Moving SETI@home to BOINC

We will soon release a new version of SETI@home, based on BOINC, a general-purpose platform for distributed computing projects like SETI@home. Switching to SETI@home/BOINC will be easy:

Create an account using the SETI@home web site. This will give you an account ID, sent by email. Note: accounts will be created automatically for all current SETI@home users (see below).

Download and install the BOINC client program when it becomes available.

Uninstall SETI@home.

When you first run the BOINC client, enter your SETI@home account ID.

If there are problems, you can reinstall "SETI@home Classic" and continue running it.

Stages of the transition

We don't have an exact timetable yet, but the transition will be staged as follows:

We will make a snapshot of SETI@home user information (accounts, teams, profiles) and will use it to initialize the SETI@home/BOINC database. We will then launch the SETI@home/BOINC project.
Over the next month or so we will send email to all SETI@home users, giving them their new account IDs and recommending that they switch to BOINC. During this period you can continue to run the current SETI@home, and your results will be recorded and used. New SETI@home accounts and team changes can be made, but will not be carried over to BOINC.
Once SETI@home/BOINC is stable, and versions are available for most platforms, we will turn off the data server for SETI@home Classic. At this point you will need to switch to SETI@home/BOINC.

Questions and answers

Why is SETI@home switching to BOINC?

Several reasons:

BOINC transparently and securely downloads new application versions. This lets us upgrade and extend SETI@home without requiring you to download and install new software. It will make it easy for us to integrate new algorithms, such as analyzing our 8 bit/sample reobservation data, or looking for other types of radio signals such as short pulses from evaporating black holes.
BOINC has a more flexible data architecture than SETI@home Classic. Data can be transferred to and from multiple servers, and can remain resident on PC disks. In the future, we'll use these capabilities to search for ET signals in a much larger radio frequency range.
BOINC distributes work based on host parameters. Work units requiring 512 MB of RAM, for example, will only be sent to hosts having at least that much RAM. This lets us use BOINC for a wider range of computations than the "one size fits all" SETI@home Classic.
Eventually other distributed computing projects (like Folding@home and ClimatePrediction.net) will also use BOINC, and you'll be able to share your computer time among projects of your choosing.

What will happen to my workunit totals?

BOINC projects may have workunits of many different lengths, so BOINC keeps track of your computer's work in terms of actual computation performed rather than number of workunits.

Because of this change, SETI@home/BOINC accounts will have separate old and new work totals. The old total is the workunit total from the current SETI@home. It won't change, and a section of our web site will show the final leaderboards based on old work totals. New work unit totals will start from zero.

What will happen with SETI@home teams?

All current SETI@home teams, and their membership, will be copied over to SETI@home/BOINC.

What SETIQueue (and related programs) still work?

These programs, which have been very useful with SETI@home Classic, won't work with BOINC. But some of their functions can be performed by other means:

The buffering of multiple work units is provided by the BOINC client itself - you can specify how much work your computer should get each time it contacts the server.
Hosts that are not directly connected to the Internet, but share a LAN with one that is, can participate in BOINC using an HTTP 1.0 proxy such as Squid for Unix or FreeProxy for Windows.
Hosts that have no network connection currently cannot participate in BOINC. A solution may be developed in the future.

What platforms will be supported?

Initially, Windows/X86, Linux/X86, Solaris/SPARC, and Mac OS X will be supported (these are the platforms to which we have access). We will continue our current source code distribution policy, and eventually we will hopefully support all platforms on which SETI@home currently runs.

Initially, the Windows version will have a graphical interface and the others will have a command-line interface. Eventually most platforms will have both interfaces available.

As with the current SETI@home, versions will be produced by compiling the SETI@home C++ source code with the the latest commercially-available compiler. Whether this produces code that exploits particular CPU features (Altivec, SSE, 3DNow, etc.) depends on the compiler.

Can I run multiple instances on a multiprocessor?

Yes, but it's not necessary; BOINC automatically uses all the host's processors (unless you ask it not to).

Will the format of input and output files change?

Yes. The new format is XML-like (though not legal XML). Programs which display information about the signals found in SETI@home work units will need to be modified to support the new formats. Information about file formats and network communication is here.

Work unit and result files will be about the same size as now. The black-hole detection project will use somewhat larger work units, on the order of 1 MB.

Is BOINC secure?

Public distributed computing involves many security issues, involving threats to both participants and projects. Some of these are discussed here. BOINC uses a mechanism called "digital signing" to ensure that downloaded executable code is valid.