BOINC: Compute for Science

Re:BOINC: Compute for Science by ChrisGranger on Friday September 11, 2015 @05:50PM (#10206364)

As a longtime BOINC user, I'm sometimes frustrated by how tiny a percentage of our global (idle) processing power is being used by distributed computing projects, especially projects related to medicine. It seems like such a good idea, and I wish we were doing more...

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Re:BOINC: Compute for Science by tedunangst on Friday September 11, 2015 @06:13PM (#10206445)

If every idle process started running simulations full bore, that'd be a lot of heat... I have maybe 100W of computers "online" at the moment. But the heavy load draw would be well over 1000W. Idle time isn't free.

The exceptions would be some previous gen consoles like the PS3, which didn't idle efficiently, but only if you assume they're being left on continuously. I used to run folding@home during the winter to help heat my apartment.

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Re:BOINC: Compute for Science by dragonwriter on Friday September 11, 2015 @06:21PM (#10206474)

> As a longtime BOINC user, I'm sometimes frustrated by how tiny a percentage of our global (idle) processing power is being used by distributed computing projects

Hasn't there been significant effort over the last decade or so to improve processor efficiency (for both heat output and power use reasons) by reducing power use when idle, meaning that "idle capacity" is much less of a "free" resource than it used to be?

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Re:BOINC: Compute for Science by isla-de-encanta on Saturday September 12, 2015 @03:42PM (#10209063)

BOINC should work more on the personal reward in order to get more participants. for example

- include some crypto mining into their client

- be included in a free version of windows (microsoft will distribute lite version of windows in exchange for contributing your pc power)

- be a default "screensaver" in ubuntu

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Re:BOINC: Compute for Science by aries1980 on Thursday September 17, 2015 @07:01AM (#10232619)

Longtime BOINC contributor here too. The only thing I annoyed by the projects is the WUs and the source code of the individual projects are not open-source. More researchers could be involved if the data would be publicly accessible.

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