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World Community Grid

Mattz0r
Rising Star
Posts: 620
Fixes: 1
Registered: ‎21-07-2010

World Community Grid

Hey guys,
I've recently joined and started using World Community Grid - Searched for a Plusnet group, and there wasn't one, So i've created one!.

If you're interested in this kind of thing, Feel free to join up and support WCG Smiley
World Community Grid's mission is to create the world's largest public computing grid to tackle projects that benefit humanity.
Our work has developed the technical infrastructure that serves as the grid's foundation for scientific research. Our success depends upon individuals collectively contributing their unused computer time to change the world for the better.
World Community Grid is making technology available only to public and not-for-profit organizations to use in humanitarian research that might otherwise not be completed due to the high cost of the computer infrastructure required in the absence of a public grid. As part of our commitment to advancing human welfare, all results will be in the public domain and made public to the global research community.

Sign up link can be found here:
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/reg/viewRegister.do?teamID=B2914ZF75Z1
If you're already signed up, and want to join the Plusnet Team, the link is here:
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/viewTeamInfo.do?teamId=B2914ZF75Z1
Look foward to seeing some of you on there.
Regards,
Matt
6 REPLIES 6
avatastic
Grafter
Posts: 1,136
Thanks: 2
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: World Community Grid

Ahh good old WCG, I remember you when you were still United Devices.
Maybe my work PC could spare a few cycles ...
F9 member since 4 Sep 1999
F9 ADSL customer since 27 Aug 2004
DLM manages your line the same way DRM manages your rights.
Look at all the pretty graphs! (now with uptime logging!)
VileReynard
Hero
Posts: 12,616
Thanks: 582
Fixes: 20
Registered: ‎01-09-2007

Re: World Community Grid

Quote from: Mattz0r
Sign up link can be found here:
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/reg/viewRegister.do?teamID=B2914ZF75Z1

Go to the bottom of that page and then compare with http://boinc.berkeley.edu/
Are those Logos just a bit similar?
BOINC has been running for many years now - and it runs a wider variety of projects.

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."

fourfourdevon
Grafter
Posts: 1,101
Thanks: 2
Registered: ‎10-09-2010

Re: World Community Grid

Erm, WCG is a BOINC project, just one that takes more of an independent approach.
Peter_Vaughan
Grafter
Posts: 14,469
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: World Community Grid

Another UD member here and one of the original forum moderators (anyone remember Orbi? yes it was me).
It was successful for many years and ran very well for the 3 or 4 years I was running the project. We had a really good world-wide community on the forums with lots of banter about any old subject (we even talked about the actual processing now and again ;)). It was good for a while, and I did a lot of beta testing of the new software releases but it basically ran out of work and kept putting people off saying a new project was starting very soon... It turned out the original supplier of the data to process cancelled the next phase so UD started sending out out already processed jobs for months without telling anyone. Eventually we found out  and a lot of people left.
UD lost it's way in the grand scheme of things as it tried to compete with the big boys of distributed computing - it had a commercial side and a not-for-profit side (which I was on) but there were a lot of conflicts in trying to do both and the company eventually had financial problems -  The company got taken over (several times) and WCG was started but it was not very successful and the whole ethos and community changed  in this new incarnation so I left.
While I can see it has a lot more 'projects' now it has gone into the public domain, I became sceptical near the end what benefits we actually made with the millions of years worth of processing. It only needs a simple software / design fault in the analysis program to render millions of hours of time completely wasted (this did happen in the early days of the UD software - something many did not know about at the time).
I'm sure things are much different now that they are running other peoples software (yes they do run BOINC compatible software) but I did my time and have better things to do with my PC now (it's no longer on all the time for one).
If you have some spare CPU cycles I'm sure they can be put to good use by the projects there.
artificer
Grafter
Posts: 1,850
Registered: ‎11-08-2007

Re: World Community Grid

after folding @ home killed two of my computers, i quit, ceased and desisted.  it was also rather effective at slowing the machine to a crawl.  not on.  not on at all.
VileReynard
Hero
Posts: 12,616
Thanks: 582
Fixes: 20
Registered: ‎01-09-2007

Re: World Community Grid

I run the BOINC client - it has a user configurable setting where it suspends processing for a while if other processes are using more than xx% CPU.
Seems to work well (although a dual processor CPU shouldn't have problems anyway).

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."