January ✩✩2016✩✩ competitions☺!

[Dirk Broer]

Another year has begun, in which AMD will introduce a new generation of CPU: the Zen -and I hope at least one generation of SOC too: AM1 socketed Puma+.
A 64-bit Cortex-A72 ARM Opteron for the masses would be welcome too. But as AMD Users we are already to put our old AMD hardware to use in the following challenges:


December 28 to January 04 - "Despite my age I don't live in the past, but in the future" 3rd Rita Levi-Montalcini memorial
We've entered the new year with Rosetta, organised by BOINC.Italy, like last year.
The Scottish Boinc Team just has released Scole's bunker, pushing us back to 12th position. Can we get back to 11th?

3rd Rita Levi-Montalcini memorial chat and stats page


January 01 to January 15 - The Official Semi-Annual Ultimate Team Challenge 2016
We're also entering the new year with theSkyNetPOGS!
The Official Semi-Annual Ultimate team Challenge chat page


January 20 to January 24 - CRUNCHATHLON WCG [MONTHLY RUN - RACE XIV]
This monthly challenge, issued by the French team CRUNCHERS SANS FRONTIERES, takes place every month at varying dates for four days. All teams are welcome
Let's take forward the World Community Grid project! Keep crunching! as they say at http://www.crunchersansfrontieres.org (a little knowledge of French can be useful, comprenez-vous?).

CRUNCHATHLON WCG [MONTHLY RUN - RACE XIV] chat and stats page


January 20 to January 27 - vLHCathome January Challenge
A rareity: Russia Team has issued a vLHC@Home Challenge. Take care to check your BIOS for the enablement of hardware virtualization!
If you are already active participant in a project that uses Virtual Box that won't be needed.

vLHCathome January Challenge chat and stats page


January 27 to January 31 - CRUNCHATHLON GPUGRID [MONTHLY RUN - RACE XVII]
For the GPU heavies: Crunchers sans frontières have their monthly GPUGrid challenge. Used to be nVidia Double Precision only, but there's now an OpenCL CPU application too. And they have an AMD GPU application....for Windows only.

CRUNCHATHLON GPUGRID XVII chat and stats page

[Dirk Broer]

We're doing great at The Official Semi-Annual Ultimate Team Challenge 2016, thanks to the four members of Planet 3DNow!
(Ritschie, LordNord, MrBad and Mac)

[Dirk Broer]

Looks like Vaughan puts all his effort in SRBase at the moment

[Dirk Broer]

LordNord has left the ship under the assumption that the POGS challenge would only last a week...and is back again after having been showned a graph by Ritschie on the Planet 3DNow! forum:

[vaughan]

Looks like Vaughan puts all his effort in SRBase at the moment

Correct observation plus Moo for the GPUs but if I add too many it overloads the power circuit and trips the breaker. Its a challenge to balance the number of CPUs running 100 percent plus the GPUs before I reach the trip threshold for the household power circuit.

[Dirk Broer]

CIts a challenge to balance the number of CPUs running 100 percent plus the GPUs before I reach the trip threshold for the household power circuit.

With you living in Australia: Wouldn't an investment in solar power pay itself back in a few years, when you connect all your crunchers to a solar installation?
I can run a simple Raspberry Pi on solar power here in the Netherlands -providing enough sun is around for my simple small solar power cell.
Bigger circuits -and having lots of them- would provide enough power for a household even here up North. In fact one of our neighbours has his roof covered in solar panels at the moment.

[vaughan]

I looked into installing a solar PV system but the killer was the cost of a new mains circuit board for the house. This had to be replaced where it on our front porch to the side of the house. It would involve relocating a lockable side gate too. In addition, to get a large sized PV array required going 3 phase from our existing single phase 240V setup and to have more than a 4.5KW system. Crikey just the air conditioner for the computer room is 6.9KW.

Also, the government has withdrawn almost all incentives to go solar so why bother.

[Dirk Broer]

You shouldn't connect the solar power cells to the main grid, you should only run the AC and crunchers with it.

[Jason1478963]

Having to upgrade to 3 phase sounds a bit fishy to me unless your grid is in far worse shape then the US. It also seems from your massive computer farm your power would very seldom leave your house. When i worked with renewable energy we would install a 20kw wind turbine on a 240 volt 200 amp service without upgrading to 3 phase. If I recall right the code limitation here was to do with the amperage capacityof the bus inside the panel being able to handle mains and solar/wind amperage combined. It seems weird to have to upgrade to 3 phase for a system of that size.

[vaughan]

Having to upgrade to 3 phase sounds a bit fishy to me unless your grid is in far worse shape then the US. ...

I agree with this. It is one of the reasons I decided not to go ahead with a rooftop solar PV setup. The best of 3 quotes was AUD9,000 and as it was only going to meet 10 percent of my electricity needs it wasn't worth it.