Real new, real keen, but bit of a hiccup
Anonymous
6 Dec 2005 10:08:32 UTC
Topic 13182
(moderation:
Quote:
Prof Bruce Allen, is quoted as having mentioned in a lecture he gave somewhere about the EAH project, that the volunteers here were saving his project multi-thousands of dollars a day in electricity charges by having all the heavy crunching done externally. It's little wonder that "farming" is to be encouraged :). Personally I think the whole concept is fantastic for the advancement of Science, something that is very dear to my heart.
The numbers are amusing. We currently have around 70000 computers working on Einstein@Home. Typically a modern computer will use another (say) 40 Watts of power if it is working hard, versus idle. If it's turned on and working instead of turned off, this would be more like 150 Watts. So I estimate that Einstein@Home is using perhaps 4 MW of power on the host computers. Now one MW-hour of energy costs around $100 USD. So this is around $400 USD/hour or $9600 USD/day just in electricity costs.
(Before anyone gets frightened and runs off to look at their electric bill, remember that per user this works out to perhaps 10 cents/day. Also your computer is less likely to fail if you don't turn it on and off, so it may actuallly save you money in the long run!)
Cheers,
Bruce