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theSkyNet Wants Your Spare CPU Cycles
An anonymous reader writes "Thousands of PC users are being called on to donate their spare CPU cycles to help create a massive grid computing engine to process terabytes of radio astronomy data as part of theSkyNet project. It will be used for, among other things, processing the huge amount of data expected to flow off Australia's forthcoming Square Kilometre Array telescope."
One can only assume that "other things" will include achieving sentience and finding John Connor.
And who was to think that the apocalypse would come from the Australian Outback?
For the love of everything, can we stop making shitty references to Terminator in computational intelligence stories? There are actually people stupid enough to believe that shit. Also, its not funny.
FRY: This is a great, as long as you don't make me smell Uranus. Heh heh.
LEELA: I don't get it.
PROFESSOR FARNSWORTH: I'm sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all.
FRY: Oh. What's it called now?
PROFESSOR FARNSWORTH: Urectum.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
What could possibly go wrong?
SKA - The SKA will give astronomers insight into the formation and evolution of the first stars and galaxies after the Big Bang, the role of cosmic magnetism, the nature of gravity, and possibly life beyond Earth.
SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, is an exploratory science that seeks evidence of life in the universe by looking for some signature of its technology.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Might as well get it over with by making the Obvious Reference in the article.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Well, at least theSkyNet will see that I was the first to welcome, I mean bow before, it. Did I just type that out loud?
In the distance you hear an ominous moo.
Zooniverse seems much more distributed human analysis, kind of a Mechanical Turk. Why not BOINC, which already exists as a distributed computing source? Being on BOINC gives them access to tens of thousands of computers.
How can you meaningfully process the data generated by the SKA without imposing on people's downloads? How do they address this with SETI?
If TFS is too "summary" for you, TFA may sometime answer to your questions. In this case, it does:
Project participants also had a choice of how to participate in SkyNet: Either anonymously through simply having their browsers open on the SkyNet site, or through downloading a dedicated app to run in the background on their PC.
...
"The load on your computer will adjust depending on what you are doing with it. The idea is to have lots of machines each doing a little and adding up to a lot.”
Wheeler said users would also be able to set limits on the number of megabytes which travelled to and from their PCs.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I'm happy about it. I only really use SETI@Home because I want to contribute to astronomy with my CPU cycles, and it's the best of the bunch (I found Einstein@Home a little flaky in terms of work unit updates, and for some reason never saw the appeal of MilkyWay@Home). If my cycles could do something more useful for SKA, I'd definitely consider moving over.
They have an FAQ section on their website.
Will this affect my internet usage / data plan?
The packets of data sent back and forth from theSkyNet to your computer are very small, but they can add up over many weeks of donating to theSkyNet. As a member, you can control how much data theSkyNet uploads and downloads each month by changing the Monthly Network Limit under Manage Account. theSkyNet team are also negotiating with Internet Service providers around Australia to make all traffic to and from theSkyNet ‘unmetered’.
The users are still the same as always, however. Why don't yout RTFA next time to save yourself from looking like a complete tool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dddAi8FF3F4
Might look into this when I get home as AFAIK I'm actually downloading less now than when I was on a 200GB plan.
Remove all youtube videos that contain any of the following:
-rick
-a cat
-a black person talking about rapists
-a crossdresser
-lipdubs with fat chicks wearing clothes that are too tight or too sexy for them
-hot chicks talking about their emotions/hope/career/fashion tips, thinking that because they have a lot of subscribers people care about what they say, while actually most subscribers are just sick old pervs doing the ol' nasty while watching these videos in their basement
Then use all the processing power suddenly available on youtube servers, and give us a break with screensaver processing a la seti.
thinking of that, scratch the whole list above and just remove videos with hot chicks that have a lot of subscribers but that are seldomly watched completely because viewers are "done" before the hot chick... and there you go, plenty of cpu available, and probably a few more bucks will find their way to those single moms working the pole to pay their student loan.
lucm, indeed.
For one of them, it's actually quite likely that they'll find something interesting.
With modern CPU's generally slowing down to save power and reduce heat output, are spare CPU cycles really spare?
I defiantly know - fans speed up when CPU is busy, does this grid type of software take this into account and use only really idle cycles or does it keep the CPU powered up when there is no user doing anything 'important'?
They need all those extra cycles to screen out porn and violent video games from interstellar communications.
Saying that the SKA belongs to Australia is misleading - the decision on whether it will be built in Australia or South Africa will only be made in 2012.
One is a scientific project, the other is looking to find Alf
No, they are looking for E.T., otherwise they would be named SAlfI@Home! :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I'd happily donate my CPU cycles to them. I have 4 cores here sitting doing mostly nothing, and I fully agree it is for the most part completely wasted silicon for the 23 hours a day I don't play games.
But I will have to send them my power bill. While my processor cycles are free, the energy usage is not. The difference between a computer sitting idly all year and running full pelt on the processor can easily be $100+ from a back of the envelope calculation, the GPU can also amount to the same.
Herpaderp. RTFA, this project is to perform research, not hunt for sexy green women.
Looks like some people are jumping the gun a bit...
Typical, like when the Aussie's volunteered to host the World Cup Soccer because they 'knew' that South Africa was not up to it.
They really picked the perfect name.
Drop the "The." Just "SkyNet." It's cleaner.
It read a Gartner report and outsourced itself to another galaxy.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
a less likely null hypothesis
Not really a huge problem:
- For some Australian ISPs, it's likely that data related to this project will be unmetered (that is, not counted towards your monthly quota, if you have one); or
- You have an unlimited plan; or if you don't...
- You can limit the monthly data transfer in the software itself
I'm on a 60 GB quota personally but generally only use 35-40 GB of it a month. I've never come close to using it all, so I might as well help out with this and set a ~15 GB/month transfer limit on it, and it should be fine (if that's even necessary - my ISP may well make it unmetered anyway).
Way to waste at least 20% of the CPU power, lazy programmers. I'll take my CPUs to something that actually uses them efficiently like Folding@home which is optimised as opposed to interpreted or even compiled java bytecode being pushed like molasis through a straw.
Yes, but how is it different LATELY?
SETI is already running for some time. SKA is still the "under construction" stage.
Is this enough for a specific difference?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
...are buried deep on the website for some weird reason. They are available for Windows and "Macintosh". No generic *nix version so far, which struck me as something pretty bad given the common demography generally interested in helping out with this sort of project.
lmao
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
> When I'm not using the computer, just turn it off! Until the world's
> energy problems are all resolved.
But why would you waste 90+ percent of your (idle) cycles when your computer is ON?
IMHO, a computer is meant to compute. And I chose for myself not to have it "compute" nonsensical screensavers, but something worthwhile to me. Enough projects exist for variety...
I remember SETI always having issues with work units. There weren't enough so a bunch of users got the same work units. Found that to be a turn-off...didn't have that cozy feeling of actually contributing anything, as with other projects. Has that been worked out?
Also, did not SETI also want to make use of the australia array? What's the status of that (haven't been following it)?
> And when you're not, you're contributing to one of the most
> significant discoveries since fire.
All romance aside...purely from the distances involved (assuming a radio signal indicating 'intelligent life'), it would certainly be a very exciting discovery (for a while), but not necessarily 'most significant'.
Until we get there (or they here)...even just by radio contact, nevermind physical, we got nothing out of it other than knowing, we're not the only guys around. And that's already a given anyway.
Until we get there (or they here)...even just by radio contact, nevermind physical, we got nothing out of it other than knowing
Hence, why I called it a discovery. One could have said the same thing about fire. It, after all, has been around every since there was a high concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere and woody plants on the land. That's several hundred million years at least. The human innovation was learning how to use it.
Similarly, SETI isn't just about discovering that we're not alone, but also how to use that. If you can detect an alien civilization, then the possibility exists of not only being able to communicate with them, but also trade knowledge.
I managed to get into Test4Theory before it got overwhelmed a few weeks ago and I'm happily cruching data for Cern. Sorry, SkyNet.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Using your "spare CPU cycles" makes the CPU use more power, it is by no means free.
This is true for other things, like ads using flash animations for example. I always find it ironic to see it in sites like TreeHugger, which is full of flashy animations. I would expect a green site to use mostly static HTML and text based ads to reduce the carbon footprint of all it's viewers.
Way to stand by your convictions there AC. Oracles JVM sucks and if the programers were using C++ properly it would run rings aroud java. The only reason java is faster in some of those situations is that it covers over rubbish programming by the developers by enforcing its training wheels.
Way to go, java is faster for people who are slower.
I wonder if anyone's considered donating CPU time to a project like Folding@Home or this, and then writing off the electricity costs on their taxes?
"Silently look for the off switch!"
But why would you waste 90+ percent of your (idle) cycles when your computer is ON?
All modern processors in modern OSes idle themselves when not actually working. My CPU isn't wasting cycles when its on and idle, its sleeping, conserving energy and generating less heat.
I waste no CPU cycles because I understand how my computer works.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Yeah, people keep bitching about that first weekend where a software glitch caused the same work to be sent for the first weekend we were in operation. As someone close to the SETI@home team, please stop bitching about a bug that's been fixed for 11 goddamn years!
BTW, we'd love to make use of the SKA, but it doesn't exists yet.
Support SETI@home
Yeah, SETI@home found 114 sources of pulsed emission, possibly a new form of pulsar. But you don't wanna hear about that. You want to hear about the what the telescope that doesn't exist yet might find.
Support SETI@home
Nereus? Why would they use Nereus? Someone on the board own stock?
Support SETI@home
How is Java at producing code SIMD code, or code that runs on GPUs? Java can outperform poorly written C code, which does form the bulk of scientific code bases. Outperforming well optimized processor specific code? Not really.
Support SETI@home
Go investigate the relative performance yourself.
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/
You are wrong. These comparisons are apples to apples, not “proper” versus “improper” code. I found that link from The Java is Faster than C++ and C++ Sucks Unbiased Benchmark, which satirically demonstrates how people may arrive at flawed perceptions about performance.
Generally speaking, experience teaches engineers that languages are not slow. Algorithms and execution environments are slow. Bad code with good compilers can be fast. Good code with bad compilers can be slow. However, languages do affect developer performance.
In the simplest sense, your belief that any language is slow relative to another is easily refuted. Consider two programs written in language X and Y respectively. Both programs produce identical output for identical input. Suppose we then introduce machine translation that compiles X into Y (or vice versa) before compilation. Or, alternatively, our respective compilers for X and Y produce identical output.
See what I did there?
Yes, but how many potential CPU cycles are you losing?
The original post is incorrect.
theSkyNet is working on HIPASS data initially, as a precursor to working on data from the CSIRO Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder when it comes online.
As numerous people have pointed out the site selection for the SKA won't be announced until next year
> Yeah, people keep bitching about that first weekend where a
> software glitch caused the same work to be sent for the first
> weekend we were in operation.
Nobody was bitching, so chill, bro! I was not aware, that this was merely a bug. My impression from back then (it's been a while) was, that there was simply not enough data from Arecibo available due to other work being done with the radioscope (is that the correct term?). If that is not an issue anymore, then great!
> If you can detect an alien civilization, then the possibility exists of
> not only being able to communicate with them, but also trade
> knowledge.
I'm completely with you on that. But it's simply gonna take a while. It's simply unlikely, that the first contact will be "Contact"-style ("Jackpot!"), where we get all kinds of wonderful things sent to us right away. Chances are, we detect something at some point, and then it will take a few decades of back and forth communication, if we even have a language we can agree on and understand each other. It might even turn out, that we are the advanced guys. In that case what are we gonna do? Send 'em a ZIP'ed copy of Wikipedia? :-)
> My CPU isn't wasting cycles when its on and idle, its sleeping,
> conserving energy and generating less heat.
That's wonderful. But you're not conserving energy, the same way a car just idling in the drive-way, as opposed to actually being driven (the whole point of a car), is not exactly doing any favors for conservation/the environment.
Especially not, when that computer you're letting sleep most of the time, will be thrown in the garbage 5 years hence because, although fully functional, can't do the things you want anymore. So, to use the car analogy again, is there really something reasonable about a car being scrapped, that has only been driven for 4500 miles all in all? Me, I don't think so. It failed its designed-for purpose. Or rather the user failed to use it for its purpose.
But it's all good. You can, of course, do whatever you want with your machine(s). Even use them as nifty paperweights. :-)
But me, even my old 486 is still chugging away on distributed projects. Why? Because it still works and it will do *something*, as long as it does.