Currently there are 2 other projects that really interest me enough and whose direction I like to consider letting them share time with SETI: pirates@home (Einstein@home's beta) and LHC@Home. It appears that LHC is close to leaving beta and I don't want to sign up before I know a few things about it that maybe some of the people using it can answer.

1) Since it is research involving the new accelerator that they are building, it would seem that it is a finite project -- i.e., once the accelerator is built, the public project has no more use until time to build another. Is that really the case or are they going to continue using it in their research (possibly for analyzing results found in the experiments)?

2) How long to typical workunits take to process. For estimation purposes I have an overclocked Athlon 2400+ running as a 2800+ with 512 MB DDR333.

3) I had one more question but for the life of me I cannot remember or figure out what it was.

Thanks,
Chris

>
> 1) Since it is research involving the new accelerator that they are building,
> it would seem that it is a finite project -- i.e., once the accelerator is
> built, the public project has no more use until time to build another. Is that
> really the case or are they going to continue using it in their research
> (possibly for analyzing results found in the experiments)?
>

At the moment it is only being used whilst construction is taking place - should be completed in 2007. After that.... I've looked around their web site and have found nothing.

> 2) How long to typical workunits take to process. For estimation purposes I
> have an overclocked Athlon 2400+ running as a 2800+ with 512 MB DDR333.

Athlon 2500+ normal clock speed - The simulations can take upto 7.5 hours, but as the particle beam can become unstable the simulation will sometimes finish much sooner. I've had some which last only 6-8 mins, 1-2 hours and one which ran the full 7.5 hours. (All were '1,000,000' WUs). Most seem to take around 3.5 hours, but I've not really completed enough to know if that is the norm.

> 3) I had one more question but for the life of me I cannot remember or figure
> out what it was.

Tried really hard to answer this one! - But I admit you've got me beaten there...

--
<p>Regards, Paul - Just slowly BOINCing along...</p>

first:
feel free to join the Project
news and info you find at
http://lhcathome.cern.ch/
and her about lhc@home
http://athome.web.cern.ch/athome/
at this time closed new account start a beta test with 1000 cruncher to end of sep.then
The plan for the CERN50th challenge, subject to successful alpha and beta phase testing, is to launch LHC@home publicly on the 29th of September, which is CERN's official birthday .The goal for the challenge is to get (at least) 50'000 people to join LHC@home, within (at most) 50 days!
------------
have 3 of wu s
10000,100000,1000000, circles to cruch
-------
the big ons need on a amd64 3000+ round 6 hours
on a pentium 3 700 mhz runnd 16 hours
hope it helps
greetings guido

Thanks for your other answers. I browsed around and found slightly more information about the length of the project, but did not find the thing about it being built by 2007. What I did find though was a little comment that said that the life of the project after their special anniversary challenge is will be based on their initial experience and it is possible that it will get added to their permanent computing infrastructure. Those 2 things together provide a pretty good idea for the timeframe of the project I think.

As for question 3, I think I figured out the question. I saw on their page that is possible they may add more beta testers, at which time I would consider signing up as well. What I wanted to know is if they plan to reset the credits of testers before they go public. Credits aren't terribly important to me, but I do like to use them to track my progress and have some kind of idea how much work and time I've put into the project. So if they plan to reset the credits, that would be something for me to consider before joining up (if given the option).

Chris


> > 3) I had one more question but for the life of me I cannot remember or figure
> > out what it was.
>
> Tried really hard to answer this one! - But I admit you've got me beaten
> there...
>

> Thanks for your other answers. I browsed around and found slightly more
> information about the length of the project, but did not find the thing about
> it being built by 2007. What I did find though was a little comment that said
> that the life of the project after their special anniversary challenge is will
> be based on their initial experience and it is possible that it will get added
> to their permanent computing infrastructure. Those 2 things together provide a
> pretty good idea for the timeframe of the project I think.

With a good enough simulator they can run an expiriment on the software before committing the time to the machine. In other words, do a test flight to see if there is something there.

Before running on a Cray most sites with one would run the program on a simulator before it would be tried on the Cray. This way they did not waste time on the machine for a program that was not ready for "prime-time".

I will grant that with expirimental science there may be simulations that "work" on the software that will not work in "live" ...

Projects like this are one of the reasons I have been so interested in BOINC because as this infrastructure gets proven we can expect many more projects. To the point that it may be hard to choose!

I ran a Few in HT Mode on a P4 3.2 and it took 10 hours to run them like that. But the last ones only took 7.5 hours...

That makes sense. I think it may be good to add that in experimental science, while some simulations that "work" don't work out in reality, there can also be some that don't "work" on the simulator and do work in reality.

My interest in BOINC was more for the scalability it added to the SETI project. However, I figured there would be a few projects here and there that would spark my interst. LHC is very much in line with my scientific interests without encroaching on what I feel to be "dangerous territory" and may very well end up "stealing" time from SETI on my computers. :)

I'd kind of like to see a project for modeling hydrogen production for alternative energy purposes. I've seen some of the modeling done and it takes days on a rather large clustor of machines to model just a fraction of a second (I can't remember how short the time was, but it was short).

> With a good enough simulator they can run an expiriment on the software before
> committing the time to the machine. In other words, do a test flight to see
> if there is something there.
>
> Before running on a Cray most sites with one would run the program on a
> simulator before it would be tried on the Cray. This way they did not waste
> time on the machine for a program that was not ready for "prime-time".
>
> I will grant that with expirimental science there may be simulations that
> "work" on the software that will not work in "live" ...
>
> Projects like this are one of the reasons I have been so interested in BOINC
> because as this infrastructure gets proven we can expect many more projects.
> To the point that it may be hard to choose!

> That makes sense. I think it may be good to add that in experimental science,
> while some simulations that "work" don't work out in reality, there can also
> be some that don't "work" on the simulator and do work in reality.

Yes, absolutely!

That is one of the reasons why, unfortunately, we submit many tests to those four legged people ...

Computer modeling can do many things, but most actually have to be tried as live fire to be sure.

And if the model works in one place and not the other, well, now you have the fun of figuring out if the problem is in the model, or real world!