[SETIATBOINC] SETI@home's transition to BOINC
highwoods
computing. There are now two separate projects:
SETI@home Classic (the original)
SETI@home/BOINC (the new one)
These projects are doing the same scientific work, though
SETI@home/BOINC will evolve to do new science.
Each project has its own account database. Some BOINC accounts are
linked to a Classic account, and show the work done (results, CPU
hours) by that Classic account.
NOTE: your Classic account will be linked to your BOINC account only
if your Classic account has a valid email address (i.e. one where
you can receive email) before the final cutover date (see below).
The plan for the transition is as follows:
14 May 2004
We made a 'snapshot' of Classic user information (accounts, teams,
profiles) and used it to initialize the SETI@home/BOINC database. A
BOINC account must be 'validated' (by responding to an email sent to
the account's email address) before it can be used. The BOINC
accounts created at this time remain linked to the Classic account,
even if the email address of either account is changed.
22 June 2004
We made SETI@home/BOINC available for general use.
16 March 2005
We updated the BOINC database with current information from Classic.
Classic accounts created since 14 May 2004 were linked to the BOINC
account having the same email address, if it existed; otherwise a
new BOINC account was created with that email address (see technical
details below).
To be announced
Account creation is disabled on Classic.
To be announced
We stop creating workunits for Classic.
To be announced (1 April 2005 or later)
We turn off the data server for Classic. Classic will no longer send
workunits or accept results. Functions to update account information
are disabled. We update the BOINC account database with current
information from SETI@home Classic one final time. At this point the
Classic statistics are frozen (though we may continue to
eliminate 'cheaters').
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Questions and answers
Why is SETI@home switching to BOINC?
Several reasons:
Other distributed computing projects are also using BOINC, and you
can share your computer time among projects of your choosing. We
strongly encourage you to participate in other projects, since then
your computer will do useful work even when SETI@home's servers are
down or have no work.
BOINC lets us release new versions of SETI@home's applications
without requiring you to download and install new software. It will
make it easy for us to integrate new algorithms, such as analyzing
our 8 bit/sample reobservation data, or looking for other types of
radio signals such as short broadband pulses.
BOINC has a more flexible data architecture than SETI@home Classic.
Data can be transferred to and from multiple servers, and can remain
resident on PC disks. In the future, we'll use these capabilities to
search for ET signals in a much larger radio frequency range.
BOINC distributes work based on host parameters. Work units
requiring 512 MB of RAM, for example, will only be sent to hosts
having at least that much RAM. This lets us use BOINC for a wider
range of computations than the 'one size fits all' SETI@home
Classic.
Can I run both versions at once?
If you do this, SETI@home/BOINC won't get any CPU time because it
runs at a lower priority. We recommend that you uninstall SETI@home
Classic before running SETI@home/BOINC.
What will happen to my workunit totals?
BOINC projects can have workunits of many different lengths, so
BOINC keeps track of your computer's work in terms of actual
computation performed rather than number of workunits.
Because of this change, BOINC accounts will have separate old and
new work totals. The old total is the workunit total from Classic.
It won't change, and a section of our web site will show the final
leaderboards based on old work totals. New work unit totals will
start from zero.
What will happen with SETI@home teams?
All Classic teams, and their membership, were copied over to BOINC
on May 14 2004.
What SETIQueue (and related programs) still work?
These programs, which have been very useful with Classic, won't work
with BOINC. But some of their functions can be performed by other
means:
The buffering of multiple work units is provided by the BOINC client
itself - you can specify how much work your computer should get each
time it contacts the server.
Hosts that are not directly connected to the Internet, but share a
LAN with one that is, can participate in BOINC using an HTTP 1.0
proxy such as Squid for Unix or FreeProxy for Windows.
Hosts that have no network connection currently cannot participate
in BOINC. A solution may be developed in the future.
What platforms will be supported?
BOINC supports Windows/X86, Linux/X86, Solaris/SPARC, and Mac OS X.
Can I run multiple instances on a multiprocessor?
Yes, but it's not necessary; BOINC, by default, uses all the host's
processors.
Will the format of input and output files change?
Yes. The new format is XML-like (though not legal XML). Programs
that display information about the signals found in SETI@home work
units will need to be modified to support the new formats.
Information about file formats and network communication is here.
Work unit and result files will be about the same size as now.
Is BOINC secure?
Public distributed computing involves many security issues,
involving threats to both participants and projects. Some of these
are discussed here. BOINC uses a mechanism called 'digital signing'
to ensure that downloaded executable code is valid.
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Technical details
Account records in the Classic database include name, email address,
URL, etc.; they also have an integer ID.
Account records in the BOINC database have the above fields, plus
fields 'seti_id', 'seti_nresults', and 'seti_total_cpu'. If this
account is linked to a Classic account, these fields contain the ID
and work totals of that account.
The database update of March 16 2005 worked as follows.
for each Classic account X
if there is a BOINC account Y linked to X
if Y is validated
update Y.seti_nresults and Y.seti_total_cpu
else if there is a BOINC account Z with Z.email = X.email
link Z to X
else
if there is a BOINC account Z with Z.email = X.email
link Z to X
else
create a new BOINC account with email = X.email,
and link it to X