August 2004

08.23.04 | Scientific Progress goes BOINC

I’ve been running SETI@home for years. For 5.270 years, according to my user statistics page. It’s been fun. I like aliens. So now, after a five year mission to hear (through radio telescopes) what no man has heard before, SETI@home (AKA seti 1) is drawing near its end.

OR IS IT?!

Much like a caterpiller that gets slimy and yucky for a while and then becomes a butterfly, SETI@home is changing from it’s “Classic” client to a NEW AND IMPROVED client. This client is called the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, or BOINC for short. It’s developed by Berkeley (obviously) and these are the same people who ran/developed seti 1. BOINC isn’t just a new way of running SETI@home, it’s a new way of running multiple distributed computing projects on the same machine. Right now, SETI@home (AKA S@H) is starting to run off of that (although you can still use the classic client as they iron the bugs out of the new system), as is Predictor@home (AKA P@H). P@H is kind of like folding@home in that it folds protiens. But while folding@home is examining existing protiens to determine their structure, P@H is trying to develop a new model for protien folding that will give us more accurate representations of how the entire protien folding thing works. Sounds like a lot of fun to me, but I’m a geek.

Now, on August 26th, Climatepredictor.net is set to launch a program to use distrubuted computing to attempt to predict world climate for this century for some reason or other. So that makes 3 different DC projects that you can run at once if you have the BOINC client. Personally, I’m not gonna bother with the climate stuff, cause that’s not as cool as aliens and protiens.

OK, I’ve clearly gone all over the place and am just ranting at this point. Here’s what I’m trying to say:
I like S@H. I like P@H. I want to run both. Before I couldn’t run 2 or more DC projects, but with the magic of BOINC, I now can. Therefore, I am giddy with delight. I encourage all of you to sign up and run this software. DC only uses resources on your computer that you do not. It harneses your computer’s power for the greater good. THE GREATER GOOD, DAMNIT!

And on that note, I’ll be going now.

Posted by Daljit of NORN at 11:34 PM