as Folding@Home, but with an emphasis on cancer cures.

Not that Folding@Home isn't after equally noble goals. Just giving options.

One major downside of UD is that they don't have non-Windows clients, so if that's an issue go with Folding.

Grid appears to be running a few other... interesting... projects as well. There's the Smallpox Project, designed to find a Smallpox counteragent, and the PatriotGrid, which is hopes to find counteragents/vaccines/whatever against a wide variety of bioterrorist agents.

I think I'll stick with Cancer research.

Or, alternately, UD Cancer Research -- pretty much the same as Folding@Home, but with an emphasis on cancer cures.

Not that Folding@Home isn't after equally noble goals. Just giving options.

One major downside of UD is that they don't have non-Windows clients, so if that's an issue go with Folding.

Grid appears to be running a few other... interesting... projects as well. There's the Smallpox Project, designed to find a Smallpox counteragent, and the PatriotGrid, which is hopes to find counteragents/vaccines/whatever against a wide variety of bioterrorist agents.

I think I'll stick with Cancer research.

Or, alternately, UD Cancer Research -- pretty much the same as Folding@Home, but with an emphasis on cancer cures.

Not that Folding@Home isn't after equally noble goals. Just giving options.

One major downside of UD is that they don't have non-Windows clients, so if that's an issue go with Folding.

Grid appears to be running a few other... interesting... projects as well. There's the Smallpox Project, designed to find a Smallpox counteragent, and the PatriotGrid, which is hopes to find counteragents/vaccines/whatever against a wide variety of bioterrorist agents.

I think I'll stick with Cancer research.

I don't know who else has heard this but the Department of Defense recently contracted United Devices to work on smallpox reasearch, also called the patriot grid. Since there are about 2 million machines running the UD client, this would put a massive amount of machines at the DOD's disposal.

The UD client is closed source so there's no way of knowing if the software the the DOD wrote is totaly dedicated to testing smallpox drugs or launching a cyber attack.

Massive DDOS attack anyone?

I don't know who else has heard this but the Department of Defense recently contracted United Devices to work on smallpox reasearch, also called the patriot grid. Since there are about 2 million machines running the UD client, this would put a massive amount of machines at the DOD's disposal.

The UD client is closed source so there's no way of knowing if the software the the DOD wrote is totaly dedicated to testing smallpox drugs or launching a cyber attack.

Massive DDOS attack anyone?