Home Page Login Register

Web Address: www.SETIUSA.Net

Supporting BOINC Distributed Computing Projects

The “Four Horsemen” 12.26.2005 - BlkJack-21, Fish, Project III, JoeJoe

On Oct 23, 2005 the team gained its 100th member! In actuality the membership at that time was slightly less as a few early members had multiple user IDs set up to make the team look larger than it actually was hoping this would attract others to join the team. On Halloween night, the team made its goal of 1,000,000 cobblestones on the SETI@home project. By Dec 22 SETI.USA had moved up into the top 10 teams for daily output on the SETI@Home project with a team output near 86,000 cobblestones a day increasing to 100,000 cobblestones by the Dec 26th.

With the continuing addition of new enthused and dedicated members SETI.USA was steadily moving up the leader board.  In 2006 milestones and team accomplishments increased in an exponential manner. With other projects coming online in BOINC and the teams output no longer dedicated to only SETI@Home the team passed 5,000,000 total credits on the project on Jan 01 and doubled that by Jan 21. Things were really starting to move at this point. On Jan 22, 2006 for the first time SETI.USA surpassed SETI.Germany’s output on the SETI@Home project for the first time. The title of top producing team was exchanged between the two teams a few times but on Jan 25 SETI.USA re-gained and would except for a couple brief periods maintain the lead in daily output on SETI@Home. With an approximate 90,000,000 credit gap between the two teams we were now gaining on the #1 position daily.

The team’s motto - Together we will accomplish something amazing! - was certainly true, 10 months earlier no one had heard of team SETI.USA now they were the top producing team and still growing!

Feb 03, 2006 SETI.USA became the first team to pass a daily output of 1,000,000 cobblestones on the SETI@Home project. One of the many firsts to follow in the team’s future. Feb 21st would see the team pass 1300 members; by May 10th the team’s strength would be up to 2100 members. The team was still picking up speed and many finally realized that yes, SETI.USA may indeed have the ability to gain the #1 position on SETI@Home unseating the once though untouchable SETI.Germany.

In June 2006 the team was being noticed by those outside of the BOINC community. Two of our members BlkJack-21 and Daniel Schaalma were interviewed by a reporter from the Wall Street Journal regarding SETI.USA’s participation in the SETI@Home project. On Jun 28, 2006 the article “How Many Computers Does It Take to Make Contact with E.T.s?” was published by the Wall Street Journal. Although there were some inaccuracies regarding the founders of our team and a comment taken out of context by the reporter to support his position (who would have thought that would happen at the WSJ?) the article was overall beneficial in giving our team exposure and we believed helped in recruiting additional members. The article is still available online and can be viewed at:

URL: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115145653496392561-AgsAtLgNBY_cpnxYQf_B8dJ9GEI_20070627.html

Mar 08, 2007 SETI.USA passed SETI.Germany in total credit on the SETI@Home project. In less than two years since its inception team SETI.USA passed all teams participating in SETI@Home and became the #1 team for total credit on the project. SETI.USA’s #1 position has never been threatened and today retains over a 239,000,000 lead there thanks to ALL of its dedicated members.
After completing the team’s original goal and expanding our lead many members moved on to other projects running under BOINC. The team set out with a new goal of becoming the #1 team for total credit across all BOINC projects. This was accomplished on Sep 19, 2007.

Although our team has had its “ups and downs” the ups greatly outweigh the downs. SETI.USA remains a major player in teams participating in BOINC. Our team currently is 1st in total BOINC credit. SETI.USA leads the way with 23 #1 positions in BOINC projects and has more “top 10” ranks at 79 than any other team.

What does the future hold for SETI.USA? That’s entirely up to the team’s members. SETI.USA has been successful in its endeavors only because of the wonderful group of highly dedicated members that have joined us here. This team is nothing without its members. Each and every team member whether he has one computer or hundreds is vital to the success of the team’s future challenges.
Let’s make the next 5 years even more exciting and successful than the past 5 have been working together to keep SETI.USA the best distributed computing team participating in BOINC.

Together we will accomplish something amazing!…

Writing a general overview of running BOINC Projects in Linux is somewhat ambiguous due to the number of different distros and the differences between them. For those not yet familiar with Linux, a good way to get a taste of it is by using the Live CD Dotsch_UX. A live cd is a one that contains an operating system that will boot off of the cd without being installed on the computer. A distro is short for distribution. A distribution is a collection of open source programs configured to run off of the Linux kernel packaged by a group or individual. The Dotsch_UX live cd is created with the distro, Ubuntu.

For those without Linux experience that are feeling adventurous, the best place I've found for beginner's help is Bruno's All Things Linux. Since Ubuntu seems to be the distro that the majority of crunchers use, I'll write from an Ubuntu perspective. I use Gentoo, which is configured much the same way as Ubuntu with startup scripts, etc.

First of all, it's important to pick an acceptable version of Ubuntu, especially if you intend to crunch with a supported nVidia CUDA card. You'll want at least version Ubuntu 9.04. Anything lower will have issues with the kernel and the nVidia driver available through the package management system. The current default download at the Ubuntu website is 9.10. Installing Ubuntu isn't really within the scope of this document, but it is relatively easy if you do a little research beforehand and know what to expect. For instance, the file system and labeling of partitions is a bit different. Also, Ubuntu did a great job with their installer to make it user friendly.

Once Ubuntu is installed, BOINC can be installed through the Synaptic Package Manager. I use the curses based manager called Aptitude, but most will prefer the GUI version. The default Ubuntu BOINC client is outdated, so to get a more recent one, you will either need to get it direct from Berkley or find the binary outside of the official Ubuntu repository. The distro that Ubuntu is based on is Debian. Debian has version 6.10.17 in its repository and some have been able to install it (or you could just install Debian). The next version of Ubuntu (Lucid – 10.04 LTS) will have 6.10.17. The planned release of that is April 29th. The latest Gentoo update now has BOINC-6.10.36.

Using the graphical interface, there's not going to be much difference between Linux and Windows. Instead of “Start”, the Gnome window manager uses “Applications”. On Gentoo, the BOINC manager is at Applications => Other. In Ubuntu, I think it's typically Applications => System Tools. I haven't used BOINC in the KDE window manager, so I don't know what the menu location is for it there, but I would assume it's just as easy to find. Ubuntu uses Gnome by default. Anyways, nobody who has run BOINC in Windows will have a hard time using the BOINC manager in Linux.

The real power of running BOINC in Linux for me is learning to use it with the command line interface. That's what I use to monitor and manage my BOINC clients when I'm at work or away on vacation. In the future I plan to talk about using BOINC across a network or the internet to control BOINC clients.

RNA World was launched 21 May 2009 in Alpha status and was available by invite only. It is based at the Rechenkraft.net e.V. research facility located in Germany. On 2 Feb 2010 a request was made for users with Win2k machines and on the 5^th status of the project was changed to Beta status and account registration was opened to all.

The projects purpose is to systematically identify all known RNA family members in all known organisms and to supply this information to established bioinformatic data bases. This information is used to help develop medicines such as antibiotics and to help in research for further understanding of cancer and genetics. RNA is the “instruction set” which tells DNA what type of cell to form. This is what makes a skin cell become a skin cell while muscle, liver, or hair cells become muscle ,liver, or hair cells. Many cancer types and even virus's utilize RNA to interact with human cells. RNA research will ultimately lead to discoveries and new medicines for health care.

RNA World has applications for Windows and Linux in both 32 and 64 bit versions. As for credits I have only run cmsearch v 0.10 and get on average 25 credits per hour on a Core 2 Quad @ 2.4 GHz.

Team SETI.USA is currently ranked 8^th on the project only 10k behind L'AF. We only have 29 members on the team. While WU's are sporadic for now, the more boxes we have on it, the more we can capture.

Come join us on RNA World and Happy Crunching.

RNA World Project URL: www.rnaworld.de/rnaworld

March 1, 1960 - John McCarthy's LISP Programmer's Manual Released
The first LISP Programmer's Manual is released. Considered the mother tongue of Artificial Intelligence (AI), LISP is older than most other high-level languages still in use today. Its inventor, John McCarthy, created the recursive and symbolic language.

March 2, 1993 - Japanese Supercomputing Competes with Cray
The New York Times reports that the Japanese National Institute for Fusion Science had challenged the United States by announcing that a Japanese supercomputer designed by NEC Corporation could perform all the tasks the Institute required. Cray Research Inc., who stood to sell the institute one of its supercomputers, insisted on testing the machine itself before agreeing to the claim.

March 6, 1992 - Michelangelo Virus Strikes
Concerns over the Michelangelo virus sparked a scare among everyone from personal computer users to world governments. As many as 5 million computers reportedly were at danger of contracting the virus, set to erase data on the March 6 anniversary of the artist's birth. In fact, Michelangelo spread to only a few thousand machines.

March 8, 1955 - Harbinger of Early Operating Systems Director for Whirlwind is Demonstrated
Computer pioneer Doug Ross demonstrates “Director” tape for MIT's Whirlwind machine. Director, which presaged operating systems for computers, gave instructions to the 4-year-old, 4,500 vacuum tube machine.

March 11, 1890 - Hypertext Pioneer Vannevar Bush Is Born
Pre-World-War II computer pioneer Vannevar (pronounced Van-ee-ver) Bush is born in Everett, MA. Bush, who also was deeply involved with wartime computer projects, invented an electromechanical differential analyzer that used mechanical integrators to help solve differential equations. Bush was a co-founder of Raytheon, a military contractor. He also became very interested in information retrieval, which led him to imagine a machine he called memex -- an electronic extension of an individual's mind and memory base -- that mimicked human associative linking of information, and anticipated hypertext research. He died on June 28, 1974.

March 13, 1986 - Microsoft Goes Public
Ten years after the company's founding, Microsoft Corporation stock goes public at $21 per share.

March 16, 1990 - Internet Extends Beyond U.S. to Europe
The National Science Foundation announces it will extend its network with a high-speed data link to Europe. Five years earlier, the Internet in its modern form had started to develop rapidly thanks to the formation of the NSFNET, which linked five supercomputer centers in the United States. Later in 1990, Europe contributed to the growth of the Internet when CERN's Tim Berners-Lee developed HTML, the language used for the World Wide Web.

March 19, 1972 - Atanasoff Judged Official Inventor of Computer
John Vincent Atanasoff emerges as victor from a protracted U.S. legal battle for the title of the inventor of the electronic digital computer. A judge determined his work had preceded and contributed to development of the ENIAC machine, whose inventors had previously been credited.

March 22, 1993 - Intel Begins Shipping The Pentium Chip
Intel announces it is shipping its Pentium microprocessor. Engineers Federico Faggin, Ted Hoff, San Mazor, and Matsatoshi Sima, an engineer from the Japanese firm of Busicom, invented the world's first microprocessor at Intel in 1971 -- the Intel 4004. The new processor continued the exponential increase in speed and power for personal computers, also allowing for a smoother incorporation of speech, sound, handwriting, and photographs into documents.

March 24, 1959 - TI Demonstrates Integrated Circuit Invented by Jack Kilby
Texas Instruments demonstrates the first integrated circuit. Its inventor, Jack Kilby (b. Nov 8, 1923), created the device to prove that resistors and capacitors could exist on the same piece of semiconductor material. His circuit consisted of a sliver of germanium with five components linked by wires. It was Fairchild's Robert Noyce, however, who filed for a patent within months of Kilby and who made the IC a commercially-viable technology. Both men are credited as co-inventors of the IC.

March 28, 1986 - Computers Enter The AIDS Research Arena
In one of the earliest developments in treating the AIDS epidemic, which had only recently begun making headlines, a team from Roche Laboratories in New Jersey publishes an article in Science Magazine that discussed the theoretical basis for the HIV protease molecule. Designing molecules with which to target viruses is one of the many ways pharmaceutical researchers have come to use computers.

March 30, 1951 - Census Bureau Receives UNIVAC I Computer
The U.S. Census Bureau receives the first UNIVAC I computer, the first commercial computer to attract widespread public attention. Although the Census Bureau began using it at the end of March it was not actually moved to the Census Bureau until a few months later. The UNIVAC was capable of completing 1,905 operations per second, which it stored on magnetic tape. The Census Bureau had helped drive the development of devices that eventually led to computers, beginning with Herman Hollerith's 1890 punch card machine.

March 31, 1939 - Harvard and IBM Agree to Build The Mark I Giant Brain
Harvard and IBM sign an agreement to build the Mark I, also known as the IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC). Project leader Howard Aiken developed the original concept of the machine: a series of switches, relays, rotating shafts and clutches. The Mark I weighed about five tons and contained more than 750,000 components. It read instructions from paper tape and data from punch cards.

Source Information From The Computer History Museum URL: http://www.computerhistory.org/