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What dc program is most beneficial? (read the post, 500+ 500+mhz comps may be involved)

B

bigshooter

Platinum Member
My boss told me i cna talk to the head honchos at my place of employment about installing distributed clients on our workstations. I'll probably try to keep them at our local office, and just on workstations, but it still adds up to at least 500 machiens. These range from celeron 566- 1.6ghz p4's. I think my case will be better if the program will benefit people somehow. I also like to participate in programs that have a finite end, seti just keeps going and going, programs like rc5 seem to keep going and going, but should wrap up soon. I'm thinking one of the protein folding or cancer programs would be good, but what do you guys think? Maybe I'll just lie and say rc5 64 is fighting terrorism or soemthing just so i can get a bunch of comps cracking that stupid thing so maybe it will end. Anyways, can people give me advice, and maybe help me wiht a persuasive argument to do this?

Thanks.
 
As far as immediately "beneficial" goes, I'd recommend Folding@Home. Granted, I'm a little biased, being involved in the project myself, but it is a noble goal with potentially immediate rewards if we can understand how proteins fold themselves. 😉
 
Being more of a SETI person doing RC5 on the side, I don't know all the details of Folding@home or ECCp-109, but both of these could use your help. TeAm AnandTech is making strides in both of these projects, especially Folding@home lately. ECCp-109 has TeAm AnandTech 5th in the world...but having difficulty overcoming the 4 top teams...you could certainly help there! :Q

Any TeAm AnandTech DC TeAm could use your assistance......regardless of the project.

(P.S. I know you said finite end and sorta no to SETI...but it sure has a great TeAm and great following around here...and with the team right behind us getting a member with 1100 workstations back up and running in the last week, those 500+ PC's sure sound great! 😀)
 
With that many machines you could run several programs and help several teams out. Seti is my personal choice.
 
I'd say you should do what *YOU* think is best. After all, you're going to be the one doing all the work.

Every team can use your help so it's not a matter of need or want. Just look at the projects and decide which interests you the most. Who knows, you may decide you want to participate in several projects. That's cool, you're not alone there. However you choose, there's a bunch of people here to help you get up and running. 🙂

Hope you decide to join us.
 
I run Seti and ECCp, but I think what you should do is check out the Welcome to the Distributed Computing Forum message at the top and read about each project. After you have read about them come back and posts any questions you have. The choice is ultimately yours so read up on the projects, ask questions and make the best decision you can. All projects are of value in some way or another and it may be easier for you to convince them if the project relates to your work.
 
Originally posted by: Robor
I'd say you should do what *YOU* think is best. After all, you're going to be the one doing all the work.

Every team can use your help so it's not a matter of need or want. Just look at the projects and decide which interests you the most. Who knows, you may decide you want to participate in several projects. That's cool, you're not alone there. However you choose, there's a bunch of people here to help you get up and running. 🙂

Hope you decide to join us.
Click to expand...

yeah what he said
 
Hi there,

Of course I am biased toward SETI, as it is my main project. The main reason I do SETI (in case you need a reason) is due to the huge amount of TeAm activity on that front. What with OhioDude's SETI Racing League and the occasional Mini Team Races, as well as the battles we sometimes engage in with other monster teams, I just find it active and entertaining... and it has really encouraged me to boost production!!

To be completely honest however, I have reached a stage (with about 100 Computers) that I have begun considering expanding my fleet to several TA DC projects. At present, I am in the process of attempting to add 18 PII 400s to the ECCp team. This is in light of my steadily increasing SETI Fleet, which hopefully will produce around 300WUs a day from now on!

With your 500 machines (that is AMAZING!) You would doubtless be the greatest producer on any of the TA TeAms that you choose to produce for. (Hey CyGor, you have some real competition now my friend!! 😉) However, this would give you a remarkable opportunity to be among the top few producers for each and every TA TeAm!!

Some points to note:
Pentium 4 processors suck at RC5. I'm not sure, but I think they are not very good at ECCp either. They are quite good at SETI however (I'm not sure about Folding).
Athlons are very good at virtually any project.
P3s are likewise "Jacks of all trades" and can do well at virtually any project. They are more suited to SETI however, than Celerons due to the cache differences. On this point, Celerons are probably better bang for the buck at RC5 and ECCp than they are at SETI. So if you are going to be doing multiple projects, consider putting computers to work on projects where they have an advantage!! 🙂😀

Well, that's about it for me... Just as a little teaser, however... Currently, our top SETI Producer (CyGoR and Cobra) produce, on average, about 450WUs/day (I think... it's a bit hard to tell 😉) Your 500 machines, I'm guessing, would probably turn in close to 3 times that number at around 1200WUs/day!! That's just a guess... not knowing exactly how many of each machine you have... but that would put you among the top few in the world in SETI! 🙂 And really help TA make it to the top spot! 😀

Enough of me though,
-PieDerro
 
Yes I would say that if you are not sure, then distribute your fleet to the projects that suit the type of CPU that you have in a machine, then after a while you can converge on one or two projects 🙂

basically what PieDerro said! 🙂
 
I think I'll just stick to one project for now. I'm going to make one package and distribute it over sms. Hopefully I can just assign it to everybody and have it install. I think I might do rc5 just until it ends, because I am most familar with that client. It does need to run invisbly as well.
 
bigshooter: Just to let you know, the SETI client can be run as an invisible service. I dunno about F@H but I do believe I saw a post by RustyNale saying there's a service for the F@H client as well. Dunno if it's inviso or not though.

Great post PieDerro! 😀
 
I'd go SETI but that's just me.
there are many ways of running SETI, and alot of 3rd party software to help you out.
It's the easiest one to customize and to get running the way you want. It's already huge and more people do it than the other small ones, but It's my project of choice anyways.
 
That was a great post, PieDerro. That would truly be distributed distributed computing... 500+ rigs... sheesh!!! WTG man!!! 😀
 
I would vote for FaH.

I think SETI would be great, but it's tough to come up with a decent argument that it's helping people.

RC5 & ECCp are just trying to break encryption and are more of a fun challenge than anything useful.

FaH is really beneficial immediately to a lot of people. I would think it's by far the easiest to convince corporate types with as it is something they can easily relate too. The team is also small atm and would really appreciate your help.
 
How about an easy project to install, runs hidden, doesn't tax resources as much, and will be a big boost to our team.
Why of course, it's ECCP.
Optimized clients for any processor, a cool monitering tool, and a fun bunch of crunchers set in an intimate setting.
What more could one ask for?1😉 😀
Drop by and say hello and check out our FAQ

We'll be waiting.😎
 
I do have to agree with Kanatna that the project that is easiest to manage is ECCp. You don't have to pull from anywhere to get work and being that ECCp is one of the smallest projects, your fleet would make a huge impact. You would probably rise to one of the very top positions in no time.
 
Taken from a Certicom White Paper on the project:

It is our hope that the knowledge and experience gained from this Challenge will help confirm comparisons of the security levels of systems such as ECC, RSA and DSA that have been based primarily on theoretical considerations. We also hope it will provide additional information to users of elliptic curve public key cryptosystems in terms of selecting suitable key lengths for a desired level of security.
Click to expand...

So to sum it up they are trying to prove and improve levels of encryption. How does this benefit you? Do you like your money being safe in online transactions? Do you want information that is supposed to be sent securely to actually be secure? This projects have very tangible and beneficial goals. They are not merely just fun games, but serious scientific work.

Remember all projects have their benefits, just because it may not be apparent to you what they are, doesn't mean they aren't there. The choice as to what is the most beneficial is up to the person who is choosing the project.
 
All the DC projects are useful in that they help in establishing distributed computing as a viable alternative to 'in house' computations. Different projects have different goals and therefore either benefit different groups or benefit the same group in different ways.

It seems there are many people who never consider the benefits beyond the 'marketing hype' of DC projects. Remember that DC computing is still in its infancy. Many of these projects are just probes into what can be done, not necessarily producing any dramatic scientific results. The trials and tribulations of any of these projects are used to reshape the paradigm of distributed computing, in essence making future projects more efficient and deployable.

So projects like RC5 and SETI help projects like FAH to tackle more difficult problems (which is necessary for them to *really* help humanity and not be just a low level data filter). Likewise FAH and other newer projects serve to increase the global awareness of distributed computing, and make it possible for new programs to emerge.
 
I'm heavy into SETI and I love the project but it's hard to argue against F@H or ECCp too. I just started running ECCp under the TA_Seti_Rangers account and I think it's pretty cool. Also, it shares the CPU power with SETI very nicely. SETI stats will probably take a 50% hit but I was surprised that I didn't even notice the ECCp client running. In other words, no slowdown other than the Outlook think common with the SETI cli client.

My only arguement against ECCp would be if you're running a P4. Seems it's kinda a waste then. 🙁 By that I mean the CPU could do much better in other projects.
 
If you really want your machines to do some good, then get them up and running Folding@Home. I fold for another team (team32, overclockers.com) but go ahead and fold for AT. They are a fairly small team and you would really move them up in ranks fast. Also, you will be helping in research that has the potential to eventually help cure diseases such as Alzheimer's, cancers, Mad Cow disease, cystic fibrosis and others. A link to read from Stanford on the project is here. The programs to run Folding@Home are at this link. The program can be run as a service in a few ways on Win2K and WinXP systems and can also be run as a service on Win9x machines with a 3rd party program, but I'm not sure on how to set it up as a service on Win9x because I'm running everything on either Win2K or XP. There are also versions that will run on Linux and also Mac OSX. Another thing that appeals to me over other DC projects is that it is a university that is running this and not some companies that have banded together like some other DC projects. If you've ever watched a loved one slowly die from cancer or slowly lose their mind from Alzheimer's disease, then this is the project to get into.

muddocktor
 
I say go for Folding@ home. Its easy to defend the benefits of the project, and in my experience the client has the least amount of impact on system performance. It uses a slightly lower cpu priority than SETI or ECCp and doesn't seem to slow down outlook of other apps. It would be nice to see the F@H team move up the ranks.
 
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