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The Cost of Distributed Client Computing?
ialbert asks: "I only recently decided to install SETI@home on my mostly idle home computer. It got me thinking though, are those free processor cycles truly free? Has anyone had experience with processors dying prematurely due to a constant, heavy load, or is usage pretty inconsequential? What about other components, like harddrives? And how much does a 100% processor load increase your power bill versus a 1-2% idle load over the course of a year? It's easy to think of idle computers as an untapped computational resource, but what are the costs to the computer owners?"
somebody worked this out when i started the e2 distributed.net team.
the figures
I've found that on my laptop, the cost of running seti@home cuts my battery life in half, so when I care about power I am sure to leave it off, however, when ever it's plugged in, it like the rest of my boxes are chugging away. When it comes to power costs I don't really care currently as I don't pay my electricity, it's included with my rent and believe you me I make good use of that.
As for premature death of CPU, being under heavy load should not hurt it, powering on and off often does far more 'wear and tear'.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
When Folding@Home is turned off, my power consumption for the entire system is 140W. When I activate Folding@Home, the Wattmeter reading jumps to about 190-195W.
So if you're concerned about electricity usage in your house, then yes, distributed computing sucks more power.
Homestarrunner.net -- It's Dot Com!
Check this website for a breakdown of the energy costs.
http://www.dslreports.com/faq/2404
Right, and the standard in the ASIC industry is a 40 year lifetime minimum before electromigration will lead to failure in normal use (which means yo keep the chip in the allowed operating temperature range, regardless of if it's overclocked or not). That's 40 years. What hardware were you using 40 years ago?
Point is, even running chips hot, to a degree, (pun not intended) doesn't reduce their lifetime enough to worry.
Some of the other points, such as increased power use, and accelerated failure of mechanical components such as hard drives, are valid. But chip wear-out is a non issue -- you'd have to heat your chip past the point of system stability to get the em lifetime down low enough to care about it.
everything in moderation