United Devices Closing Down - April 27th

A

Anderu

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - August 2006
Joined
Jun 19, 2001
Messages
1,189
This is hard to believe, but it appears that the United Devices project is shutting down entirely as of this coming Friday.

Here is the post from their forum:

With seven years and five projects under its belt, Grid.org has successfully completed its mission: To evangelize the benefits (and demonstrate the viability and security) of large-scale Internet-based grid computing. Therefore, it is with great pride for all the accomplishments of this pioneering resource, and above all with the utmost gratitude to each of our members around the globe, that we announce Grid.org will be retiring on Friday, April 27, 2007.

We’ll be making a public announcement on the site later this week, but we felt it was important to give you, our loyal member base, an early heads-up out of respect for the years of support you’ve given to Grid.org. This way you’ll have time to gather final statistics, exchange contact info, and prepare for the official shutdown.

What exactly is happening:
At 12:00 noon Central Time on Friday, April 27, Grid.org will retire: Jobs will stop running, forums will be closed, and the website will be updated to reflect the retired status of this resource. We will leave the actual servers up for 1 week, so agent messages about this action can continue to be sent to members around the globe who might not check forums regularly. We will also leave the Stats up for one week so you have plenty of time to gather this data. After that, only the Home and Projects pages will remain, along with the instructions for uninstalling the agent ( http://www.grid.org/help/faq_uninstalling_agent.htm ).

Why?
Grid.org has completed its established mission to prove the benefits and viability of Internet-based grid computing. Grid.org was the largest and most ambitious public interest grid venture ever attempted when it was conceived – and thanks to Grid.org (and more specifically to all of you), today such a grid is no longer a novelty. Many public grids are now available, sponsored by large organizations better positioned to provide support to millions of member volunteers and the scientists who leverage their processing power. So, with the underlying technologies now well established globally in both public and private research programs, Grid.org’s goal of establishing the underlying technology has been achieved.

But what about…
We realize that over the past few months, Grid.org has made several announcements about upgrades coming in anticipation of a couple of new projects that we were working on. While we were fairly optimistic about these projects being launched, they ultimately fell through for a number of reasons. We realize that many of you had looked forward to participating in a beta program ahead of launching these projects, and we’re sorry you won’t have that opportunity.

Moving on: Where to go from here?
It’s clear from your years of loyalty to Grid.org that Internet-based research projects of this kind are important to you… and so we’re sure many of you will take your valuable resources to other projects of this kind that are ready and willing to accept you as new members.

Below are just a few of the projects we encourage you to investigate:
> World Community Grid ( http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/ ), operated by IBM
> Distributed.net ( http://www.distributed.net/ ), operated by distributed.net
> Compute Against Cancer ( http://www.computeagainstcancer.org/ ), operated by National Cancer Institute
> Folding@Home ( http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/folding/ ), operated by Stanford University
> fightAIDS@Home ( http://fightaidsathome.scripps.edu/ ), operated by Olson Lab at Scripps Research Institute
> LHC@home ( http://athome.web.cern.ch/athome/ ), operated by CERN
> Distributed Folding ( http://www.distributedfolding.org/ ), operated by a group of partners including Hogue Bioinformatics Research Lab, Mount Sinai Hospital, and University of Toronto
> SETI@home ( http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ ), operated by University of California at Berkeley

Also, here are a few great sites to visit to learn more about these and other projects:

> http://enterthegrid.com/
> http://gridcafe.web.cern.ch/gridcafe/gridprojects/fora.html
> http://www.ogf.org/
> http://www.grid.org.il/

Uninstalling the agent
The agent will no longer be processing work after Friday at noon, so you will want to uninstall it from your home device. Here’s how: http://www.grid.org/help/faq_uninstalling_agent.htm . Some more explicit instructions, including Troubleshooting, will be posted online Friday when Grid.org actually retires.

Last but not least
As we’ve tried to emphasize not only in this announcement but throughout our years of operations, we are fully aware of the debt of gratitude we owe to all of you, our loyal members.

The excellent work Grid.org has done, both in contributing massive research power to critical health research and in establishing this kind of research as viable, would not have been possible without your faith, efforts, and donations of compute power and goodwill. There is no superlative high enough to describe the value we place on your ongoing support for Grid.org, and so we simply say Thank you, and we hope you feel as proud as we do of the work you’ve done.

Sincerely,
The Grid.org Team
Click to expand...
 
wow.

hard to believe!

one team --- two [h]ard projects... hmmm... down to one project now.

I was thinking about moving some of my machines to UD.


:confused:
 
I do not see this entirely as a suprise. From what I had been reading on various forums for a while, they completed their main objective a while ago and a lot of the WUs being sent out were nothing new. I could be wrong, but that was my impression. That was my main reason for keeping all of my boxen on FAH, I thought that Stanford was doing better science.

 
well was UD just a proof-of-concept or were they actually doing research?

heh, i just started running this on my work machine a few months ago too...

oh well, more CPU's for FAH :)

and its [quote ] not <quote>
 
Thanks for the advice on the
thing. I don't do that often enough to commit it to memory.

I can hardly believe this, but I guess I will go out on top! I really wanted that 15 million badge too. I was SO close.



Click to expand...
 
That's very unfortunate. I guess a lot of other great projects are hopefully going to get a large infusion of people very quickly.

 
I almost transfered 2-3 of my slowest boxes to UD but I guess I should stick to F@H for now.

It will be strange to see those heavy UD contributors come to F@H among newcomers if they never participated before.

 
I had moved a few cores off already due to FAH SMP, but I have already moved 3 of my 4 boxen folding for UD. Oh well, looks like my efforts will terminate almost right at the 300k mark.



 
Wow.... Just wow.... :eek:

I have to admit that I didn't follow the happenings at Grid too much, but I was eagerly anticipating the upgrades they had been discussing.

Tis a sad day indeed.... :(
 
wow, thats shocking news. Looks like [H]ard Folding will be getting many new converts and a big boost of production after UD closes down.
 
No idea what to say.

To out crunch a whole frigging project, now that is truly [H]ard!
 
Hopefully the FAH side of things will get some of the fallout from this. Sad to see it go. It was a cool project.
 
Gosh I don't know what to say, I'm sorta of flabbergasted of finding out that UD was shutting down. Hmm, now maybe we can now see some boost from our Moose, since all his boxen was toward UD.
 
This truly sucks for all of the guys UDing. It makes me wonder, what were they doing? Was UD actually doing research? Are they sending said research to other projects? Or was years of UDing all for nothing?

More boxen for F@H I suppose, but this still really sucks!
 
Viper87227 said:
This truly sucks for all of the guys UDing. It makes me wonder, what were they doing? Was UD actually doing research? Are they sending said research to other projects? Or was years of UDing all for nothing?

More boxen for F@H I suppose, but this still really sucks!
Click to expand...

The answer is simple UD was just running the projects, Oxford and the NFCR have final say in everything, now while the message doesn't go into specifics, it seems like perhaps Oxford pulled the plug.

As to what we got out of it, in the 7 years we got 2 sets of results that are being used in the real world via the C.D.C. and U.S.A.M.R.I.I.D. and Cancer results that are being pushed forward by Oxford.

While the project is closing down what we produced is still beneficial.

1 [H]ard Team, 2 Great Projects, 1 Common Goal..... The Cure.



Site Admin: [H]ard|Folding
Lurker Extraordinaire
 
I think they were doing actual research, but with a "proof of concept" philosophy. They were piping their results to Oxford University's Dr. Richard Graham. I would hope that before fading into the blackness, they can give some accounting of what, if any, difference this has all made.

I will be switching my home computers to F@H this weekend. After all this time, you finally got me! Be kind. ;)
 
maybe they just couldnt pay the bills anymore...and no matter what, they used the same or similiar cores as F@H, and its sounds like they are sharing all of their programming and stats with all the other DC groups.


and here comes anderu to Folding@home.... roos are PISSED :D
 
It is indeed a sad day, but everyone who has run UD for one day, or seven years, take a moment to pat yourself on the back.

Like King said, a lot of good work was done through the program, and now that you have the "Find a cure for _____" bug in you, find a program that is equally deserving of your time and machine power.
 
Sucks to see a project like this end... Hopefully though, those that participated will switch their boxen over to other projects and continue to search for a cure! I'd hate to see all that computing power go wasted and idle......


Keep on Folding!! For the [H]orde!!

 
AtomicMoose said:
Now what am I going to say to marty? :eek:
Click to expand...

Guess I'll have to do the talking... :D

Below are just a few of the projects we encourage you to investigate:
> World Community Grid ( http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/ ), operated by IBM
> Distributed.net ( http://www.distributed.net/ ), operated by distributed.net
> Compute Against Cancer ( http://www.computeagainstcancer.org/ ), operated by National Cancer Institute
> Folding@Home ( http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/folding/ ), operated by Stanford University
> fightAIDS@Home ( http://fightaidsathome.scripps.edu/ ), operated by Olson Lab at Scripps Research Institute
> LHC@home ( http://athome.web.cern.ch/athome/ ), operated by CERN
> Distributed Folding ( http://www.distributedfolding.org/ ), operated by a group of partners including Hogue Bioinformatics Research Lab, Mount Sinai Hospital, and University of Toronto
> SETI@home ( http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ ), operated by University of California at Berkeley
 
See my new thread. I have not decided what would be best yet. Should we support another project, or just get behind FAH full bore?
 
what crappy timing, I just got a part today for a boxen I was going to put on UD. I had converted all my crappers to UD 4 weeks ago :(
 
I suggest to avoid distributed.net since their goal isn't about humanity, just stupid number crunching for cracking their encryption. I was in it before and I feel it's a waste of time.

Any project catering to find a cure or understand the human body better is more useful IMHO.

 
Xilikon said:
I suggest to avoid distributed.net since their goal isn't about humanity, just stupid number crunching for cracking their encryption. I was in it before and I feel it's a waste of time.

Any project catering to find a cure or understand the human body better is more useful IMHO.

Click to expand...

I agree about distributed.net. The LHC project looks cool, simulating a particle accelerator won't do much for medicine though. :)
 
I think SETI@home should be disregarded as well. The project doesn't really help out humanity, and in the many many years they've been doing it the only thing they've managed to find was a guy's stolen laptop, which I'm assuming any distributed computing program could do.





 
ReaperofDreams said:
I think SETI@home should be disregarded as well. The project doesn't really help out humanity, and in the many many years they've been doing it the only thing they've managed to find was a guy's stolen laptop, which I'm assuming any distributed computing program could do.





Click to expand...

That's true, forgot about this one...

 
I have a bunch of old PC's I was gonna slave to UD... humm.... guess not. And I mean a bunch, like 18+... not sure they would do so good at FaH.

Any reccomendations for a project that can still use older gear? P2-400 to AMD 2600+
 
ReaperofDreams said:
I think SETI@home should be disregarded as well. The project doesn't really help out humanity, and in the many many years they've been doing it the only thing they've managed to find was a guy's stolen laptop, which I'm assuming any distributed computing program could do.





Click to expand...

If the aliens wanted us to meet them, they would have called by now... :D
 
Robbie mentioned before that they literally had to shout at Oxford to give them new data, and that they are still sifting through all the generated data. I guess a combination of lack of funding, Oxford got somewhat satisfied by the project, aging equipment (remember the meltdown 2 years ago?), and other high profile "happenings" (read: GPU Folding, PS3 Folding and XBox 360 possibility of joining BOINC) have sped up grid.org's demise. I just hope that good people like Robbie was not laid off or anything.

I remember when I first joined the UD team when it was still called THINK (see my sig), through the lowest point when there were mass defections to FAH and GAH, to the establishment of the "#1 Plan", to the UD team stablized (recently), and now the end. More than 5 years of contribution, mostly to the [H].

And it all just started on 1 machine! Then I got to 3 (one router/file server, and another machine for my brother). Over the years I stuck with the 3 machines and just scale up with upgrades. To some degree it fueled my upgrades over the years. UD, to me, is still the most "hands off" program, no EUE's, no trashing of wasted WUs, and it can certainly survive server crashes (re-register castastrophe excluded :p). I think I'm the perfect example of "slow and steady wins the game". Some people had short bursts of points and then went off, while I steadily climbed the ranks. I'm actually surprised that I get to as high as I am on the team.

Although it is a sad day that UD is shutting down, I do agree with the annoucement that we now have a bunch of other DC programs going on which are worthwhile and technically advanced/stable. I have become involved with team TechReport in the past few years so I guess I may be moving to them soon. However, it's the [H] that started me on this journey, so may be I will switch to the [H] from time to time just for kicks. :)

To all my soon-to-be-former UD teamates, it has been an honour and fun. May team 33 continue to rule the FAH roost. Let's continue the fight to these debilitating diseases!


 
Well said.

Thanks for the CPU power over the years Fox. I too am sorry to see it end, but as you pointed out, there are now many decent alternatives, most of which are deserving of all the CPU power they can get.

Like most, I will sticking to the humanitarian-based projects. I am a big fan of taking care of things close to home, and I cannot think of anything more worthy than curing the afflictions of man.

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top