On 12/27/2010 09:20 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
Some of you may be already aware of the project known as "SETI@Home<http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/>", which has been using the power of hundreds of thousands of under-used PCs in homes and businesses worldwide...
I used to run dozens upon dozens of machines with BOINC/setiathome... One thing, depending on your point of view, that is either "interesting", "amusing", or "appalling" is that modern computers can burn a lot more electrical power (i.e. have a greater carbon footprint) when doing things like SETI computations. I've been running a power monitor on one of my AMD 6-core machines and it goes from about 65 to 70 watts during normal use to about 125 watts when it is thinking mildly hard. I haven't pushed it really hard but I anticipate that it will be well above 175 watts. (High-end graphics cards can show the same kind of changes in power consumption when they are working hard.) I ran some tests on a laptop and BOINC/SETI made a real difference in heat (the laptop got positively hot). I'd suggest thinking twice about running it on a laptop. --karl--