OT: Space Empires and Seti@Home

sachmo · #1 September 25th, 2002, 06:31 PM

That is so cool!

rdouglass · #2 September 25th, 2002, 06:53 PM

Cool! Zenbudo and sven pushed us over the 20K mark w/ plenty of room to spare!!! However I don't think the page has completely updated its' calculations.

If anyone hasn't checked out Seti@Home, take a look. It is (as sachmo says) cool!!!

I personally have quite a few work units myself. In fact someone here on another thread suggested I was "heating my house" with it (with all the spare CPU's I have running the process)..

Reguardless, most if not all that visit these forums probably have some interest in SETI......

Timstone · #3 September 25th, 2002, 07:02 PM

I've seen the page now and I don't understand what they mean. What do they mean with 20000+ year cpu time? And what do you mean with plenty room to spare? Please explain.

rdouglass · #4 September 25th, 2002, 08:42 PM

It may be better for you to start out at the home page:

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/index.html

Basically Seti@Home is an attempt at discovering ET by analysing radio frequencies across the sky (the web pages do a much better and more thorough job explaining it). Then, breaking up all that data into approx. 330K chunks and distributing a chunk to one of several million participating computers for analysis (1 chunk = 1 "Work Unit"). The remote computers do the analysis (Fast Fourier Transforms, etc.) to look for signs of ET, then return the results and recieve a new chunk for data crunching.

On the page I posted, "Results Recieved" is a count of completed Work Units (or chunks), "Total CPU Time" is (obviously) how long your computer(s) took to process thosw work units, and "Average" is pretty self-explainitory.

"Plenty of room to spare" is just that the group is actually well over 20K work units (not currently displayed but should be updated soon).

dogscoff · #5 September 26th, 2002, 09:12 AM

Just looked at the link at the start of the thread. who wrote this?

Quote:

Space Empires is a strategy game, similar to the board game Version of Risk.

Similar to Risk? Like a Space Shuttle is similar to a canoe...

Fyron · #6 September 26th, 2002, 09:15 AM

Since Paul Dionne (MinervanEmpire) founded the group, it is safe to assume that he wrote that.

DavidG · #7 September 28th, 2002, 11:32 PM

Are you guys all running Quad Pentiums X's or what? I joined and my first unit took 44 hrs' to process!! I didn't think my 1Ghz PIII was that slooow! I want Imperator Fyron' or Thermodyne's computer.

Parasite · #8 April 29th, 2005, 04:19 PM

Talk about rescuing an old topic

I finally got a computer that I don't turn off. It is cranking away at the SETI work units. I may even pass Imperator Fyron. No way to do it in post counts.

There are just a few of us left still processing. Let's see what these new computers can do.