Wednesday, March 23, 2005

1,000+ Units for SETI@Home
I wasn't home that much yesterday, so I missed out on getting a screen capture of the actual 1,000th data submission to SETI@Home, but this morning I took this pic of the 1,004th.

1,004th Data Unit

There are all sorts of programs out there now that can effectively harness the otherwise unused processing cycles of thousand or hundreds of thousands (or more) of CPUs, but SETI@Home was the first, and still the one that appeals to me the most. I like the fact that the computers in my home are part of a search for the BEMs that I feel have to be out there. (I just hope they use the radio frequencies SETI scans through.)

The project has also indirectly become a measure as to the relative processing speeds of the various machines I have had. Am pretty sure the first computers I loaded SETI@Home on took at least 3-4 days to process a single unit. Now, most of the systems in the house can at least handle a unit per day, and my fastest machine typically does up to 4 units in a day -- and could potentially do more if I put a faster processor on its motherboard.

I also liked it when my elder daughter asked what the computer was doing when that program is running. "It's looking for aliens" I replied. "Come on." "No, really". "Really? Dad, stop kidding me..." ;-)


# posted by Keith : 6:20 AM  0 Comments

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