So that's it. After exactly 21 years (started May 23rd 1999) I've finished my last work unit yesterday: https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/result.php?resultid=8704138288
Thank you all. This was a part of my life for more than half of my life time.

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Congrats on hitting 21yrs crunching :), you're lucky to have been able to do that! Unless you bunkered of course ;).

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Team AnandTech - SETI@H, Muon1 DPAD, F@H, MW@H, A@H, LHC@H, POGS, R@H, DHEP@H.

Main rig - Ryzen 5 3600, 32GB DDR4 3200, RX 580 8GB, 500GB Samsung 970 Evo+, Win 10
2nd rig - i7 4930k @4.1 GHz, 16GB DDR2 1866, HD 7870 XT 3GB (DS), Win7 64bit

Just a few days short of 19 years' crunching, through the evolution of at least 4 machines, my Seti tasks have finally fallen to zero.
A wonderful endeavour, and the first project I joined.

If I might poorly quote (I believe) Arthur C. Clarke: "There either is or there isn't extraterrestrial life. Either is utterly mind-blowing."

Here's hoping something mind-blowing is found amongst all that data.
So long Seti, and thanks for the ride.

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To err is human; to moo, bovine.

I would like to recommend the short story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_God by Arthur C Clarke to everyone as they finish their last few Workunits and Tasks

I found it kind of appropriate, as we are getting closer to the end of the current search.

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Sir Arthur C Clarke 1917-2008

Just a few days short of 19 years' crunching, through the evolution of at least 4 machines, my Seti tasks have finally fallen to zero.
A wonderful endeavour, and the first project I joined.

If I might poorly quote (I believe) Arthur C. Clarke: "There either is or there isn't extraterrestrial life. Either is utterly mind-blowing."

Here's hoping something mind-blowing is found amongst all that data.
So long Seti, and thanks for the ride.

. . I have no doubt there is extraterrestrial life, there have been some finds of limited evidence for that on matter from 'out there'. The question this project is addressing is "Is there intelligent (ie technologically advanced) life out there". That is a very different question and has a bigger ? at the end. It would seem unlikely that no would be the answer, but it is a big universe and has been around for a long time (measured in our life spans, both individually and collectively), so it is entirely possible many (even thousands) of technological civilisations have developed and disappeared before we got to where we are, or are only now blossoming. Many may come after we are gone. So the final refined question is "Are there technological civilisations out there now or at the time when the radiation we are receiving now was originally emitted*.

. . But if it turned out that we are the only technological society that would be amazing, If we are on the only planet with life, that would defy all reason and all the odds. Truly mindblowing.

Stephen

? ?

Congrats on hitting 21yrs crunching :), you're lucky to have been able to do that! Unless you bunkered of course ;).

I didn't. But I was lucky to receive another pile of work units after they ran out for the first time a few weeks ago.

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I would like to recommend the short story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_God by Arthur C Clarke to everyone as they finish their last few Workunits and Tasks

I found it kind of appropriate, as we are getting closer to the end of the current search.

Thank you for the hint, Keith T. It is on Kindle for 49 cents, so I just bought it quickly.

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We will have to replace the RAC>1 requirement with a total credit requirement. We may also have to come up with an endorsement process to allow new users.

From the SETI@home Facebook group, Eric posted:

I've changed the RAC threshold on the public forums to 0 and the total credit threshold to 100.

From the SETI@home Facebook group, Eric posted:

I've changed the RAC threshold on the public forums to 0 and the total credit threshold to 100.

. . Thanks for the update Keith T.

Stephen

. .

WE are getting there.
Results out in the field 98,083

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I think the server side software needs to be rethought. The amount of work issued to a computer should initially be around 100 work units and if the RAC indicates it, increased accordingly. I see 76 work units returned in the last hour and there are still 91,000 work units in the field. This indicates somebody has a slow computer but by tweaking their software, they can hoard more work units than they will ever process in the time they are given. In the mean time, without rigged software, I ran out of work two days after the data stopped as I was limited to 100 units for one graphic processor and 100 cpu units.

The primary advantage of this approach is the results in the field number would be much lower because people couldn't claim units that they would never be able to process in the time allowed so the server wouldn't get so clogged with work. It might also leave more work in the ready to send queue during dry times so systems able to do the work wouldn't be dry.

As a data point, my CPU can do a RAC of about 5,000 and 100 work units last it about 2 days. One graphic processor on my system (two generate excessive heat) can crank out a RAC of 10,000 and again, 100 work units last it about two days. If the limits for my computer was set to 200 work units for each type of data, I think that would be more than fair. Of course, I should still be able to configure my system for less work. Over on World Community Grid I have found advantages to limiting my work to half a day. They have many work units with very short turnaround times and I can complete them long before the deadline, even when my Air conditioner was down for two days and I had to shut down. In addition, they aren't very good at figuring run time and often work units take nearly twice the time of the original estimate.

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There are 2 or 3 computers in the https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/top_hosts.php that are holding on to tasks until just before deadline in order to maintain their RAC.

This has been discussed elsewhere, and has caused some controversy.

Unfortunately it appears to be within the rules, even though it gives them an unfair advantage.

It also seems to be a waste of time and electricity, because the results that they are returning have already been Validated weeks or even months ago !

hi Dena,

All valid points but rather moot now that the project is in hibernation. For the record the limits were raised before Christmas and after several adjustments were set at 150/150 before the end. But even with 300 GPU tasks my two 2xGPU machines would run out in about 3 to 4 hours. But keep on crunching there are lots of projects with work to do.

Stephen :)

hi Dena,

All valid points but rather moot now that the project is in hibernation. For the record the limits were raised before Christmas and after several adjustments were set at 150/150 before the end. But even with 300 GPU tasks my two 2xGPU machines would run out in about 3 to 4 hours. But keep on crunching there are lots of projects with work to do.

Stephen :)

I figure when everything is working, your RAC would be about 5 times what mine is. Rough number, your GPUs would be a RAC between 50,000 and 75,000 which would give you up to 1,500 work units. Granted with your horse power you would still burn through them pretty fast but they wouldn't be clogging up the queues with work that never gets processed.

It's not about being fair in distributing work, it's about pushing as much work through the system as possible while reducing the load on the server. Everybody should get work if it's available but they shouldn't get work just so they can hoard it..

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There are 2 or 3 computers in the https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/top_hosts.php that are holding on to tasks until just before deadline in order to maintain their RAC.

This has been discussed elsewhere, and has caused some controversy.

Unfortunately it appears to be within the rules, even though it gives them an unfair advantage.

It also seems to be a waste of time and electricity, because the results that they are returning have already been Validated weeks or even months ago !

since the sum of WUs with those 2 or 3 computers amounts to about 5-6000 WUs, and there are ~30,000 WUs in the field, that would mean that most outstanding WUs are with other hosts, no?

why be mad at the guy returning his 5500 WUs, but not at all the hosts with 24,000+ who probably wont return them at all?

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Seti@Home classic workunits: 29,492 CPU time: 134,419 hours

hi Dena,
All valid points but rather moot now that the project is in hibernation. For the record the limits were raised before Christmas and after several adjustments were set at 150/150 before the end. But even with 300 GPU tasks my two 2xGPU machines would run out in about 3 to 4 hours. But keep on crunching there are lots of projects with work to do.
Stephen :)

I figure when everything is working, your RAC would be about 5 times what mine is. Rough number, your GPUs would be a RAC between 50,000 and 75,000 which would give you up to 1,500 work units. Granted with your horse power you would still burn through them pretty fast but they wouldn't be clogging up the queues with work that never gets processed.

It's not about being fair in distributing work, it's about pushing as much work through the system as possible while reducing the load on the server. Everybody should get work if it's available but they shouldn't get work just so they can hoard it..

. . Absolutely ... I pride myself on getting results back within 24 hours, mostly much less. When the work was available my RACs were actually higher than your estimate. The 2 x higher level machines were about the 100K mark each, and the 5 machine total was about 290K (he says braggingly for his 5 secs in the sun) but that was over shadowed by the behemoths of certain hard core individuals like Zalster, Ian&Steve, Keith, Petri, TBar, etc, etc, etc. But still an achievement I was happy with. One which was possible because of the development work by guys like Petri et al.

Stephen

:)

(he says braggingly for his 5 secs in the sun)

Everyone deserves some "Sun". I believe with 100,000 RAC machines you were highly competitive with the average Seti user(s).

One of my other Seti acquaintances converted his two 4 core with gtx 1060 3Gb Windows boxes there near the end and suddenly he was running right under 100,000 too.

Tom M

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A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association).

Here are the Top 30 by RAC

01,3021, 8652081
02,1923, 4892694
03,0
04,0
05,30, 8873167
06,0
07,0
08,0
09,148, 8873154

10,0
11,15, 5944259
12,1
13,0
14,0
15,0
16,7, 8873201
17,0
18,86, 8873378
19,0
20,43, 8887061

21,2, 8835661
22,0
23,0
24,0
25,0
26,0
27,0
28,0
29,28, 2301233
30,0

Only 8 or 9 other hosts in top 30 still have Tasks In Progress

Is unlikely a high performance cruncher has any WU yet to crunch.
Unless the owner force it to lately report the WU crunched.
Even my host 150K WU ultra large cache was exhausted long time ago.

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Is unlikely a high performance cruncher has any WU yet to crunch.
Unless the owner force it to lately report the WU crunched.
Even my host 150K WU ultra large cache was exhausted long time ago.

Well there are still a significant number of results being returned today.

https://munin.kiska.pw/munin/Munin-Node/Munin-Node/results_setiathomev8_hour.html