Engadget has published an article on SETI which includes discussion of Breakthrough Listen and SETI@home.

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@SETIEric@qoto.org (Mastodon)

However, even with the million-odd CPU cores at SETI@Home's disposal, analyzing all that data is still slow going. Its volunteers only account for around 2 percent of the Breakthrough Listen Initiative's analytical power.

Seti@home represents only 2% of Breakthrough Listen Initiative's compunting power?

Is it for real? Only 2%?

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However, even with the million-odd CPU cores at SETI@Home's disposal, analyzing all that data is still slow going. Its volunteers only account for around 2 percent of the Breakthrough Listen Initiative's analytical power.

Seti@home represents only 2% of Breakthrough Listen Initiative's computing power?

Is it for real? Only 2%?

2% of activity, or 2% of need?

When I first read the Engadget article, I assumed only 2% of the data was being processed. But reading it again, I'm inclined to agree with you - somewhere else is supplying ~50 times the power of SETI@Home. It would be interesting to know where that is, and whether their results will feed into something like the Nebula post-processing stream.

I'm disappointed that Breakthrough Listen itself still seems to have stated nothing more explicit than http://breakthroughinitiatives.org/OpenData/1:

OPEN DATA

Fundamental to Breakthrough Listen is transparency of data for everyone.

Each telescope will generate vast amounts of data. All of it will be open to the public. This is likely to produce the largest amount of scientific data ever made available to the public.

Breakthrough Initiatives are also developing powerful software for analyzing this data. All this software will be open source. The hardware and software used in the LISTEN project will be compatible with other telescopes around the world, enabling them to join the search for intelligent life. And scientists and members of the public can develop their own apps to sift the data for phenomena of interest.

We will also be joining forces University of California, Berkeley and their famous SETI@home program to bring the power of distributed computing to bear on the data. SETI@home is a platform of 9 million computers around the globe – collectively forming one of the world’s biggest supercomputers.

Both statements are vague, and still written in the future tense - although SETI@Home has been working on the data for over a year now.

We would do well to write code which can be executed on bitcoin mining equipment, ASICs in particular. There are millions of potential computers awaiting new purpose. I would donate some funds for that :)

We would do well to write code which can be executed on bitcoin mining equipment, ASICs in particular. There are millions of potential computers awaiting new purpose. I would donate some funds for that :)

Being ASIC, the AS being "Application Specific", they are hardcoded for mining and missing features and functions that SETI@Home would require. I don't know the specifics of what, but hashing doesn't require FP math as far as I know, so these ASIC chips may be only able to do integer math (at least well), for example.

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Essentially, the Institute can point the ATA at a known exoplanet (or system like TRAPPIST-1), measure the star system's radio signature, then wait for the planet to transit behind the sun and measure the system's radio signature again. If there's a significant difference in the readings, that could mean there's something afoot on that exoplanet. The Institute wouldn't necessarily be able to understand what's encoded in the transmission but it would provide strong impetus for other astronomical research groups to follow up with their own observations. This is actually very close to what the Breakthrough Listen Initiative team is doing, albeit with a less sensitive piece of equipment.

This strategy actually makes sense to me.

I hope the ATA gets the scope of it's antenna grid expanded, and other telescopes come online soon, too.

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place