The End of SETI@Home

[Ron Schmit]

On Tuesday (3-Mar-2020), researchers at the Berkeley SETI Research Center announced they would stop distributing new data to SETI@home users at the end of March.

I've been around long enough to remember when they launched this in '99. There were MAS several members working hard to be the "Packet King." People would set up ridiculously fast over-clocked systems dedicated to gobbling through the SETI data. How about on NT? How about on Unix? Linux? What about a Mac, running Linux? Speeds got faster. Packets poured through. Numbers were climbing. It was a Geek Olympics! An unofficial computer-based X prize! What a time!

What became of nearly an exabyte of data? Researchers have only been able to review a small portion of it. Anything conclusive? Not at all.

Seems incredible, but talk to Enrico about that. He's equally stumped.

[rdavidjohnson63]

I have not been running SETI/BOINC for about a year now.
I started in June 1999 and that got me a member number in the 21,000 range.
I processed 15,881 classic work units for a total CPU time of 112,289 hours.
Since the switch to BOINC, they report things differently. It is just a total credit number. I have 39,233,461.
Sad to see it end.

Here is the link to the main page where you can read the announcement:
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/