Slashdot Mirror
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?"
While it is an interesting question, the reason you donate cycles to seti/columb rulers/cancer research/whatever is you love science and the progress of humanity.
:)
Its not about money.
Or to put it another way. How much CPU cycles are wasted on Pr0n, and how does this help society?
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Hard disks are more reliable in my experience than CPUs too.
You living in Bizarro world? Or are you just an overclocker?
How could a mechanical hard drive be more reliable than a solid-state CPU? Hard drive failures are a well-known problem, which even makes its way into primetime sitcoms. Everyone knows someone who's drive crashed. Rumors fly that the latest batch of Seagate or Western Digital may have jinxy spindles.
But stop a pedestrian and ask him when he last heard of a CPU burnout- you'll get a puzzled look. Since I don't OC, I've never lost a CPU. But my stack of dead IDE drives is tall on the bookcase.
Even amoung Slashdot users, I'm sure a show of hands would reveal that far many more people have suffered from unpredictable failures of an HD than a CPU.
(Google says that "hard drive reliability" is nearly twice as common a topic as "CPU reliability")
The most you`d hope to get out of it is `yes, there are other civilisations out there`, and I already know that.
You'd get two things, sequentially:
1. Not just knowledge, but PROOF. That you followed Sagan's "billions & billions" calculations is one thing. That everyone else KNOWS its true is another. Potentially, this could change the terrestrial balance of power. (More likely, resistant groups will deny the proof, but they'll at least be marginalized somewhat)
2. Later you'd get actual translations of the messages. Who could predict the value of alien wisdom and folly?
Dell PIII-550MHz:
Athlon 1800+
So my computers seem to use about 20 extra watts under load compared to idle. That would amount to an extra $18/year if the app ran all the time compared to letting the machine idle all the time (@ $.10/kwh).
However, I usually power my systems off when I'm not using them. If my athlon system is off an average of 16 hours per day vs. running under load, that saves $65 per year.
My 17-inch CRT monitor used 74 watts. Turning off or suspending that would save a similar amount of money. Altogether, that would be about $10 per month, as you guessed.