seti@home
Saving Lives, one computer at a time...
July 10, 2006 07:04 PM Categories:
Distributed
Computing
With the recent shakeups at
SETI@home, and apparent reduction of
probability for useful science coming out of that project, I've
reallocated some of my BOINC resources towards another project.
BOINC or Berkeley
Open Infrastructure for
Network Computing allows you to
use your spare computer cycles for different scientific projects
using the same core application platform; making it easier to
contribute to multiple projects and allowing you to move resource
allocation from one to another.
80% of my Distributed Computing resources are now allocated towards Rosetta@home. This project from the University of Washington uses your computer power through the BOINC system to help determine 3-dimensional shapes of proteins. Determining such shapes through protein folding with the "lowest energy state" is the scientific "Holy Grail" of Biomedical science. The University of Washington's focus is to design new proteins that will help fight HIV, Malaria, Anthrax, Cancer, and Alzheimer's (more info here). This research can be applicable to a multitude of other diseases once the protein simulations are effective and proven in clinical trials. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation contributes to this project as part of their anti-Malaria contribution. Unlike SETI@home though, Rosetta's code is not opensource and has not been released to the wild. As such, there are no optimized workers like Crunch3r's Seti workers for SSE-SSE3. In addition, the way it calculates points is also different. According to Dr David Baker regarding the difference between this project and the older Folding@home project at Stanford: "The Rosetta@home project goals are very different from those of Folding@home. The goal of Folding@home, I believe, is to determine how long proteins take to fold, given the sequence of the protein and knowledge of its three dimensional structure. The goal of Rosetta@home is to predict the three dimensional structure from the amino acid sequence."
20% will still be allocated towards SETI@home (I still want to find E.T., or at least some long lost Alien Civilization's last message). Either project can act as each other's backup for CPU cycles if the other project's servers are down. All the points I earn will still be part of Team MacNN under BOINC, Seti, & Rosetta stats.
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80% of my Distributed Computing resources are now allocated towards Rosetta@home. This project from the University of Washington uses your computer power through the BOINC system to help determine 3-dimensional shapes of proteins. Determining such shapes through protein folding with the "lowest energy state" is the scientific "Holy Grail" of Biomedical science. The University of Washington's focus is to design new proteins that will help fight HIV, Malaria, Anthrax, Cancer, and Alzheimer's (more info here). This research can be applicable to a multitude of other diseases once the protein simulations are effective and proven in clinical trials. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation contributes to this project as part of their anti-Malaria contribution. Unlike SETI@home though, Rosetta's code is not opensource and has not been released to the wild. As such, there are no optimized workers like Crunch3r's Seti workers for SSE-SSE3. In addition, the way it calculates points is also different. According to Dr David Baker regarding the difference between this project and the older Folding@home project at Stanford: "The Rosetta@home project goals are very different from those of Folding@home. The goal of Folding@home, I believe, is to determine how long proteins take to fold, given the sequence of the protein and knowledge of its three dimensional structure. The goal of Rosetta@home is to predict the three dimensional structure from the amino acid sequence."
20% will still be allocated towards SETI@home (I still want to find E.T., or at least some long lost Alien Civilization's last message). Either project can act as each other's backup for CPU cycles if the other project's servers are down. All the points I earn will still be part of Team MacNN under BOINC, Seti, & Rosetta stats.
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A drop in the ratings...
May 12, 2006 03:36 AM Categories:
Distributed
Computing
I've been setting my
Seti@Home boxen lately to grab the Seti Enhanced
workunits (5.12 and now 5.13)... and now that
Crunch3r has optimized versions for Linux and
Windows, I've been regaining a few (but not all) the credits/day
that I used to have in the previous version of Seti. Unfortunately
Alex and Rick from the Team MacNN forums haven't compiled an
optimized Seti Enhanced worker for the Mac yet and that has
resulted in my heaviest hitter (a quad G5 PowerMac) dropping
quickly from the Top Computers list on Seti@Home's website. At its
height with the last client before the transition, I was #2 out of
countless thousands of computers out there and approaching #1.
Unfortunately the lack of an optimized version of Seti Enhanced
that supports Altivec has seriously crippled it's credit/day
performance. Oh well... I'll have to just wait until the optimized
versions are ready. Of course regular users of BOINC and Seti@Home
won't have to worry about this since the transition from 4.18 (or
4.02 in the case of Linux) to 5.13 will be automatic. It's only
when you use an optimized version of the worker files with an
associated app_info.xml (this file allows you to force use of a
third-party worker or one you compiled yourself) that you have to
manually upgrade the Seti Workers.
Along those same lines, UC Berkeley has released the latest Boinc client 5.4.9 with a lot of improvements (some geared towards interaction with 5.12 and 5.13 Seti Enhanced). So I've also started transitioning systems over to the official 5.4.9 from TruXoft's calibrating client 5.2.13tx37. This may result in lowered claimed credits for any remaining old Seti units, but soon that won't be a problem as there will only be a few weeks left before those units will no longer be offered. Boinc upgrades are of course manual for all Seti users (unlike "regular" seti worker updates).
Just like the previous post, if you have no clue what I'm talking about, check it out here.
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Along those same lines, UC Berkeley has released the latest Boinc client 5.4.9 with a lot of improvements (some geared towards interaction with 5.12 and 5.13 Seti Enhanced). So I've also started transitioning systems over to the official 5.4.9 from TruXoft's calibrating client 5.2.13tx37. This may result in lowered claimed credits for any remaining old Seti units, but soon that won't be a problem as there will only be a few weeks left before those units will no longer be offered. Boinc upgrades are of course manual for all Seti users (unlike "regular" seti worker updates).
Just like the previous post, if you have no clue what I'm talking about, check it out here.
Read More...
Updates and Little Green Men
May 06, 2006 12:45 PM Categories:
Distributed
Computing
Sorry, I know it's been awhile since
I've updated the site (a month actually). Things have been really
hectic at work with some major projects coming to fruition. I'm
finally able to merge some of my Multimedia, Flash, Video,
Broadcast and Broadband tech skills and knowledge at my job, but it
has taken a large portion of my free-time these days. Of course I'd
rather have a lot of work to do than no work.
Seti@Home Enhanced
In the meantime I've been following the release of SetiEnhanced lately and reading the message boards. Crunch3r's new Enhanced Optimized clients are out as of yesterday and I've tried them on two of my main crunchers. I've had to actually remove the app_info.xml file because that threw up some problems (no new app file was included in Crunch3r's package this time). Oddly enough, the existing Crunch3r Optimized version of the old boinc seti client still worked ( I'd expect it to download the non-optimized client like it used to, but that didn't happen this time). We'll see how this shakes out in the transition from Boinc Seti I to Boinc Seti Enhanced. BTW- I'm using the Truxoft Boinc Calibrating client 5.3.12.tx37 on most of my crunchers. The Seti Enhanced work units should ignore any of the calibration settings due to the credit algorithm change, so no need to change my current Boinc settings. Right now I'm riding high as #6 on my team (TeamMacNN) and one of my boxes is #2 in the Top Computers list at SETI@Home's site.
And for those of you who don't know what the hell I'm talking about.... explanation here.
Work Related:
For now, I've gotta get some sleep... I just came off an over 27 work hour shift trying to get our latest project ready for Monday's internal beta launch... *YaWN*.... my developer and qa colleagues were very VERY tired when I left, and our primary developer looked ready to collapse, but she kept on coding away, not wanting to see this project fail. I work with some pretty dedicated people... I just hope we're all rewarded for the time/blood/sweat spent.
Read More...
Seti@Home Enhanced
In the meantime I've been following the release of SetiEnhanced lately and reading the message boards. Crunch3r's new Enhanced Optimized clients are out as of yesterday and I've tried them on two of my main crunchers. I've had to actually remove the app_info.xml file because that threw up some problems (no new app file was included in Crunch3r's package this time). Oddly enough, the existing Crunch3r Optimized version of the old boinc seti client still worked ( I'd expect it to download the non-optimized client like it used to, but that didn't happen this time). We'll see how this shakes out in the transition from Boinc Seti I to Boinc Seti Enhanced. BTW- I'm using the Truxoft Boinc Calibrating client 5.3.12.tx37 on most of my crunchers. The Seti Enhanced work units should ignore any of the calibration settings due to the credit algorithm change, so no need to change my current Boinc settings. Right now I'm riding high as #6 on my team (TeamMacNN) and one of my boxes is #2 in the Top Computers list at SETI@Home's site.
And for those of you who don't know what the hell I'm talking about.... explanation here.
Work Related:
For now, I've gotta get some sleep... I just came off an over 27 work hour shift trying to get our latest project ready for Monday's internal beta launch... *YaWN*.... my developer and qa colleagues were very VERY tired when I left, and our primary developer looked ready to collapse, but she kept on coding away, not wanting to see this project fail. I work with some pretty dedicated people... I just hope we're all rewarded for the time/blood/sweat spent.
Read More...