The SETI@home project, managed by a group of researchers at the Space Sciences Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley, is the first attempt
to use large-scale distributed computing to perform a sensitive search for radio
signals from extraterrestrial civilizations.
The image above is SETI@Home uses the National Astronomy and Ionospheric Center’s 305 meter telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico. The inset at right shows the details
of the “carriage house” structure. The SETI feed is the vertical structure extending
downward from the carriage house.
The main SETI@home server consists of three Sun Enterprise 450 series computers. One holds the user database, containing information on each of the 2.4 million SETI@home
volunteers (including the number of work units completed, time of last connection,
and team membership).
The second server system holds the science database in an ever-expanding array of redundant disks (currently a 432-Gbyte RAID 0+1).
The third server system contains the work unit storage, handling distribution of work units and storage of returned results.
SETI@home was originally slated to process two years worth of data from the Arecibo telescope. The strong public response and new improvements to the client software have prompted us to extend the survey.
