A way to use wasted CPU cycles for scientific research

[thetoof]

I just found out how we video enthusiasts could use our powerful (or not so powerful) computers for something useful when they're not busy filtering and encoding.

Ever wondered how to benefit from your unused CPU cycles other than by wasting them in the great System Idle Process?

Here's how to help scientific research without even noticing: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/ (processes are on low by default, low memory usage, fully customizable CPU, RAM and disk space usage)

Join and share! (or ignore and leave this thread..!)

[mariush]

The problem is... CPU usually lowers its power consumption when idle and obviously with this heat also decreases. For a CPU it's usually not much of a difference, but it still is.
On a quick Google search I found this:

on full processor load (no video card involved) : http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-power-cpu,1925-11.html

The chart shows the actual difference between idle and full load on the processor, so you can see it can be up to 100watts on full load and this adds up.

With GPU aware programs like Seti@Home it's even more fun... a 4850 like the one I have in the computer goes from a cool 150w idle to about 270w when gpu is abused, even when cpu stays around 20% use.

So it's a trade-off, instead of wasting (free) cpu cycles you now waste money on electricity. I could go on to mention noise levels (whenever my power supply goes above 200w load, it starts to spin it's fan to a point where it's audible and it annoys me) but the post is already too long.

[Ghitulescu]

The SETI project uses your idea for some 10 years now ;)

[thetoof]

The problem is... CPU usually lowers its power consumption when idle and obviously with this heat also decreases. For a CPU it's usually not much of a difference, but it still is. Granted. However regardless of noise level... Let's assume a computer on 24/7 and a 100W increase in a country where electricity is @ .1$/kwh... It would cost less than 25 cents a day in electricity.
It's a price I'm willing to pay for that purpose (maybe not factorizing gigantic numbers... but helping climateprediction.net seems fair to me).

The SETI project uses your idea for some 10 years now ;) Yes, I know and no, it's not my idea (I don't recall claiming to be revolutionary; only pointing out something some might not know). I linked to wcg because it cover human-related causes, not scanning the universe to detect life signs. edit: and in case you may add that many other projects can be found/helped with the boinc manager, it can easily be learned/deduced when dling the software from wcg.

[honai]

a computer on 24/7 and a 100W increase in a country ... helping climateprediction.net seems fair to me

I can predict the climate in that country: it gets warmer.

Problem solved.

[Chengbin]

Not to hijack your thread, but if you want to put your GPU to use, you can get Folding@Home GPU, which is almost the same as this project, but it is about protein folding. Of course you can run Folding@home on a CPU, but my 8800GT is about 10-20 times faster than my Q6600. I always run it when I'm not home, it is a great way to contribute your unused computing power to science. I recommend running the GPU client only when you're not on the computer. Unless your GPU is water cooled, it'll get noisy.

[thetoof]

Thanks for the info; that's exactly what I wanted to come from this thread.

[mariush]

Yeah, but again, a 4850 in 2d mode or idle is ~ 170watts , when doing any heavy gpu stuff, system goes to 270w, the power supply fan starts and if I still had the regular fan on 4850 then fan would run at 60% and card would stay at 82C. I'm lucky that I got an Accelero S1 rev2 and now the card is passively cooled by the heatsink and stays at 45C in full load.
With such a big difference the electricity costs still don't matter so much, it would be about 1$ a day extra to the electricity bill, noise is what annoys me more.

i'm quite sensitive to noise levels and it bothers me to the point I'm seriously considering selling a perfectly good 100$ power supply to get a 150$ passively cooler power supply when with the same money I could get a second 24" LCD which would be a better investment in productivity. Won't even mention the stock intel fan, I'm already using the bios fan speed settings to keep fan spinning as low as possible and keeping the q6600 at about 55C average on idle instead of around 46C with standard speed fan (ill get passive heatsink soon)...