Participating in Global Computing Projects is Free!

One of the defining characteristics of global computing projects is that participation is free for everybody with an Internet connection. There are no fees for the computing software or participation. While some projects even pay you for participating, the truth is that you will not earn much money this way. Thus you will most probably participate in projects that you like and want to support for non-materialistic reasons on a PC you already have anyhow. However, if you think about participating you will want to know the hidden costs you face.

General caution for use of computers: Do not run your computer at all (much less continously), when ...

• weather is too hot and you have no appropriate cooling system.
• you have no appropriate backup system. The cheapest way to do that nowadays is to buy an extra hard disk drive (most Gigabytes for your money). Then copy your data to that hard disk, every evening before you leave your computer.

There are no obligations you can not completely control and nothing you have to pay directly. However, every global computing project has hidden costs for its participants. Compared to other projects, costs for evolution@home can be configured to be low, if run-files with complex simulations are chosen, as they keep connection costs low (much computation for little connection). Besides that it shares the cost of having your computer on all the time. The current simulators can not initialize dial-up connections automatically. As you have to send results back by email manually, this gives you thight control over the file-sizes transmitted.

What does it cost to participate in any global computing project?
The hidden costs for participants of all global computing projects are in short having your computer run and pay for the data transfer:

• Hardware: You bought the computer
• Systemadministration: You maintain the operating system in a state where it can run a simulator
• Cost of having your computer work: As the simulator works only if your computer is on, the following costs and risks arise, if you leave the computer on only for the sake of the simulator:
• Electricity: Your computer consumes about as much as a light bulb when left on.
• Cooling: Make sure you operate your computer in a room that is not too hot in summertime.
• Increased risk of hardware failures coming to surface: A computer either fails to operate correctly in the first weeks after production or it can be expected to work fine for its expected lifetime of 5 years or so.
  We definitively recommend to run complex simulations continously after buying a new computer, as this is likely to make any problems surface after short time. If your computer made it through that period, it can be expected to run smoothly thereafter. If you find regular crashes of the OS or the client, you may want to check for problems with RAM quality, main-board or processor-cooling.
• NoteBooks: If you leave your notebook computing continously, you probably have to leave the LCD display on. While this reduces its lifetime, it depends on your habits whether lifetime is reduced faster or slower than during the usual switch on-off stress.
• Lightening: If you have no special protection, lightening induced voltage peaks may dammage your computer as any other electronic devices switched on during such a storm. Although probability is low, no global computing project will pay for such dammage.
• Connection cost of getting tasks and submitting results: This can be very costly, if projects have to transfer large amounts of data. Some projects even demand continous Internet connection. With evolution@home, however, you pick the runfiles with the complexity you like and thus determine the costs to submit results. Runfiles that need 6 months computation have virtually no transmission costs.
  As all Internet connections in general open your computer to potential hacker attacks, you have to live with this risk or start to learn how to fight hackers.
• Cost of installing new releases of simulators. This surfaces as download connection costs and as the amount of manual work needed to install the new releases. Other projects already have this process automated. evolution@home will do so later.
• Trust: As any connection to the internet opens your computer to potential threats from bad people, you have to trust the global computing project you participate in, that the code does what it is supposed to do:
• Does not spy around in your computer
• Does not open security breaches that allow others to spy around or misuse your computer
• Compute what is says to and not some secret whatever project you would not be willing to support.

To summarize, besides having a little light bulb on and a slightly higher phone bill, there are only minor risks you have to bear, if you follow general backup practices. However, as you can start and stop participation at any time, you fully control the extent of all hidden costs.

Do simulators disturb normal operation of the computer during work?
No, not really, although some rare exceptions may exist for this rule. As the priority of the process that needs computing time is set to the lowest possible level under Windows, it completely backs of, if another application needs the CPU. However, when that is no longer the case, the CPU is used again for continuting the simulations. Thus you should notice nothing during your normal work. However, as all simulators up to release 5 (of S005) do not make any pauses, the CPU is allways used up to nearly 100%. This may lead to small delays of some operations on some computers, as Windows apparently needs some time to give processes with higher priorities everything they need.
Under MacOS, control is given back to the Finder about 100 times per second by default (release 5). You can change that value in the preferences by setting the number of individuals computed every time the simulator gets control. If you increase the value you increase performance, if you decrease it, you increase responsiveness of the system. In daily use you would not notice operation of the simulator with default interrupt behaviour, except when you use processor-intense applications like e.g. image processing or background printing of PDF files to a ink-jet printer. In these situations, stop the simulator to get performance back to normal levels.

Are results lost if my computer crashes?
Yes, but only minimally. Each simulate-command from the run-file stands for a single run whose results are stored to harddisk after it has been completed. So, such results are not lost by a crash. If you start a run that needs very long time, then each hour an intermediate results-file is generated. For very long runs these intermediate can be very valuable, as it can be hard to complete the whole simulation. However, final results are always better. If evolution is interrupted very often (due to a crash or other reasons), please choose run-files with simulations that need less time than the interrupts intervall.

Security: Running the simulator at weekends...
Currently, the simulator needs to be started as any other program. This means that you need an open user account to start the simulator automatically or manually. However, if you logoff, the simulator will be closed, as all other programs. If you now leave for weekend and want your simulator to continue to run, you have to either

• lock the door of the room with the computer with a key no untrusted person has access to or
• hide / encrypt all critical data on your disk in such a way that nobody can make use of it (and have a backup in a secure location) or
• be ready to have a reduced simulator performance due to a screen saver with a good password and boot-protection or
• trust all evil persons you know and all those you donât know to be more busy with other things in the world.

©  by evolutionary-research, last change 2002-06-30. Contact