Re:The untapped potential of volunteer computing
by mrob on Tuesday December 22, 2015 @12:02PM
(#10778824)
The article doesn't mention what I suspect is the biggest reason for the decline in popularity - improved power management. When these projects were new they really were using computing power that would otherwise have gone to waste. Idle power consumption was very similar to power under load, so it made sense to keep your CPU busy. But now idle power is much less wasteful, and everybody participating in these projects pays for it in higher electricity bills. This is unsurprisingly less popular than helping at no additional cost.
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Re:The untapped potential of volunteer computing
by faitswulff on Tuesday December 22, 2015 @12:48PM
(#10779117)
Not to mention the move to portable electronics. Having SETI@home running may make only a minor difference in performance on a desktop, but that's precious battery life for a laptop user.
Re:The untapped potential of volunteer computing
by wolfgke on Tuesday December 22, 2015 @02:11PM
(#10779631)
I mostly run my laptop on the power grid and many other people, too. So your argument only makes sense for people that run their laptop mostly on battery
The much worse problem is that many laptops have non-decent cooling - so if you really put them under hard workload for a longer time, you will at least hear that by the loud annoying fan or the processor will reduce its clock frequency making the laptop slower.
Re:The untapped potential of volunteer computing
by sitkack on Wednesday December 23, 2015 @08:11AM
(#10783099)
I am not sure if the current boinc clients do this but to gain more users they could
* run only while connected to wall power
* run while battery is 80% charged or higher (don't compete with a 0% charged battery)
* don't spin the fan (meaning throttle back and don't make the user's machine sound like a jet engine)