SETI@home
Current Version: 3.07
Client Download size: 792 KB
OS: Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Solaris
Progress: 800,000,000 packages analyzed
Percent% complete: Ongoing
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How SETI@home works
The SETI@home receiver scans the skies from its perch on the Arecibo radio telescope, completing
a survey of the entire sky every 9 months or so. It collects radio data on a frequency band of 2.5 MHz around the central frequency of 1420 MHz.
This raw data is then delivered on tapes to SETI@home headquarters in Berkeley, California.
There it is chopped up into small "work-units" 107 seconds long and about 10 KHz wide. These
work-units are then distributed to SETI@home users around the world, who analyze the data on their PC's.
Once the PC program finishes analyzing its work-unit, it sends its results back to the Berkeley headquarters, and receives a new one in return.
All interesting and promising narrow-band signals, gaussians, triplets, and pulses, are automatically saved for
further analysis and review. Any one of them, just might be the "real thing"
SETI@home is by far the most popular DC project to date. Over 3.5 million computers are now participating in the search.
Combined together they form a supercomputer that computes faster than any manmade object in the world. The most powerful computer, IBM's ASCI White,
is rated at 12 TeraFLOPS and costs $110 million. SETI@home currently gets about 15 TeraFLOPs and has cost $500K so far.
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Current Version: Variable
Client Download size: Variable
Supported Platforms: Windows, Linux
Progress: n/a
Percent% Complete: Ongoing
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Help the Analytical Spectroscopy Research Group (ASRG) in their
SETI project. Their system has the same basic goal as SETI@Home, but it
uses a more manual process: you download work units from a web page, process
them with one of three tools, and email results back to the project
coordinator. More information can be found on the
volunteer page.
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Current Version: Entropia 3000
Client Download size: 10.1 MB
Supported Platforms: Windows
Progress: Multiple Projects
Percent% complete: Ongoing
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Participate in various volunteer science- and
medical-oriented research projects at Entropia.
Entropia is currently supporting the FightAIDS@home.
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Current Version: 5.0
Client Download size: 750 KB+
Supported Platforms: Windows, Mac OS
Progress: Not Announced
Percent% complete: Ongoing
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Evolutionary-research has created a grand-challenge computation
research program called Evolution@home to study evolution. The first
simulator for the project "helps uncover potential genetic causes of extinction
for endangered and not-yet-endangered species by investigating Mullers
Ratchet. Your help to improve understanding of such genomic decay might one
day be used to fight it."
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Current Version: Multiple Projects
Client Download size: Variable
Supported Platforms: Windows
Progress: Variable
Percent% complete: Variable
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eOn
Current Version: Unknown
Client Download size: 1.84 MB
Supported Platforms: Windows 95+, Linux
Progress: n/a
Percent% Complete: Ongoing
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Help research techniques for "calculating the long time
dynamics of systems" in the eOn project.
From the website:
"A common problem in theoretical chemistry, condensed matter
physics and materials science is the calculation of the time evolution of an
atomic scale system where, for example, chemical reactions and/or diffusion
occur." Interesting events occur so rarely that they can only be observed
in direct simulations by using a distributed computing environment. See
a brief scientific
overview for a more detailed description of this problem. The project
takes the results from one set of work units and use them to
generate the next set of work units. It is not critical
if some users don't return the results of their work units within a time
limit or at all. The current project studies ice growth.
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Distributed Particle Accelerator Design
Current Version: 4.21b
Client Download size: 953 KB
OS: Windows95+, Linux, Solaris, Cobalt
Progress: 1,500,000 results
Percent% complete: Ongoing
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Help design a better particle accelerator in Stephen Brook's Distributed Particle Accelerator Design Project. This program "simulates the both the pion-to-muon decay channel
(grey cylinders surrounding a straight blue path) and the reverse bending chicane (purple and grey field areads) of the RAL Neutrino Factory front end design" ( a $1.9 billion dollar machine scheduled for construction in the year 2015).
The muon program uses evolutionary genetic algorithms for this optimization.
The muon project software is very easy to use. It has a version that runs in the background at idle, low, and normal which makes it seem like it is not even there. The thing that I dont like about other projects is that it takes
at least 12 hours on a good computer to get through one workunit. But this program finishes one in about an hour or less (depending on the setting). And the cool thing is that Stephen Brooks (the programmer) is only 18 years old!!!
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climateprediction.com
Current Version: Beta testing
Client Download size: 600 MB allocated space
OS: Windows95+
Progress: Beta testing
Percent% Complete: n/a
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climateprediction.com will use a large-scale Monte Carlo simulation to predict Earth's climate 50 years from now. The project is being implemented in a series of experiments.
Note:
This project begins in August, 2002. It is currently not active.
Unfortunately, this program demands a rather fast computer:
OS: Windows 95+
CPU Type: Athlon, Pentium 2,3,or 4
CPU speed: minimum of 450 MHz
RAM: Minimum 128 MB
Disk space: 600 MB for this experiment
But you do not need a permanent connection to the internet.
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