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So who wants to help Anandtech win and possibly cure cancer at the same time!

S

Skillz

Golden Member
Anandtech community members are currently competing in a competition of who can do the most World Community Grid points. World Community Grid (WCG) is a distributed computing project that utilizes the BOINC software to distribute it's work loads to individuals computers. At the time of this writing we are in 2nd place, but with the help of people joining we could easily catch up to 1st. We have a little less than 7 days to catch them.

Here is a link to the current stats that is updated hourly.

Statistics -> Teams 2026 | seti-germany.de

www.seti-germany.de www.seti-germany.de

If you're interested in helping the team by donating your idling CPU cores then follow this link. It's a "referral" type link in a way that it'll automatically place you on Team AnAndTech, therefore all you'll need to do is create your account, download the BOINC software, login and everything will be good to go with you helping the team win!

join.worldcommunitygrid.org

World Community Grid

What if you could support causes you care about while reading this post? Your device's unused computing power can help scientists tackle cancer, HIV/AIDS, Zika, clean energy and other humanitarian issues.
join.worldcommunitygrid.org

After you make your account and get setup you need to enable stats exporting so your points can be gathered by the stats page. Go here and allow it:
www.worldcommunitygrid.org

Home

World Community Grid enables anyone with a computer or Android device to donate their unused computing power to advance cutting-edge scientific research on topics related to health and sustainability.
www.worldcommunitygrid.org www.worldcommunitygrid.org

Make sure you check "display my data" you do not have to link your devices if you don't want to. All that does is let people know how many systems you are using and their specs. So anyone using secret alien technology to crunch wouldn't want anyone to know.​


Let's kick Xtreme System's butt and maybe find a cure for cancer in the process!
 
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As soon as the 3950X is released I'm building a new rig to replace the old 2600k.

But unfortunately, my heart and cores belong to another team.
 
Awesome! Thanks for the info Skillz, this is a great way for 24/7 computers to help heat the house for Winter! Intelligent heat, it should be called, I suppose! 🙂
 
s0me0nesmind1 said:
What is this, the new Folding@Home?
Click to expand...

World Community Grid is far more than a single focus Distributed Computing project. IBM is the creator of this 'project', and one of the largest contributors. Whereas Folding focuses on one medical project, WCG has quite a few broad topics to cover, from medical to climate change to water purification science.

WCG runs under BOINC (Berkley [University] Open Internet Networked Computing) 'wrapper'. BOINC has a great many projects to choose from....pure mathematical stuff, medical stuff, and Astronomy/Physics stuff, and even some stuff I haven't tried yet. 🙂

It can be addicting, so be warned! Here are some of the competitions TeAm AnandTech has participated in this year.


EDIT: Our friendly crew can be found hiding out here: https://forums.anandtech.com/forums/distributed-computing.15/
 
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hmm, is @Markfw part of this? I know he does F@home, and something else, so I wonder if his cores are available. I'm guessing he is either ~95% of the AT contribution, or if he were to contribute his cores, would easily make up the difference on his own. 😀

I'll try to set something up, but I only have a dinky 2700X, :\
 
haha, holy shit. ...I'm guessing that spike yesterday means this thread has been somewhat successful?

I am starting to get a bit more interested in this, as I'm considering ~1-2 years from now putting in my own data server @Home or @The lab, wherever it can be accessed. I've spent years producing a few thousand nextGen Seq libraries, but never had the skills to work with that data. This can either require massive Institutional clusters, or for a tiny lab like ours, a decent Threadripper machine will suffice with our amount of data...i think. I'me still quite the novice, but just starting to learn how to work in these environments, running command line and python scripting to work with these files and do analysis (something I should have learned about 10 years ago. ...ah well).
 
Serious question...I like the concept of distributed computing, but honestly, has it ever actually accomplished anything? Any diseases "cured," any aliens found...anything "real?"
 
Sure it has accomplished something.

It's computational research though. Therefore, instant gratification from it can probably only be had in number-theoretical projects (example).

Going for an example in a different field, astrophysics, TeAm AnandTech is about to complete a little sprint on the side in a project called Asteroids@home. This project calculates the 3D shape of asteroids based on the little data that is available in the form of photometry from several observatories. This project published results recently, thereby doubling the number of asteroids whose (coarse) shape is known to man. :-)

Or in particle physics, there is for example the LHC@home project, which is nothing less than an extension of CERN's own data center into volunteer computing. I.e. volunteers are running some of the data analysis of the very experiments that are going on at CERN.

Back to diseases cured: There is a variety of theoretical chemistry/ molecular dynamics/ protein simulation/ ... projects in the Distributed Computing world. They don't cure diseases on their own, as computational simulation is a step at the early stages of drug development. Some of these projects have their scientists publish a paper now and then, others are more constantly publishing.

The contest at which TeAm AnandTech is participating currently (Join us!) is held at World Community Grid (WCG), which is a Distributed Computing infrastructure run by IBM. IBM has been hosting quite a variety of scientific projects there, which, even though they are of course all computational research, are less on the theoretic and more on the applied end of the scientific spectrum:
Before WCG commits to hosting a proposed project, the WCG staff is vetting the proposals for their viability. During and after a project, they regularly check on the progress that the scientific teams are making based on the data that WCG returns from volunteers to the scientists. The links above give a high-level impression of what is going on there.
 
@BoomerD , a certainly valid question, and thanks so much to @StefanR5R for a detailed answer. To be sure, WCG is definitely one of the more 'open to the public' projects, with transparent research available for all. Think of it as baby steps, very often research papers are published, but they are just stepping stones, to get to the top, to the 'cure' for xyz disease.

Personally, I have a powerful desktop. It runs 24/7, otherwise idle 98% of the time. It is winter, and I can use the 'intelligent' heat. 🙂 I run BOINC.

One thing is certain....Cancer can't be cured by not trying...
 
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zinfamous said:
hmm, is @Markfw part of this? I know he does F@home, and something else, so I wonder if his cores are available. I'm guessing he is either ~95% of the AT contribution, or if he were to contribute his cores, would easily make up the difference on his own. 😀

I'll try to set something up, but I only have a dinky 2700X, :\
Click to expand...

Nothing dinky about it, I run one in challenges. It works quite well on most projects. There are GPU projects too, BOINC is not limited to just CPU.

Current BOINC Projects List with links and descriptions of said projects
 
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If we don't get more help, [H] is gonna steam roll us in about 20 hours.

I know people here have got to have multiple core rigs and only utilize half or less of the cores on a daily basis.

Where are you guys? Let's bring home 2nd place for Team AnAndTech.

I believe the highest the team has ever reached in this challenge was 8th (maybe 6th) and we're in a position to take home the silver medal.
 
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Skillz said:
If we don't get more help, [H] is gonna steam roll us in about 20 hours.

I know people here have got to have multiple core rigs and only utilize half or less of the cores on a daily basis.

Where are you guys? Let's bring home 2nd place for Team AnAndTech.

I believe the highest the team has ever reached in this challenge was 8th (maybe 6th) and we're in a position to take home the silver medal.
Click to expand...

Calling @Markfw this definitely your thing and you have what 90 something cores?

I’ll look into this tonight but I may be too late to help
 
There is still 2+ days to go. (The top link in @Skillz' first post has got a timer counting down.) Lots of processor cycles that could still be squeezed in. :-)
 
just started running for ya guys, though I don't think the application asked for my login, did it?
 
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Yes it should have. Did you follow this link to create an account?

join.worldcommunitygrid.org

Home

World Community Grid enables anyone with a computer or Android device to donate their unused computing power to advance cutting-edge scientific research on topics related to health and sustainability.
join.worldcommunitygrid.org join.worldcommunitygrid.org

Then, when you download the software you need to go to attach project, search for WCG and click attach project. Then enter your login and work should begin downloading after a few mins. In 15 mins your CPU should be at 100% usage.

Also, holy crap this site is so dang full of stupid ads it makes browsing the site and doing anything on my phone nearly impossible.
 
I joined it, i think. Clicked through and setup account now it is doing stuff and heating my house even though it is already hot in here. I'm not much help but I will do what I can.
 
Awesome guys.

Make sure you export your stats so the stats server can add it to the team.

www.worldcommunitygrid.org

Home

World Community Grid enables anyone with a computer or Android device to donate their unused computing power to advance cutting-edge scientific research on topics related to health and sustainability.
www.worldcommunitygrid.org www.worldcommunitygrid.org

Click Display my Stats.
 
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