BOINC-wide team: “Team Elder Scrolls”

Are you curious about this BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) thing?


For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, it is an umbrella to house any number of distributed computing projects under one application. It not only has the ability to run on your CPU but can take advantage of unused cycles on ATI/AMD and nVidia GPUs as well! And those who are running multiple computers can administer all their BOINC instances with one manager!


Is it safe? This program was developed by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley, first released on April 10, 2002, and is hosted on their servers, maintained and updated by U.C. Berkeley staff. Unfamiliar with U.C. Berkeley? Check them out at: http://berkeley.edu/


With BOINC’s configurability, those who are running older equipment or those who do not wish to devote 100% of their idle cycles can easily do so. Some settings include: “Set it and forget it” settings to start when you boot up, Run only when idle or within time restrictions (i.e. run from 1AM to 5AM), CPU core and % usage, network restrictions so that those still on dial-up can connect and disconnect automatically, disk usage, the % allocation for each project you wish to donate, and also a “snooze” button!


The most well-known project hosted by BOINC probably is SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence as seen in the movie Contact. You can choose projects that tickle your fancy in the research fields of: Disease, Biology, Protein, Cryptography, Mathematics, Games, Climate study, A.I., Physics, Astronomy, and more! There are even Grid projects that host a number of their own projects!

A few example projects are:
SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence)-Examines radio signals for artificial patterns to find the presence of intelligent alien life, run by U.C. Berkeley.
WCG (World Community Grid)-Humanitarian research on disease, natural disasters and hunger, run by IBM.
Climateprediction.net-Climate research and modeling, run by Oxford University.
Einstein@Home-Searches for gravitational waves from spinning neutron stars (pulsars), run by University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and the Max Planck Institute.
POEM@HOME-Protein structure prediction, run by University of Karlsruhe (Germany).
Docking@Home-Study of protein-ligand interactions, run by University of Delaware.
GPUGrid.net-Molecular simulations of proteins, run by Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB).
Milkyway@home-Astonomy, run by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.



The program can be installed on a number of 32 and 64 bit platforms such as: Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, and PS3s running Linux. It also features a graphical screensaver that can be activated in your system settings which displays output from the various projects you are running. (I really like the SETI one!)


Everyone’s welcome! To get started, go to the BOINC links below and download the client. Browse and choose projects, and visit those project’s webpages to get set up! Once there, be sure to “Find a team” and search for our “Team Elder Scrolls” and join up on each project’s website!




BOINC main page: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/
Download BOINC: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php
Choose projects: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php
Our team stats: http://www.allprojectstats.com/showteam.php?projekt=0&id=1568012

If you have any questions, or any projects missing our team? PM me!



Also, I realize that not everyone will trust this program (which has been around a while and was created by a first tier university), and not everyone will want to install it. However, please refrain posting about that as it just spams up the post and doesn't contribute anything remotely worthwhile. Thanks.

Since this was brought up a few times: This thread was sanctioned by the moderators.

I don't like downloading programs I've never heard of, sorry.

Unfortunate, but this may fall under advertising...

BOINC has been around for years, and is a legit project. This thread was started with the blessings of forum moderation.

No spam, no danger, no advertising.

BOINC is similar to, but in competition with, the Folding @ Home project already stickied here.

How about changing the text from colored to something legible for the people using the IP.Board skin.

Very cool. I will be joining to help with SETI. I was really bummed to find they pulled the funding.

OK, I just quintupled your team's total credits.

(Been on BOINC for a while.)


Hey there's this neat program called BOINC that lets you do distributed computing!

Now you heard of it.

I've been on it since it started in 1999 (pre-BOINC SETI@Home) and I've never heard of anyone having a problem with it. It has several security features built in, ie code signing and running client apps. in a sandbox.

https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Client_security_and_sandboxing... note the "as long as projects use proper practices." As the SETI@Home team is also the BOINC development team, that project definitely does.

For those who like astronomy projects I also highly recommend http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/. It also anolyzes data from Arecibo as SETI does, and also the LIGO gravity wave observatories. It does GPU computing, always has lots of work (SETI runs out sometimes as it's very popular) is a very stable project which I can't remember ever going down, and has made several discoveries.

Thanks for the help, uncle! You rock! Anyone who doesn't wanna do BOINC, go to the Folding @ Home one and join up on that project!

Done, removed all color tags from the post.

Welcome aboard!

Wow, we got a celebrity here! Thanks for joining! I remember the pre-BOINC SETI@Home...I think I had it running on a Pentium at that time...

First,big of Uncle Fuzzy to say what he says, and Folding at Home is a great project, so if boinc isn′t for you,take a look at Folding at Home,Team Elder Scrolls of course

Over to Boinc then.
Found the first setting particulary usefull if I have unlimited internet = when I don′t pay for traffic (through mobile for example).It speeds up things on projects where time is a factor,afaik many GPU-projects,can help with credits too if that is important

The Multi-GPU thing is self explainatory,but just in case one have more than one GPU,that setting might be needed,don′t have to be,but it might.

cc_config.xml.txt-tips
----------------------
How to report tasks immediately:

Create, or edit an existing, cc_config.xml file in the Program Data folder for Boinc, using a text editor (Notepad),
- For Vista and Win7 create the file in this folder, C:\ProgramData\BOINC

Add the following lines:



1





Using Multiple GPUs:
Depending on your driver, you may also need to add this line if you want to use multiple GPUs

1

Pass....

In addition to SETI that was mentioned above here, world community grid is backed by IBM, guess people have heard about that company World Community Grid is part of Boinc btw.
Quite easy to find the results of their work,it is on their public website.

Additional configuration tweaks:

Cache Levels (Additional Work Buffer):
For GPUGRID it is better to set a low cache level of say 0.05days (rather than use the default 0.25days).
Open Boinc in Advanced View, Click Advanced, Preferences, under the network usage Tab set the additional work buffer to a low value.
- This will optimise Work Unit turn around and expedite the project. It will also allow you to collect larger bonuses.
----------------------------------------------

You can add this Environmental System Variable to dedicate a CPU core for each GPU (just 1 thread for HT systems),
Variable name: Swan_Sync
Variable Value: 0
-------------------------

Alrighty! Time for the BOINC thread's first team update. "Team Elder Scrolls" is getting off the ground slowly, but I'm hopeful we'll get some charitable souls to help out with our endeavor! Some of you guys out there surely must be running BOINC...

The format of these posting will evolve over time since there's just so much information on the team. No milestones will be posted this time. (Baseline report.)



Anyway three new members!

Member - Total member credits
1) Me! (CFx-Tahoe) - 1683971.1
2) folding_rejects - 24485875.44
3) Mr. Kevvy - 13327239.66


Total team credits: 3796036.74
Team rank based on total credit: 3805 of 93357
Team rank based on RAC (recent average credit): 281 of 93357
Team rank based on # of members: 16478 of 93357


Projects running: PrimeGrid, GPUGrid, MilkyWay@Home, Climateprediction.net, SETI@home, Einstein@Home, Cosmology@Home, World Community Grid, Rosetta@home


For project stats visit: http://www.allprojectstats.com/showteam.php?projekt=0&id=1568012&showall=1
For member stats visit: http://www.allprojectstats.com/top.php?type=4&projekt=0&teamid=1568012



Aaaand, as a reminder from the OP: Not everyone will trust this program and not everyone will want to install it. However, please refrain posting about that as it just spams up the post and doesn't contribute anything worthwhile. Thanks.

Well, at least we pulled 2997 points out of you before you went back to BOINC.

So I install this and it uses up my CPU for other things?

You have a habit of pulling ppd′s out of people Uncle Fuzzy

btw was over and was registred team Elder Scrolls at DC Vaults for convinient sake,and DC Vaults includes F@H too,makes us "Boincers" looks good,that and Primegrid I guess We are in total at place 204
http://www.dc-vault.com/showteam.php?team=537

Yes, I say that is a huge benefit with Boinc, for example you download the basic program = the boinc client depending on what OS you are on,have an user name,pick any project from within the boincmanager that comes included when you install it,and that is really that easy If it isn′t we are here to help if we can,or we find out eventually.
It says in the boinc-manager btw if it is supported by cpu,gpu and which GPU = ati/amd or Nvidia together with a description of what it is about.

For example on my "main computer" I use regurlary I have it using 50 % of my 6 core cpu,if I game maybe go down some more,MW manages fine on 50 % for boinc,while Oblivion don′t,more like 20 %,or using an affinity changer. On secondary pc′s I have the cpu load at 90 %,have to have some left.
And AMD/ATI GPU′s shines in Boinc,really good at it.

Edit: have to say my main pc isn′t standard, at the speed it is at mostly,everything works but running it more on cpu and I risc getting a nice reboot because of my oc,besides I run 2 X gtx 460 which basically do most of my contributions,cpu is a little extra basically.

It runs at low priority so you won't notice it's there as it only takes unused CPU cycles. What you may notice is if you do GPU computing; it may slow down screen refresh for videos, games. In which case you can just set it to not do GPU computing when the computer is in use (mouse or keyboard activity.)

I have a GTX 460 on my primary box, and run it 100% CPU and GPU and still get 60FPS in Oblivion even outdoors. The Fermi architecture multithreads much better.


I guess this was missed, er... a lot:

This program was developed by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley, first released on April 10, 2002, and is hosted on their servers, maintained and updated by U.C. Berkeley staff. Unfamiliar with U.C. Berkeley? Check them out at: http://berkeley.edu/

http://berkeley.edu/news/features/nobel/ of whom the most recent addition was Saul Perlmutter, who shared the Physics prize this week. BOINC is supported by the National Science Foundation.

So, yeah, they aren't serving malware. And BOINC has a lot of security built into it.

Don't worry, I'll still do some. I installed that beta client and am checking that one out.

Yeah, I figured I'd "remind" people because as you know, the whole 200 post limit thing. And anyone who's interested probably doesn't care if some random dude from "Somewhere Scotlandishly Scottish" or whatever doesn't wanna install it. I don't mind legitimate questions and the like. And having you and jax on here, it's like the BOINC POSSE! BTW, I like your location. Clever...but all my Canuck friends don't really say "eh."

oi.. where to start..

Please tell me;

1) how much on average does your computer use up bandwidth? 5mb a day? projects exceed that and transfers back and forth double it to 50mb? I've no idea I'm bandwidth capped.

2) how do I get into that team page - I'm just on World Community Grid, and whatnot, and dl'ed from there

3) and please generally explain the steps you took to getting your setup

-- meaning.. what major program are you running (an account manager? or from a diff website like I did off world grid?)
-- and how you get all those different projects listed (though I have a general idea, please explain all the steps in a simplified manner)
-- etc..

thanks~


Processor: 4 AuthenticAMD AMD Phenom™ 9500 Quad-Core Processor [Family 16 Model 2 Stepping 2]
Processor: 512.00 KB cache
Memory: 3.00 GB physical, 6.20 GB virtual
\NVIDIA GPU 0: GeForce 8500 GT (driver version 18627, CUDA version 2020, compute capability 1.1, 256MB, 30 GFLOPS peak)


how can I take advantage of this while at the same time not losing significant bandwidth and not bothering performances for streaming videos etc?

1) how much on average does your computer use up bandwidth? 5mb a day? projects exceed that and transfers back and forth double it to 50mb? I've no idea I'm bandwidth capped.

how can I take advantage of this while at the same time not losing significant bandwidth and not bothering performances for streaming videos etc?

That is a good question! One's average will depend on a variety of things. Which projects you contribute to and what your BOINC settings are. You can set a maximum upload and download rate, as well as cap the amount of data you transfer per an arbitrary number of days. You can also tell it to connect after a certain number of days, etc.


2) how do I get into that team page - I'm just on World Community Grid, and whatnot, and dl'ed from there

The WCG team page is here: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/viewTeamInfo.do?teamId=N41SBR9D402 Alternately, you can click on the "My Team" link then click on "Find a Team" then in the "Contains:" text box, enter "Team Elder Scrolls" and click on search. On the page that comes up, there should be a button that says "join this team" and you just click on that.


3) and please generally explain the steps you took to getting your setup

-- meaning.. what major program are you running (an account manager? or from a diff website like I did off world grid?)
-- and how you get all those different projects listed (though I have a general idea, please explain all the steps in a simplified manner)
-- etc..

I installed the BOINC manager from: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php

Then I went here: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php to start looking for projects that interested me. In the Berkeley release of the BOINC manager, you can see a list of projects or add projects by going to Tools -> Add project -> Next > -> Select whatever project you like -> Next >

From this point, if this is a new project for you, Select "No, new user" and fill out your email address and choose a password -> Next > -> Finish.
Otherwise, Select "Yes, existing user" and fill out your email address and your password -> Next > -> Finish.

For stats, visit the links in the original post. If I didn't answer your questions to your satisfaction or you have more, just PM me and I'll edit the response into this post.

I don't even understand how/why this thread is still open. O.o

Thank you for the spam. Anyhow, this thread was created with the blessings and by the suggestion of the mod team. Thus, this thread still exists.

Boinc from scratch-windows
--------------------------
As for GPU specific questions, that depends, there is volountarily work to do do with cuda 23 but not all,so it is suggested getting the cuda toolkit if one are into GPU computing: Or update the general driver. Lower than 23 is no good in general.
http://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-downloads

theres been a bit of confusion

I just meant that there seems to be a variety of BOINC applications and I was a little lost.. my version from WCG seems to be a lower version, and it's bugged somehow where I'm stuck in advanced mode - which has its up's and down's .. I like the more visually appealing simple mode just for aesthetic purposes :/ .. so, I'm going to try to install BOINC from that link you provided, instead of what I did (I installed boinc from WCG website)


and about the team thing .. if you check, I joined WCG and hopped on the elder scrolls team maybe 2 days ago now - but I just specifically meant that the link you posted for elder scrolls team (http://www.allprojectstats.com/top.php?type=4&projekt=0&teamid=1568012) doesn't show me, while this website (http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/viewTeamMemberDetail.do?sort=name&teamId=N41SBR9D402) shows Clipfox, folding_rejects, and me~ Kyffre

see? one website kev, cfx, folding
the other.. clip, fold, me~

O.o

and I was lookin' for tech support in unleashing my 4 core beast if that is a presumably good idea that wont hurt performance as mentioned, or even to enable the "secondary" Three cores, leaving the primary core to the computer for computing~