Nick M V Salmon wrote:

"D." <Dereka_k@NotSoHotmail.com> wrote

  Last month it demanded 35.4% CPU power and has slowly creeped up
and as of this morning demands 36.1%  I realize overall this is a
small change but anyone have idea why seti is slowly taking over the
CPU?

Heh, that's funny - something is decidedly wrong - when you're not
doing anything else, SETI should take _all_ the system's resources.
ie. 99.x%..!

No, it's not funny, since the two of you are talking about separate issues.
Nick's right: SETI uses 100%, ok "99%". D. is talking about the "CPU
dedication" indicated by SETI Spy. This number shows how much CPU time you
dedicate to SETI, compared with the maximum possible time.

Example:
If you run your computer 6 hours per day, and it does nothing but crunch
WUs, then the result is a CPU dedication of 6/24=25%. If you you use your
computer for other things things during these 6 hours and SETI only "gets"
an average 80% of your CPU's potential, then your CPU dedication is
25%*80%=20%. SETI keeps track of the average CPU usage based on the date you
signed up to the project. I've been a SETI member for 2.322 years (20341
hours) now and I've recorded a total CPU time of only 7839 hours. Hence my
CPU dedication is 38.5%.

In D.'s case that means:
You used to dedicate 35% of your CPU time to SETI, which is 8h24m per day.
Lately you're dedicating more time to the project, therefore your average
CPU dedication is rising.

Simple.

HTH,
Carsten