SETI@home

SETI @ home (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence at home, english for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence at home ) is a distributed - computing project of the University of Berkeley, which is concerned with the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life.

The project

Unlike other SETI projects SETI @ home is a very inexpensive project. In conventional SETI projects promising certain sections of the sky are searched specifically for radio signals from aliens. SETI @ home instead has equipped the radio telescope located on the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico Arecibo Observatory, which is used for astronomical observations with an additional receiver and so draws on radio signals, while the telescope makes other scientific observations. SETI @ home thus receives a large amount of radio data do not occupy their own telescope time. To analyze the vast amount of data but little custom hardware is also required, the computational load is instead outsourced to the PCs of the global SETI @ home community.

Due to the large success of SETI @ home distributed computing has proven with normal PCs its operational capability. The total computing power was close to 700 teraflops in December 2009. Since 1999, the countries participating in the project hosts have together provided nearly 2.3 million years of computing time. During this time, approximately 1.84 billion results from over 5.4 million users have been received ( which also must be said that only about 250,000 users are active on average, always, that is, in the last four weeks also a result of the have returned server). Although the project so far yielded no definitive proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, but it has identified some elements in the sky that need to be analyzed in more detail.

SETI @ home has thus become a model for other projects in the medical and scientific fields, such as Folding @ Home, or the Cancer Research Project.

SETI @ home is supported by a variety of companies by computing power and donations, among which are, for example, Intel and Sun.

The software

SETI @ home distributed two programs: SETI @ home Enhanced and Astropulse.

While SETI @ home Enhanced is active in the narrowband frequency range, looking Astropulse contrast, after high-bandwidth pulses of short duration. There are mainly carried out three tests with the data:

Search Gaussian rises and falls of the transmission power that could possibly point to a radio source.
Search for pulses that may be like a narrow-band digital transmission
Search triples, three pulses in succession

SETI @ home with BOINC

SETI @ home was changed on 22 June 2004 to the new BOINC software platform. Developed by the SETI @ home BOINC Team provides a common platform for various applications for distributed computing dar. With the conversion is to be established a basis to expand the SETI @ home project flexible. The old "classic" client for example, was limited to being able to analyze data with 2-bit sampling depth of the recording device at the telescope of Arecibo. For the future it is planned to evaluate well data with better resolution and the Parkes telescope in the Southern Hemisphere in Australia. This future project was christened the SETI @ home II. The BOINC client can be relatively easily extended with new search algorithms or data formats by creating a new version of the program from the SETI @ home server is reloaded automatically.

The user can select on their profile page, whether he wants to use only SETI @ home Enhanced or Astropulse or both applications. Currently, the calculation of a Astropulse - Work Unit requires a multiple of the time required for a SETI @ home Enhanced Work Unit.

As platforms for SETI @ home Enhanced currently Windows (x86 ), Linux (x86 and x86 -64 ), Mac OS X 10.3 and Intel CPUs and Solaris ( SPARC) support. For Astropulse only Windows (x86 ), Linux (x86 and x86 -64) and OSX are currently supported. In addition, there are some unofficial applications for other platforms which are not supported by the SETI @ home team.

GPGPU

Since 17 December 2008, the CUDA technology of the graphics chip manufacturer Nvidia is supported. This makes it possible not only to use the unused processing power of the CPU but also the GPU, leading to a significantly accelerated completion of the work units. Requirement for the use of the GPU processing power is a CUDA - capable graphics card with at least 256 MB of video RAM, a current CUDA - supporting drivers for the graphics card and a BOINC version from 6.4.5. Currently, only SETI @ home Enhanced applications, and not Astropulse applications for CUDA are issued. At the present time (Feb. 2009), there are CUDA applications only for x86 Windows. Linux is only unofficially supported by third party. An application for Apple Macintosh is available from MAC OS X version 10.4.0. Since recently, both AMD Radeon graphics cards, as well as the iGPU Intel Ivy Bridge CPUs can be used for the calculation of work units. Since the nVidia CUDA exclusive technology is not naturally available, this will fall back on the OpenCL interface. A 64 -bit version of Windows 7 or Windows 8 and the current BOINC client ( version 7.0.28 or later), as well as a 64- bit version, however, is a prerequisite. Difficulties arise often due to the driver selection. Thus, the use of the GPU for BOINC can not be activated for example when using the recent drivers from AMD for the Radeon graphics cards. Currently (as of: April 25, 2013) is the driver version 12:11 optimally for the Work Unit calculation BOINC with Radeon graphics cards. The performance gain is substantial: A graphics card calculates a Work Unit in less than a third of the time, such as a CPU from a comparable price range.

History

On 17 May 1999, the SETI @ home project has been officially released for downloading the first client programs.
On 22 June 2004 has been converted to the platform BOINC.
On 15 December 2005, the SETI @ home Classic project was officially set. Since SETI @ home is calculated only within BOINC. The calculation results ( inter alia, the number of calculated units of work ) the old SETI Classic application were frozen at this time and can still be viewed on the official website today.
On 25 July 2008, the Astropulse application has been added.
Since 17 December 2008 CUDA is supported and since January 21, 2009, graphics chips are supported with older versions as CUDA 2.0.
Mid-May 2011 was put into operation a receiver at the Green Bank Telescope Green Bank Observatory.

Origin of the name

The addition of @ home (English for at home) refers to the fact that anyone who has a PC and an Internet connection, can home to this project contribute by installing a freely available program that downloads which data of a radio telescope and analyzed. The program runs either as a screen saver or completely in the background as a daemon. In both cases, only computing power is used, which otherwise would have remained unused.

Optimized applications

There are a number of so-called optimized applications, for example, also use the SSE or SSE3 instruction sets of processors for computing the working units, so that the calculations can be performed much faster. These applications are not manufactured by SETI @ home and not officially supported by them. Portions of this page sources were, however, included in the official application.