[H-GEN] SETI at home

[Martin Pool]

(Note reply-to: being general at humbug.org.au vs Martin Pool <martinp at mincom.com>)

Robert Brockway wrote:
> 
> "Patrick Nichols" <pat at humbug.org.au> wrote:
> : (Note reply-to: being general at humbug.org.au vs "Patrick Nichols" <pat at humbug.org.au>)
> 
> : Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't seti use up inordinate amounts of ram

It also uses much more bandwidth to download units-of-work, because it
needs to download raw data to crunch rather than just being told a range
of keys.  I think blocks are ~400kB and take a day or so to process. 
Perhaps they could use a more efficient format but since the data is
essentially random it can't be compressed.  This may be a problem if
you're concerned about volume or connection time charges.

> It uses bit of ram but so far it hasn't bothered me as it still only runs
> wutn the box is idle (I have it set to nice 20).

As others pointed out a nice 20 process will still use a few percent of
the processor even when it's busy with nice 0 tasks.  You can always
kill it if you need more power and restart it later.

-- 
Martin

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