I saw this article (
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10959590) this morning, and it got me thinking about joining up in some capacity. I only have a laptop, which isn't on permanently, so I don't know how much my contribution would be in terms of help.
Also, I'm just interested to hear what others have to say about the project.
Einstein@Home uses the BOINC platform (
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ ), which has the become the industry standard for these dispersed computing jobs. I've run a slew of BOINC programs on this laptop without any difficulty - everything from the venerable Seti@home to now defunct projects like LHC (the design analyser for the now up & running Large Hadron Collider). Its fun; & can be useful
The biggest problem you might find with Einstein@Home is that the data sets can take a while to download & run, though you're given a reasonable amount of time to do it (all data-sets have time limits for completion, which can be anything from a few days to the best part of a year for particularly time-consuming jobs). If you have a decent laptop - mine is far from state of the art - & can run the program for an hour or two a day, you should be fine
(ClimatePrediction is even worse in this aspect. If you ain't running a good system almost full time, don't even think about running it. For me, it can take 10-12 hrs a day, for months. Great screensaver, though)
There are a bunch of quicker programs to look at if you want to help out but don't want the runtime responsibility of Einstein. The BOINC site linked above will lead you to them. A number have the spacial characteristics appropriate to the Trekbbs - SETI, of course; Einstein; Orbit; etc - others are medical - Malariacontrol; Rosetta - while a few are environmental - Virtual Prairie springs to mind
(Embarassing admission time - i've done 2000 work units of yoyo@home & couldn't for the life of me remember what it did. Had to check. It's a great multiple project project like World Community Grid but my new dataset is a bit on the long side. May not be a good choice for you)
The quicker programs include SETI (mostly), Virtual Prairie, Rosetta, FreeHAL, Malaria, Orbit & World Community Grid. Apart from those already mentioned, Aqua & Cosmology are two which tend to take ages to run
If the idea appeals, have a look round the BOINC site for inspiration. There are links to all of the participating jobs, with a summary of what science you'll be helping on. Be aware, though, that not every program has data available all of the time. SETI is always looking for computers (as is Einstein); but Malaria & Virtual Prairie (to use only two egs) are lower-budgeted projects which only release data for processing when they have it
On the other hand - in case you're afraid of uploading more than one program at once - BOINC allows you to suspend work on them when you're busy. Right now there's plenty of Virtual Prairie data out there, so i'm almost exclusively running it
Hope i haven't completely confused you
With regards
Robert
