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Thread: United Devices - You can make a difference and help improve cancer treatment

  1. #1
    Member shark_megabyte's Avatar
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    United Devices - You can make a difference and help improve cancer treatment

    I have been thinking for a week or so about starting a team for SysOpt in the United Devices distributed computing project. I dont know if you've heard of that one but one of the things they're working on is modelling cell/drug interactions to try to come up with more effective cancer treatments.

    Last night I read in the Community forum that one of our fellow SysOpt members, Fatal Exception, passed away on Friday due to brain cancer. She was cheerful and funny, and I always enjoyed reading her posts.

    After checking with a moderator if it was ok to post this info at this time, I have created the SysOpt team. It is called SysOpt in Action. I set the description as "Members of SysOpt.com putting our fastidiously-tweaked computers to work together as one for the improvement of cancer treatment and better lives for patients. Created in memory of Debi, who we knew (as Fatal Exception) far too briefly."

    You can download from www.ud.com a small program that operates a lot like the SETI@home project - you can run it either as a screensaver, or activate it yourself when you're going away from your computer, and it will run during the time your machine would normally do nothing, analyzing data sets. When one set finishes, you connect to the net so it can report its results and download a new set.

    The team's UD info page is
    http://members.ud.com/services/teams...2-778D183C774C

    [have had some trouble with that link not working... you may need to download and register - www.ud.com - before being able to see the team page. Sorry for the mixup.]

    You can both download the software (link is toward the bottom) and join the team from that location. Make sure to choose the cancer research module to run when you install. Anyone reading this is welcome to join.

    If you have cpu idle time to spare, no matter how slow your computer may be, you can help. It's not often I get a chance to put my hardware where my heart is. Let's make Debi smile when she sees what our computers are doing in her name.
    Last edited by shark_megabyte; 03-31-2002 at 08:22 PM.

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    I hate that.. It made my prossesor run at 60Âșc! I mean you would think this program could be less computer hoggy, but it just eats everything your poor processor can put out.

    UD: Good idea, poor execution.

  3. #3
    Member shark_megabyte's Avatar
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    Here is what I have seen with UD Agent and cpu temp.

    [SUMMARY: It places demands on your system's cooling, but no more than hardcore gaming or similar tasks. I have it running on a very old machine and I will report any problems I encounter at once.]

    The UD Agent is a processor-intensive application. It will probably take your system to its high-load temperature, whatever that may be. I set it up for the first time and noticed that it took my system from normal warmed-up running temp of 47C up to 51C after running for a while. I left off running it then for several days because then (and still as of this post) all I've got for cooling is my CPU fan (Dragon 478). My processor is a Pentium 4 1.6a. I have several case fans shipping to me this week, so I thought I would just wait for them to get here before going all out.

    Today after I made my posts, I decided to fire up UD again and kick the team launch off by completing a work unit. I kept a close eye on the temp (sat by my machine eating while it did the rest of the computations) and it never got above 52c. I am comfortable now leaving my machine unattended while running UD.

    I also installed the agent on my old laptop (Pentium 233 MMX) today and have had it running nonstop for several hours. I expect if there is any serious risk from overheating with this program, I will see it in my laptop. 4 hours 35 minutes and counting, and nothing has happend yet.

    If you have a Northwood with a decent cpu cooling scheme, you have nothing to fear here. I've blazed that trail for you. If you have an AMD and you have good case circulation, I would think you should be ok too. I plan to leave UD Agent running continuously on my laptop for quite a while (its screen is slightly damaged and no longer useful for serious computing, so this is the best use it can possibly be put to). The laptop will be like a miners' canary for us. If I notice anything happen to it that could possibly be caused by heat stress, I will let the team know immediately.

    Don't let this scare you off, there are thousands of people using UD and this seems to have caused trouble for very few of them if any!

  4. #4
    Member shark_megabyte's Avatar
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    UD is also very kind about quickly giving you back whatever resources you need if you want to quit it or do something else while it runs in the background. Though it does use as much CPU time as there is available, it seems to run with a low priority so that you can smoothly get your system back whenever you want instead of waiting any time at all for it to grind to a halt. I was very impressed by this.

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    I mean there should be a warning about this. I left my PC on for a couple days, because I was on vacation. I got back home and it was huffing and puffing the last bit binary code it could.. Running for I suppose 3 days at 60+- can't be good for it. I have tons of cooling, but I do live in a warm enviorment.

    YOU SHOULD INSTALL WARNING LABELS ABOUT THIS

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    Ultimate Member araaraara's Avatar
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    I would love to switch from Seti@Home to do this. I will make the switch as soon as I reach 200 blocks for Seti (10 more to go, sould take me about 45 hours). Then my overclocked AthlonXP speed machine will be on the team.

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    Senior Member Grentarc's Avatar
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    i am putting my XP 1700+ and my Celeron 600 to work for this cause... Hope it helps alot... the Celery 600 is a dedicated RC5-64, SETI and now UD machine... hope it doesnt die

  8. #8
    Member shark_megabyte's Avatar
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    Thank you! I was beginning to wonder if I'd stay the only member of the SysOpt team forever.

    After running UD continuously for 72 hours, I have stopped it on my laptop because it was going so incredibly slow the whole time (my desktop completed 4 work units before the laptop even got through one) The keyboard and case were warm the whole time, but I cant say it felt much warmer than it ever has before. I think your Celeron should be ok, but if you're concerned for it, you can use a temp monitor on it for a while.

    Meanwhile my P4 1.6a is really racking up the stats. I can't wait to see what it'll do when my fans get here tomorrow so I can OC

  9. #9
    Senior Member madfish's Avatar
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    if you want a " machine good score" when you recive you next WU. make sure your doing nothing on said machine, even just surfing will return a poor machine rated score, your points are also based on the score your machine gets.
    As for high temps. I've run this on a 233mmx with just the stock cooling with no problems, temps stayed around 120 f. be warned tho.... that some work units take a very long time.. and I belive the cut off for WU's is 100 hrs, as if you still have a WU being worked on at this time, it willn't count. and gets recycled for someone eles to finish.
    Stop into www.extremedc.com and on our main page is info on a few DC projects with links to them. right now we have joined with www.team-tnt.net in the battle for #1 in Eccp. stop in at www.team-tnt.net and ask any questions you have about the different DC projects going on. Randy48 ( now know as just Randy ) started it all here, I think, I could be wrong. he can help with 99% of your questions about DCing.

    And no. I am not trying to get new members to join us. I'm Just trying to help by passing links to some good info for ya all.



    Madfish

    Edit: btw, AMD's rock doing most of the DC projects. no I'm not a AMD user, I run Itel Iron, tho my kids run a 900 athlon.
    Last edited by madfish; 04-05-2002 at 02:23 AM.

  10. #10
    Member shark_megabyte's Avatar
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    Well I've looked at how the scoring works on UD, and I'm usually getting a machine rating of over 100 after a little tweaking of preferences. I'm not worried about surfing while DCing though, I see there is provision for UD to add some kind of reward system to redeem points... but they're so far along, they have more incentive NOT to do it, or at least to set the point/reward ratio really huge. There are tons of people with many thousand points racked up by now.

    I leave UD running when I'm out of my room, and whenever I'm not trying to fix my gaming problems. My comp finishes at least one unit a day while I'm out.

    I agree AMD's rock.. I'm running a P4, and whoever has joined the team already (that you, Grentarc?) is off to a sizzling start... could catch me easily if he left the app running a bit more

    I have done SETI before, but that was before the UD cancer project came about, and not to knock other DC efforts, but I'm going to stick solely with this one for a long time to come. I have kind of a personal stake in it.

    I got 4/6 of my case fans in today, and tested with Sandra burn-in... my load temperature now is 47c, which was my idle / light task temp before. And that's with my cpu cooler now running at medium instead of max speed As soon as I figure out & fix what keeps making my games crash, I will be ready to OC.
    Last edited by shark_megabyte; 04-05-2002 at 03:32 AM.

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    Senior Member Grentarc's Avatar
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    Yeah... i guess that would be me with my Athlon XP in there... my celeron isnt on at the moment, but i finish a data unit in 3 hrs

  12. #12
    Member shark_megabyte's Avatar
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    I've been shot down by a hardware problem, but I'll be churning units again as soon as I get my system back up.

  13. #13
    Senior Member Grentarc's Avatar
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    I only have one complaint about UD... It says that my 98GB of HDD space is actually 0.98 GB and is worse than their comparison machine (but my processor is 52% faster than their P4 1.5 GHz, i have twice the ram of their P4 and it only recognises one of my two 10/100 network cards).... other than that , it seems to be going along quite nicely, although my processor does get up to 55 deg C when it is running ... it usually uses about 95% of my processor power when i'm surfing... I dont mind... its a good cause. Anyway, i hope i up the points for our team on this!

  14. #14
    Member Harshu's Avatar
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    Well I m a member of United Devices from 04/09/2002. Here i have given 201 days 3hrs 47min as my CPU time. Given 277 results and a maximum of 272Hrs of continious running.
    The program was very buggy at first and it really dranied every bit of the PC by now the program really works fine and cool. No problem every created by it. Ya some problem is there as lots of CPU timeget lost due to some technical problem in the program. But still it works fine.
    I have joined the UD program just because of the prizes given by them nothing else. But now it become a passion for me. Now even the prizes have been stopped and works just for volentary purpose still my PC is ON 24hrs a day.
    I think every one should join and give there CPU power. If i can give CPU power of my slow machine PII 350, 256MB RAM. Then y can't u peoples with over 1 gig CPU.

  15. #15
    Member shark_megabyte's Avatar
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    Originally posted by Grentarc
    I only have one complaint about UD... It says that my 98GB of HDD space is actually 0.98 GB and is worse than their comparison machine
    It rates you on how much storage space you allow it to use, not on your total HD size. So it must be set to use only about 1gb on your machine. If you'd like to give it more space to get a higher rating, then edit your device profile (it takes you to a web page, and your settings will be in effect when the UD agent next downloads a new work unit)

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