Quiet in 'ere?

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi all

It's all gone pretty quiet in 'ere of late.

I'm sorry I've not posted much, but there hasn't really been much going on in the big wide BOINC world and there's other stuff that's taking up some of my time these days, mainly down to work.

So, I hope things are going well for all recent visitors to the forum and that you are all doing your best to support the odd BOINC project whilst also coping with the various demands on your time.

Keep on crunching (if you can afford to !!).

regards
Tim

[UBT - Mikee]

Hi

Just got back from extended fly/drive to New England, so nothing from me for the last few weeks!

Don't get here as often as I used to as real life gets in the way, people move on.

Used to be more competitive in the early days as we all had similar PCs and a couple of farms. Then dual and quad CPUs got popular and some setups got too powerful, there wasn't an even playing field anymore, so team competitions faded out.I think that's when interest died down a bit.

Ho hum...

Mike

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi

Just got back from extended fly/drive to New England, so nothing from me for the last few weeks!

Don't get here as often as I used to as real life gets in the way, people move on.

Hi Mikee

Hope you are well (and Mrs Mikee too). And so nice to hear from you and hope you had a good time in the US of A. My last US fly-drive was in Florida about 20 years ago !!

Used to be more competitive in the early days as we all had similar PCs and a couple of farms. Then dual and quad CPUs got popular and some setups got too powerful, there wasn't an even playing field anymore, so team competitions faded out.I think that's when interest died down a bit.

Ho hum...

Mike

I think another issue has been the rise of cloud computing, where people with a few shekels to spend, will rent multi-CPU processing power from the likes of Amazon, install BOINC Manager on it, configure it and just leave it running. That has certainly allowed people to "do their bit" without constantly upgrading their home-based rigs, and of course if they need to, they can (on a whim) increase or decrease their processing needs accordingly.

And of course, since the war in Ukraine, energy prices has also gone through the roof, so that has been a factor as well, I am sure.

I think the "golden age" of distributed computing has passed now, so that just leaves a few die-hards, who are keeping up their interest. And there aren't enough new people becoming interested in BOINC, to help offset those who've stopped.

regards
Tim

[UBT - PennyQ]

I keep plodding along with the one PC doing what it can on Einstein and WCG. Never been one for anything other than a trickle since the early days of SETI so leccy bills have never gone through the roof anyway. Will keep on "doing my bit" until such time as it all dries up...

Penny

[djg2008]

I had some bad computing and financial luck the previous year.

The good news is now, I have a new rig, I am free to run crunching when I can.

I think you may find me doing more towards Folding@Home now days. I tried to fetch some LHC tasks the day before yesterday, and I was surprised to see nothing turn up, so I went back to suspended.

I may do some more PrimeGrid/WUProp/NumberFields/Einstein in time, but there's nothing really major I feel like I want to dedicate all of my resources to. I would have done some for LHC if just to try and figure out how to get it running smooth instead of "full on" @ 1fps.

I think the main thing is, as long as everyone is okay and keeping their head above water - that's all that is really important.

Could UKBT do some kind of uh, like what was posted above - where CPU/GPUs can be cloud-sourced. So team members can vote on where the science focuses? That way you could have members participate without PCs good enough to compete. I'm not sure what the nuances of it would be or how costs would be fronted for such an endeavour. It's just an idea

[UBT - Timbo]

I had some bad computing and financial luck the previous year.

The good news is now, I have a new rig, I am free to run crunching when I can.

I think you may find me doing more towards Folding@Home now days. I tried to fetch some LHC tasks the day before yesterday, and I was surprised to see nothing turn up, so I went back to suspended.

I may do some more PrimeGrid/WUProp/NumberFields/Einstein in time, but there's nothing really major I feel like I want to dedicate all of my resources to. I would have done some for LHC if just to try and figure out how to get it running smooth instead of "full on" @ 1fps.

I think the main thing is, as long as everyone is okay and keeping their head above water - that's all that is really important.

Yes, you are 100% correct - the most important thing is to stay alive, keep healthy and well and hopefully you can do your own thing when you fancy.

Could UKBT do some kind of uh, like what was posted above - where CPU/GPUs can be cloud-sourced. So team members can vote on where the science focuses? That way you could have members participate without PCs good enough to compete. I'm not sure what the nuances of it would be or how costs would be fronted for such an endeavour. It's just an idea

A cloud based idea does make sense, but to be honest, anyone can do that on their own, without the need to crowd fund it and the obvious implications of administering the process of getting people to make donations and to ensure that the donated money is actually used "properly".

I (and others) have tried freebie trials of various cloud-based resources, where one can install BOINC Manager, add some projects to it and then just leave it be, crunching away merrily for the trial period and then for longer if you want to continue the account on a monthly fee-paying basis.

For some this could actually be cheaper than running one (or more) PCs at home, based on the current charges for electricity in the UK - around 60p/kWh + standing charges and VAT. So, running a high end GPU might consume say 300W/hour, so that's about 7kW for 24 hours crunching - or nearly 5 quid per day !! One could argue that you could about the same money on a cloud based host and maybe get a better "return" in terms of the work crunched and a saving in terms of not having to keep buying/replacing/upgrading any PC hardware!!

However, you would lose out of the benefits of the GPU heating your house in the winter !!

regards
Tim