BOINC Games- Live for Alpha Testing

[pututu]

Originally as posted in Anandtech DC forum on the BOINC Games alpha testing. Some of you may have already registered earlier on. Update: If you will need to register again in the new alpha live site here. Previous site was a beta site.

BTW, the person behind BOINC Games inception is none other than our ex-horde, Skillz

Spoiler: BOINC Games

Some of you may be aware that there has been a project underway for some time by @Skillz (with assistance from the rest of the TeAm) to create a new BOINC competition called BOINC Games. This is a brand new competition that is unlike any other, and will run year round. It aims to be a fun and fair competition that all participants and teams are welcome to join. There are some unique things about BOINC Games that should keep things fun and interesting-

1. Each user needs to register and when registering has to change their BOINC name on a single project to a randomly generated string. This allows BOINC Games to validate that the person that registered is the owner of that BOINC account. This also means that it requires active participation from team members that want to be a part of BOINC Games.

2. The teams on BOINC Games are not associated in any way with your actual BOINC team affiliation. This will allow people to create sub teams or join up with other teams, etc. without actually changing the BOINC team affiliation. This change can only happen once per year, though, to avoid team hopping during the competition.

3. There will be practice sprints to ensure that all projects that are used for sprints are capable of running them.

Please join us for alpha testing BOINC Games by registering at the following link - https://www.boincgames.com/register.php You will need your cross project identifier when registering, which can be found on any BOINC project by logging in, going to 'Your Account' --> Computing --> Cross project statistics and it will be listed there. If you have any questions please post here, and if members from any other teams see this post please feel free to join us in alpha testing.

Registration is simple:
1. Go to the alpha live site registration page.
2. Enter your BOINC Games account information. The CPID (Cross Project Indentification/Identifier) can be obtained via visiting free-dc stat if you already participated in any of the BOINC projects. Here I use Primegrid project as an example. ** update 9/13/21: Primegrid may not be suitable. Try other BOINC projects instead.

Here is my CPID in free-dc stat on one of the BOINC projects. You can select any BOINC projects and all BOINC projects have the same CPID. Enter the CPID and "Submit" button.

3. A temporary unique name (67RMeB) will be generated to link BOINC games to your BOINC project stats. Copy this new name.

4. Log into any of the BOINC project website listed in BOINC games (in short B-games). Here I chose Primegrid.com and change my name from "pututu" to "67RMeB" after clicking on "other account info".

Click "Update Info" and you are done.

5. Sit back and wait for 24 hours or sometime up to 48 hours for the CPID to be validated. This validation speed depends on how often the project stat is been updated.
6. Once validated, you can change your username back in the BOINC project that you had selected. In my case, it is Primegrid.
7. Any questions, please post in B-games forum or here.

 

[auntjemima]

Pretty cool! Been talk for ages about replacing FB and it's about time it's come around. I hope it all works out.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Reading all of this I still don't know what it is.

I've seen the abbreviation BOINC before but wasn't really familiar with it, so Iooked it up, looks like it is some form of open source platforn for distributed computing.

But what that has to do with games, I don't know at all...

 

[michalrz]

Reading all of this I still don't know what it is.

I've seen the abbreviation BOINC before but wasn't really familiar with it, so Iooked it up, looks like it is some form of open source platforn for distributed computing.

But what that has to do with games, I don't know at all...

Games as in - Olympic games. Arenas, lions, no women, etc.
Basically, the purpose of that website is so we can pwn other teams in number crunching. F@h, math projects, cancer research, world community grid, pwning noobs.

Oh and - if you like to keep your gear minting coins instead - you can earn a crypto 'obyte' by participating in DC research. I have amassed 32 cents, so I'm on my way.

 

[Endgame]

Reading all of this I still don't know what it is.
I've seen the abbreviation BOINC before but wasn't really familiar with it, so Iooked it up, looks like it is some form of open source platforn for distributed computing.
But what that has to do with games, I don't know at all...

Folding at home is a similar project that you are probably familiar with. It gives you points for the amount of compute you donated. Same thing with BOINC.

This is, basically, a way for teams of people to compete in how many points you can generate in a given time frame.

There is a large contest each year called the Boinc Pentathalon (https://www.seti-germany.de/boinc_pentathlon/), and this is basically another way to have competitions like that.

 

[Deleted member 268674]

Primegrid won't yet work to get verified, I found that out the hard way. At least it didn't for me. I'm told that PG keeps their stats in a password protected directory, and so it's a little harder to set up stats with them.

I ended up using Collatz.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Folding at home is a similar project that you are probably familiar with. It gives you points for the amount of compute you donated. Same thing with BOINC.

This is, basically, a way for teams of people to compete in how many points you can generate in a given time frame.

There is a large contest each year called the Boinc Pentathalon (https://www.seti-germany.de/boinc_pentathlon/), and this is basically another way to have competitions like that.

Ah, ok. So essentially a statistics server. Got it.

I did some SETI@Home back in college but haven't done any distributed computing projects in 20 years.

In fine with donating my unused CPU cycles. My electricity - however - is a whole other question. Especially when you consider that most of our power still comes from coal, you have to balance the benefits of these projects against the harm the emissions cause (respiratory illnesses, etc.)

 

[pututu]

Ah, ok. So essentially a statistics server. Got it.

I did some SETI@Home back in college but haven't done any distributed computing projects in 20 years.

In fine with donating my unused CPU cycles. My electricity - however - is a whole other question. Especially when you consider that most of our power still comes from coal, you have to balance the benefits of these projects against the harm the emissions cause (respiratory illnesses, etc.)

Come and join us back. Try pi or raspberry. They consume very little power. I've 3950x when optimize properly for some BOINC projects will only consume 125W-130W off the wall. My old haswell xeons consume a lot more power. Disclaimer: I've solar panel

 

[Endgame]

Ah, ok. So essentially a statistics server. Got it.

I did some SETI@Home back in college but haven't done any distributed computing projects in 20 years.

In fine with donating my unused CPU cycles. My electricity - however - is a whole other question. Especially when you consider that most of our power still comes from coal, you have to balance the benefits of these projects against the harm the emissions cause (respiratory illnesses, etc.)

I’m running rooftop solar and have tried to stay in the power budget of the surplus power i generate. I’ve decided that donating compute for finding Covid antivirals is probably the best thing I can contribute to, even if I end up burning coal on and off.

When it comes to efficiency, 20 raspberry pi 4s is less than 100 watts and is hard to beat in a performance per watt measure, though a 5950x in eco mode is pretty close. I’ve basically decommissioned all of my old junk hardware - a core 2 quad 9650 is only about 2x faster than a pi 4, but it uses 150 watts instead of 4.5.

 

[EXT64]

I live right up the road from a Nuclear Power Plant, so I like to imagine all of my power comes from there.

Joking aside, I do try to adjust to the seasons. It is a lot easier to justify in the winter when I would be using electricity anyway to heat my house.