Message boards :
Number crunching :
SETI ASIC Chips
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Author | Message |
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Brian Send message Joined: 20 Apr 13 Posts: 4 Credit: 1,777,568 RAC: 0 |
Could the basics of SAH be supercharged with ASIC chips? I mean that if we follow the BitCoin craze and have some chips specifically designed for this work? I would be interested in buying a bunch. Brian |
Alinator Send message Joined: 19 Apr 05 Posts: 4178 Credit: 4,647,982 RAC: 0 |
IIRC, there was some discussion here a few years back about using ASIC's and/or FPGA's as dedicated SAH crunchers. However, acquiring the hardware and developing the software to run BOINC, as well as any projects you'd want to crunch wouldn't be cheap, and since there ain't no cake to be had for the effort and cost in the BOINC world one would need to have pretty deep pockets with no place better to put it. ;-) OTOH, it would be a pretty cool and interesting project to sink ones' teeth into. :-D |
Brian Send message Joined: 20 Apr 13 Posts: 4 Credit: 1,777,568 RAC: 0 |
I understand your argument. However, in respect to the "cake", getting larger numbers up on the board are all the value (sweetener) some people need. With all of the BOINC projects, what's in it for everyone? All I see is points. I mean there are projects like Rosetta that may give you some credit for crunching a solution, but no monetary prize. Yet, we still buy hardware and spend money on electricity to get higher up on the board! That being said, if a Kickstarter project was started to fund these chips then I for one would invest. I would also buy extra chips outside of Kickstarter to run a rig. My description would be something like using a Raspberry Pi to serve a box with the "SETI Chipsets" in it. The Pi or other cheep microcomputer could then manage the setup and report back the results. The chipsets could do most of the crunching, saving electricity and money for those who get enjoyment out of seeing their numbers rise. |
Alinator Send message Joined: 19 Apr 05 Posts: 4178 Credit: 4,647,982 RAC: 0 |
Mike Hewson posted this last November and an update this morning. Looks like there's potential there, especially if they meet their pricing goals. ;-) |
MarkJ Send message Joined: 17 Feb 08 Posts: 1139 Credit: 80,854,192 RAC: 5 |
Mike Hewson posted this last November and an update this morning. Apart from the Parallella there was an attempt to port SETI to FPGAs which is mentioned over at www.fpgaathome.org. I say attempt because there hasn't been an update since Jan 2013. BOINC blog |
James Sotherden Send message Joined: 16 May 99 Posts: 10436 Credit: 110,373,059 RAC: 54 |
What are you asking for. That Seti@Home give bitcoins? Theres enough wailing and nashing of teeth now that V7 has arrived. You aint heard nothing yet if you start talking real cash. [/quote] Old James |
Brian Send message Joined: 20 Apr 13 Posts: 4 Credit: 1,777,568 RAC: 0 |
No, no not giving BitCoins. I was saying that BitCoin mining now uses special chips designed for mining the coins. They are much faster than other methods. A mining rig can have unlimited BitCoin mining chips set up with one computer supplying data to them. A rig of lets say 64 special chips designed for SETI could replace a bunch of computers, thus lowering computer costs. You would be able to add more boards with more chips for larger number crunching. |
spitfire_mk_2 Send message Joined: 14 Apr 00 Posts: 563 Credit: 27,306,885 RAC: 0 |
I think that would complete the circle. The original project started exactly because there was no money for hardware to crunching all the data. So the project team wrote the software and gave it away to the rest of us to crunch the data for them. |
James Sotherden Send message Joined: 16 May 99 Posts: 10436 Credit: 110,373,059 RAC: 54 |
Then I see the end where Seti@Home says we dont need you anymore.OR that so many do the mining bit that the pipes from the colocation gets just as jammed up as it was from the lab. [/quote] Old James |
bill Send message Joined: 16 Jun 99 Posts: 861 Credit: 29,352,955 RAC: 0 |
That would only happen if the limits were removed. |
James Sotherden Send message Joined: 16 May 99 Posts: 10436 Credit: 110,373,059 RAC: 54 |
That would only happen if the limits were removed. Explain why only if limits were removed. We had limits before the lab went to the relocation. The pipes were clogged up beyond repair. If every cruncher in here went to the magic mining chips and started to really pound out the work units, You dont think the pipes wouldnt get full? Probally what would happen is we would outstrip the ability of the lab to make work to crunch. Then we'd hear all the crying about no work units and my rac is falling BS all over again. [/quote] Old James |
bill Send message Joined: 16 Jun 99 Posts: 861 Credit: 29,352,955 RAC: 0 |
That would only happen if the limits were removed. I thought there were daily/max limits in place. "Probally what would happen is we would outstrip the ability of the lab to make work to crunch." Another kind of limit. |
James Sotherden Send message Joined: 16 May 99 Posts: 10436 Credit: 110,373,059 RAC: 54 |
That would only happen if the limits were removed. There are still limits in place as far as I know. BUT if you crunch faster you use more work units faster. so my computer for the sake of argument is liminted to 100 for CPU and 100 for GPU and lets say I can crunch 100 a day for each. So i do 200 tasks per day. So if x computer now crunches 200 wu a day and the magic mining machine can turn that into lets say 500 a day I have more than doubled my crunching power. The limits are still in place for my cache size but ive have now manged to crunch that over twice a day. Now imagine that evertyone wants to get on the magic mining work unit gravy train. I can see clogged pipes and waiting for work. [/quote] Old James |
MarkJ Send message Joined: 17 Feb 08 Posts: 1139 Credit: 80,854,192 RAC: 5 |
Really does it matter about limits? If they can't port the app to run on an FPGA then they certainly aren't going to be making a chip to run the app. All this talk about limits and bitcoin mining is hypothetical and irrelevant to the subject. BOINC blog |
ML1 Send message Joined: 25 Nov 01 Posts: 20258 Credit: 7,508,002 RAC: 20 |
IIRC, there was some discussion here a few years back about using ASIC's and/or FPGA's as dedicated SAH crunchers. ... And then nVidia came along with their CUDA enabled GPUs... And the rest is history! Aside: Note that Berkerly already use FPGAs in some of their dedicated search hardware for such as SERENDIP. However, the s@h application performs a much deeper search and is perhaps better suited for more general purpose compute hardware to process. I'm sure the Lunatics have deservedly won their eponymous title over their years of dedicated knightly hacking to speed s@h towards the holy grail!! I keep an eye on suitably large FPGA hardware and it always looks to be horribly expensive compared to just getting an off-the-shelf nVidia GPU. Parallela + Epiphany is looking interesting for low-power/efficient computing. However, that is still a long way away from the top end nVidia GPUs... Happy super-fast GPU crunchin', Martin See new freedom: Mageia Linux Take a look for yourself: Linux Format The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3) |
Alinator Send message Joined: 19 Apr 05 Posts: 4178 Credit: 4,647,982 RAC: 0 |
IIRC, there was some discussion here a few years back about using ASIC's and/or FPGA's as dedicated SAH crunchers. ... That was it. Here's the link to it. In our case, this baby is what does the preprocessing of the data coming off the Arecibo telescope (and others) before it gets sent to us to chew on. Needless to say, this a very specialized and demanding application. ;-) In any event, in the BOINC context I agree. It will be hard to displace the GPGPU's. Given they can put the pretty pictures on peoples' screen as well, it makes it fairly easy to get them out in the field in large numbers at a reasonable cost. <edit> Here's another interesting link which came up in the google search. Looks like somebody has been playing around with idea. |
MarkJ Send message Joined: 17 Feb 08 Posts: 1139 Credit: 80,854,192 RAC: 5 |
<edit> Here's another interesting link which came up in the google search. Looks like somebody has been playing around with idea. That's the one I mentioned before only I didn't link to it. Could have been interesting if they got it to work. I am awaiting the Parallella to see how they go, although the small number of cores will presumably be one of its limitations (when compared with a GPGPU). BOINC blog |
Raistmer Send message Joined: 16 Jun 01 Posts: 6325 Credit: 106,370,077 RAC: 121 |
64-core config is actually much more than most on current GPUs have, not less. Each core corresponds 1 CU of GPU. Their relative performance is another topic though. SETI apps news We're not gonna fight them. We're gonna transcend them. |
Brian Send message Joined: 20 Apr 13 Posts: 4 Credit: 1,777,568 RAC: 0 |
When I first brought up the possibility of ASIC chips, I was not so interested in speed as I was cost of ownership vs. number crunching. If we look at the price of a pc with all of its hardware to crunch and then add more and more expensive hardware to crunch then to some, it becomes cost ineffective to crunch. Not to mention the price of electricity a pc and it's associated hardware uses. If we have chips that are low power and low cost, then we could build crunching rigs as we go. If I was not sending less on electricity, then I could add some more chips to a rig as I went. It would increase the crunching. Now, I know about the Parallella, so do you think something like it could work? |
MarkJ Send message Joined: 17 Feb 08 Posts: 1139 Credit: 80,854,192 RAC: 5 |
When I first brought up the possibility of ASIC chips, I was not so interested in speed as I was cost of ownership vs. number crunching. If we look at the price of a pc with all of its hardware to crunch and then add more and more expensive hardware to crunch then to some, it becomes cost ineffective to crunch. Not to mention the price of electricity a pc and it's associated hardware uses. Sure it will work. We already can use the Raspberry Pi. The Parallella is a dual core ARM A9 so it's like two Pi's. The unknown is how well the Epiphany chip will run a SETI OpenCL app. BOINC blog |
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