Skynet wants YOU!
 

Doesn't sound omninous at all, does it? :cool:

They didn't mention any payment for usage of my computer. Therefore, no. At least until I find a good reason to.

I would, but I'm running folding@home on my servers right now. There's a lot of distributed computing projects I'd like to run, so I just picked one and stayed with it.

And Advent, these projects usually run as a lowest priority process, which means that they only run when the cpu isn't fully loaded, and thus don't interefere with normal computer usage. There are arguments against running these though, sometimes the heat/noise output of your computer can make a room uncomfortable or the power bill too d*** high. :P

This has been done for different scientific projects for years now. This group just picked a humorous name for it.

For real Advent, would do it for monies :hmm:

Money isn't everything. But it is our currency. And so, a service (such as the use of my computer) requires payment in return. If they don't like it, they can go get another computer. Simple as that.

IIRC it started with Seti at Home, which I participated in, but that was in times when computer did not scale power consumption accoring to usage, so it reallz was a use of wasted cycles. These days, running this means to use more energy really. And if it comes to that I believe it is more energy efficient to let these things run on a specialized large computer than on many small systems. Besides, task management by priority does not always work best and there is also the issue of memory use and energy use. So for now I am not doing any of this. Maybe if they pay for the electricity they use, I will consider. Or if there are projects I relly like to support by a donation...

Actually, many (not all) HPC systems use less powerful CPUs than consumer hardware (although recently, they've been moving to GPU-based processing), because it's the parallel aspect that gives them their power. Once again, you complain about something you know nothing about (as power usage in terms of TDP has always scaled with load) simply because it isn't some romanticised and unrealistic portrayal of 'magical native americans'.

Maybe I can personally clarify the performance/Watt problem. I have a server that uses about 200W from the outlet and a desktop that uses about 550W. Both, in fact, have *extremely* similar architectures (Athlon II X2 vs Phenom II X6, same ram, same brand am3 mobos).

The desktop gets on average 25.2GFlops using 400W. (CPU only)
The server gets on average 11.2GFlops using 200W.
Desktop: 25.2/400 = .063GFlops/W
Server: 11.2/200 = .056GFlops/W

Although it's not that black and white. This both proves and disproves what you are saying. It is true that faster and more power-hungry systems (in this case, a 6-core 4.25GHz Phenom II X6) are actually more efficient than large numbers of slower systems (A dual core Athlon II X2 at 2.80 GHz). However, the argument that performance doesn't scale with power consumption is not always true. If I used 50 servers with the same spec, I'd still have the same performance/power ratio, because I'd use more power but also get more performance in a linear fashion. This is how most large computers are in fact constructed, with maybe 500 computers, each containing 2 or 4 CPUs. (With the exception of the IBM System z10, which fits somewhere in between a single box and a small supercomputer, with its 17 CPUs).

I wouldn't mind participating in this, or f@h (since the AMD gpu client seems to be improving)

But the problem I have with it is the amount of data that has to be downloaded/uploaded for every work unit completed (I have no idea how much). My ISP has tiered plans with set data caps, and if you go over it's $5 per GB :( I'm already at the very edge with just work related stuff and general browsing. So yeah...

The extra power consumption wouldn't bother me too much. In the winter at least, any extra heat my PC puts out wouldn't go to waste.

WUs are small for most projects, because it isn't rendering or something else that multiplies the volume of data. With F@H, IIRC one is a few MB, and the data produced to send back is smaller.

That said, get a better ISP ;)

I have no idea what native americans or any other cultural aspect has to do with computer power. This is simply about data...
Here is a list of the computing systems that are most efficient:
The Green500 List :: Environmentally Responsible Supercomputing :: The Green500 June 2011
FAH would rank somewhere around place 100. Not bad, but still computers that are designed to be efficient and powerful seem to score better. Of course crowdsourcing is always a gain because the computing power is huge and of course it is free for the ones giving out the work units - the payment is done by the contributors who simply donate a couple of $$ a year to the project that way by buying energy and computer equipment.

If you think F@H could be run on a couple of dollars per contributor per year, you are seriously mistaken. It costs users more than that in energy.

HPC is like any computer, it is most efficient in terms of power per clock at the top of its designed load. There is ALWAYS a minimum power draw a CPU will have even if the actual load is zero.

Those power consumption figures are outright mad, how did you measure them exactly?

Mad? How so? I have an AC induction clamp ammeter, I use that to get the current draw of the server by clipping it on its power cable, and a cheap multimeter to measure the mains voltage. Wattage is obtained via the equation W=VA.

They seem like perfectly acceptable wattages to me, remember any hpc type application will load your system to it's max. I've even found that folding makes my CPU 2C hotter than 6 instances of K10 CPUBurn. :D Under normal usage, the server pulls about 150W, and most of that is the power used to keep the disk drives spinning, and the desktop pulls about 375W, which is still high, but it's overclocked on a board with High RDS(on) mosfets, which are horribly inefficient. (Srsly, never buy any 4-phase mobo from MSI. ever. their 8-phase mobos are quite good though.)

And yes, HNM is right, electricity is expensive. However, I got my shiny new Phenom II X6 around the same time the AC stopped working, so the new AC provides a great excuse for any differences in the power bill... :rolleyes: