As far as I know, they send the same task to different persons.
So the results can be compared and if a person quits the program the result doesn't get lost.

So it doesn't matter when you return the result.

Well, looking at David's post there may be a timeout after all. The server will eventually assign the Work Unit to another computer, but there are a lot of Work Units (millions) to go through.

I have been reading through the grid.org forum about this question. They started with a 2 week limit on CPU Time and 3 week limit on wall clock time before the Agent aborted the Rosetta Work Unit. However, on 22 Nov 2004 they announced in the Member News Forum that they were changing the time limits to 3 weeks CPU Time and 4 weeks wall clock time. However, on another day they increased the Minimum RAM required from 128MB to 256MB to 'avoid interfering' with member's computers. Since each grid is setting requirements independently, there is no guarantee that WCG is using the same time limits or even any time limits at all. There has not been any official mention of time limits on the World community Grid that I am aware of. Sorry I cannot give a definitive answer.

Ok, so if the wall clock timeout is three weeks, I would like to know if there is a Rosetta log file or something that I could refer to see when exactly I downloaded and began a workunit.


Is there a way to see how long I have had a particular work unit?

Thanks for the speedy reply Graham!! That will help me out tremendously!