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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Making solar energy economical is defined as one of the grand challenges for engineering within the 21st century by the National Academy of Engineering.
This is an important task. I encourage all to process 24/7/365 Remember development of solar energy also have the potential to lift millions out of poverty by providing clean, inexpensive energy to remote areas. http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/8996/9082.aspx You encourage us to process 24/7/365. Think of how much enrgy it will take. I live in a province where wind is the main energy source but processing 24/7/365 isn't Green. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Making solar energy economical is defined as one of the grand challenges for engineering within the 21st century by the National Academy of Engineering. This is an important task. I encourage all to process 24/7/365 Remember development of solar energy also have the potential to lift millions out of poverty by providing clean, inexpensive energy to remote areas. http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/8996/9082.aspx You encourage us to process 24/7/365. Think of how much enrgy it will take. I live in a province where wind is the main energy source but processing 24/7/365 isn't Green. I take it that you are not currently running this project. Right now I have a WU that has not check pointed for 3 hours. If I shut down now. That is three hours that will disappear and I will have to do it again. That is not green. When running boinc my cpus are all maxed out. This does take more energy. However, each unit of energy is doing a lot more than if I were just surfing the web. It is a much more effecient use of energy. I run 24-7 and when I am not here there is no difference in cpu uusage. Power usage does go down a good bit as I turn off my monitor and all other connected devices. To follow your "green" logic, and I have some sympathy for this, computers should be turned off and recycled. Power usage is not green no matter the source. What we can do is try to be effecient and not waste it. Running a box at full speed for 24 hrs in a row is more efficient than running it for 24 hours broken up into smaller pieces as you are not wasting energy booting and shutting down. Now if you have nothing running and the box is just sitting there, that is a silly waste. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I have a dual boot 64 bit Linux and 64 bit Windows 7 machine and opted into this project when it started. I have also been almost exclusively running Linux so this project can run and to pick up extra computing efficiency, when compared with Windows 7, in other projects like Cancer, AIDS and Muscular Dystrophy.
To be as green as possible I have come to the conclusion that I should let WCG run in the background whenever I am actually using the computer, and that I should shut the computer down whenever I don't expect to use it for more than two hours. On this solar energy project I do monitor the work unit progress and will usually set the computer timer to shut down after the work unit is completed. On the other projects, which check point more frequently, I don't worry as much about turning the machine on and off. That usually doesn't happen more than twice a day. However, if I am using the computer late at night I will set it to run WCG maxed out until sunrise and then shutdown automatically. Here in the Eastern US, we usually have surplus electric power all night long, from nuclear and large coal generators that can't easily be turned on and off. But during the day, less efficient generators are brought online to meet peak demand. During some of the recent summer heat waves the local utilities asked that non-essential electrical appliances be turned off to keep the electric grid from overloading. During those times I avoid having the computer turned on. I think the most efficient use of my computer is to let it run WCG maxed out 24/7. But on the other hand, if WCG is running in the background, when I would be using the computer anyway, especially late at night, then the WCG processing is really getting an environmental free ride since the crunching is consuming little extra energy. If I have my computer running just WCG all day then it is consuming extra and less efficient energy during the day, and not getting the free ride in the background benefit. That has to be less green per work unit completed. So if one wants to be both as green as possible and do as much research crunching as possible the situation must be managed. I always seem to want to come down on the doing more research side of the dilemma. By the way, because my computer is almost five years old and a couple of Moore's law cycles behind today's multi-core high speed machines I don't get many Solar project work units assigned to me. As of today, I have completed just over ten days worth of solar work units, and haven't been assigned a new WU in weeks. On the other hand, I am productively crunching on other projects where I don't have to worry as much about wasting work if I have to shut down before the WU is completed. On a global scale, the greenest use of energy in doing these grid computing projects would probably be to have a larger number of computers doing background crunching while the owners were using the computers during non-peak energy periods, and not just have the computers running 24/7 to do the crunching. Now we just have to get more people interested in crunching for WCG to make that greater efficiency possible :-). |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
You will find that the Linux is better at crunching. Unix, the base for Linux was designed for crunching numbers.
MS was not designed for crunching. While is good at what it is designed for it is not the ideal thing to crunch. Other factors, of course, are also important in the choice of platform to run. If you are a gamer, for instance, I would not recommend Linux as a great platform for you. Here in SE Montana, we have plenty of power from coal to supply us during the day. This means it is basically sated if not used. We are also getting a LOT of wind generation built all over Montana. We have, generally, what is locally known as "prairie breeze". A calm day is 10 to 20 mph, usually 15 to 25, many times 25 to 35, too often for comfort over 40. |
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