The 3rd PanGalactic

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The 3rd Pan-Galactic
Workshop
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Schedule
900 1000 BOINC status report 1000
1015 Break 1015 1130 BOINC plans 1130
1230 Discussion 1230 130 Lunch 130
215 Breakout session 1 230 315 Breakout
session 2 330 400 reports 400 500 Wish
list, discussion, wrap-up
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BOINC status reportDavid P. Andersondavea_at_ssl.b
erkeley.eduSept. 6, 2007
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Outline

• The state of volunteer computing
• The state of BOINC
• Whats happened since the last workshop
• and what hasnt happened
• Whats in the works
• Whats in the future

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The state of volunteer computing

• Folding_at_home leads the way
• 200 TFLOPS from PCs, 50 TFLOPS from GPUs, 600
  TFLOPS from PS3s
• Storage_at_home
• BOINC-based activity
• 40 projects
• 500 TFLOPS from PCs
• No big discoveries so far
• Grid.org shuts down April 07
• IBM WCG transitions to BOINC
• Volunteer population stagnant
• No major (gt 10K hosts) projects in last year

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The state of BOINC

• Über-goals
• use all computers in the world for important
  work
• enable new science
• involve the public in science
• BOINCs role
• provide software technology
• catalyze/enable communities
• Partners projects, BAM!, GridRepublic,
  translators, alpha testers, volunteers, ...
• Staff me, Rom Walton, Charlie Fenton 50
• Contributors
• Kevin Reed, John McLeod, Rytis Slatkevicius,
  Nicolas Alvarez, David Barnard, Frank Weiler,
  many others
• Funding new NSF grant, 9/07-8/10

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Requests for BOINC projects

• If you need a new feature
• talk to me about it first
• develop it yourself but stay in synch
• Upgrade server software frequently
• Participate in email lists
• Include some BOINC funding in your grant
  proposals
• Tell me about publications

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Whats happened since the last workshop?
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BOINC now uses trac

• Trac bug-tracking system replaces BOINCzilla
• Subversion replaces RCS
• sandboxes
• Milestones
• Documentation is Wiki-fied
• please participate!

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Facilitating project creation

• VMware BOINC server
• run on Windows/Mac/Linux
• all software pre-installed, compiled
• Wrapper application
• handles sequence of legacy apps, which use
  stdin/stdout or named files
• checkpointing at sub-job level
• make_project improvements
• reasonable config.xml defaults

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Client software releases

• 5.6 (Sept 06)
• new CPU scheduler
• Mac sandbox
• 5.8 (Dec 06)
• Simple view
• Snooze button
• CPU throttling
• memory usage prefs
• 5.10 (May 07)
• Project selection menu
• Advanced prefs dialog
• Grid-based views

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Multi-platform support

• Some hosts can run gt1 type of binary

supported platforms win64 win32
client
scheduler
application version number platform
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Homogeneous redundancy

• Multiple HR types
• each classifies hosts based on numerical
  properties
• per-application HR types
• Feeder reserves shared-memory slots per HR class
  in proportion to RAC
• Census program computes ratios
• Feeder DB queries scans all unsent results

feeder
shared mem
win32
linux/x86
mac
new
scheduler
scheduler
. . .
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Load-aware scheduler
job deadline CPU time remaining 1 17 4 2 35 1
2 ...
client
scheduler
For each candidate job J if run J with existing
jobs, are any new deadlines missed (or missed by
more)? If not, accept J
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Client simulator

• Simulates 1 client and N projects
• Uses actual client code
• Web interface
• Uses
• study new scheduling policies
• debug client
• optimize preferences for a particular client

project description
options
graphical timeline
host description
message log
simulator
global_prefs.xml
figures of merit idle CPU wasted CPU share
violation monotony
cc_config.xml
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Recruitment and retention

• Newsletter support
• Reminder email support
• dropouts
• initial failures
• Grass-roots PC magazine publicity campaign
• http//boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/BoincPr

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BOINC-wide teams

• http//boinc.berkeley.edu/teams
• create BOINC-wide teams here
• offers list of teams/founders by Web RPC
• team_update.php (periodic task)
• fetches team list
• creates users and teams as needed
• BOINC-wide teams are automatically created on new
  projects

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Skype-based customer support

• Volunteer registration
• languages
• projects
• Server polls Skype status
• Users can call or email
• Users can rate volunteers

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Scheduler and daemons
2007
2006
Nov
Oct
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
Dec
EDF simulation based on workload
use reliable hosts for retries
homogeneous redundancy changes
multi-platform support
abort, abort-if-unstarted
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Client
2007
2006
Nov
Oct
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
Dec
security-related changes
suspend if idle preference
memory-aware scheduling
log availability info
auto-update
improved slot dir management
improved network BW estimates
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Manager
2007
2006
Nov
Oct
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
Dec
preferences dialog, day-of-week prefs
per-application slide show
project selection menu
grid-based views
complete skin mechanism
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API and runtime system
2007
2006
Nov
Oct
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
Dec
multi-job wrapper
message-passing more robust
support memory-aware apps
kill unresponsive apps
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Web features
2007
2006
Nov
Oct
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
Dec
team foundership transfer
mass host merge
show all projects on user page
certificate of computation
forum moderation features
Paypal donation system
private messages
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Web RPCs and AMS support
2007
2006
Nov
Oct
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
Dec
Google gadget
AMS can specify prefs, venue, resource share
BOINC-wide teams
team history delta
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Simulators
2007
2006
Nov
Oct
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
Dec
SIMBA (global simulator)
client simulator
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What did we not get around to?

• Document app development using Cygwin, MinGW,
  FORTRAN
• Disk space management
• Revised credit system
• better FLOPS accounting
• generalized credit system
• Community features
• buddy lists
• cross-project profiles, message boards
• BOINC protocols as Internet standards

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Whats in the works?
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Version 6 application graphics

• Old graphics in separate thread
• New graphics in separate program
• takes fullscreen option
• has logical name v6graphics
• Library support supply render function,
  input-handling functions
• Support for shared memory between app and graphics

BOINC manager, screensaver
BOINC client
graphics app
main app
shmem
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Other V6 changes

• Windows
• Sandboxing create unprivileged account for BOINC
• Move data directory out of CProgram Files
• Wix-based installer
• Mac/Linux
• Use memory-mapped files instead of shmat()

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V5/V6 transition

• V6 client is compatible only with V6 apps
• Scheduler change
• API version is attribute of app version
• Can have both V5 and V6 app versions
• Scheduler will send only V5 apps to pre-V6
  clients
• Projects can maintain backwards compatibility as
  long as they want

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Whats in the future?
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Berkeley_at_home

• Campus-level meta-project
• Applications
• 6 pilot apps climate, geophysics,
  nanotechnology, genetics, phylogenomics,
  scientific decision systems
• Volunteers
• 1,000 instructional PCs
• 5,000 faculty/staff
• 30,000 students
• 400,000 alumni
• general public
• NSF proposal submitted

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Multi-threading support

• Whats in a 1000 PC?
• 2007 dual-core CPU, 4 GFLOPS, 1 GB RAM
• 2010 80-core CPU, 100 GFLOPS, 8 GB RAM
• Volunteer computing provides a use for all those
  cores, but you may run out of RAM
• BOINC support for multi-thread apps
• Languages/libraries for parallel programming
• Open MP
• Titanium, Cilk, ...

Try to use N cores
core client
app
OK, Im using M cores
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Non-PC platforms

• Sony Playstation 3
• Support from Sony on hold
• PS3Grid.org
• Other game consoles
• TV set-top boxes
• Hand-held devices
• not clear if feasible

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Energy and volunteer computing

• Computing energy usage carbon emission
• Energy-aware computing
• dynamic clock rate
• shut-off when idle
• disk spin-down
• BOINC must be energy-aware friendly
• compute while in use by default
• allow auto-shutoff
• dont assume constant clock rate
• Make sure volunteers are aware of energy cost
• Computer as space heater

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How to validate results and credit?

• Redundancy
• homogeneous redundancy messy
• heterogeneous must write fuzzy validator
• wastes computing power
• Non-redundancy (CPDN, Rosetta)
• result consistency checking (application-specific)
  
• granted credit constant, or based on
  project-wide distribution
• Variable redundancy?
• hosts start with 2X redundancy, asymptote to 1X
  redundancy as trust increases
• (doesnt solve comparison problem)

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Skill aggregation (human computing)

• Web-based vision tasks
• Stardust_at_home, Clickworkers, galaxy
  classification
• Amazon Mechanical Turk
• Validation
• Formulation as multi-person game
• Louis von Ahn image tagging
• Motivational axes

competition
community
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Rosetta_at_home plan

• Protein structure prediction
• low-res combinatorial, spatial, intuitive
  humans do better than computers
• high-res computers do better
• Interactive protein manipulation program
• Teams as management structures
• tasks are given to (possibly multiple) teams
• managers organize and schedule sub-groups with
  particular skills or resources
• communication paths between sub-groups

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Berkeley Open System for Skill Aggregation (BOSSA)

• DB-driven web-based system
• Tools for community, competition, collaboration,
  and organization
• Teams, groups, sub-groups
• Communication mechanisms
• Tasks, validation, credit
• Integration with BOINC for tasks that involve
  large computation or storage

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How to verifiably train volunteers?

• Interspersed lessons and exercises
• Optimal refresh for long-term retention
• Analytics for content assessment/refinement
• Adaptive teaching
• Volunteer computing and skill aggregation provide
  an ideal venue for education research

lesson
exercise
exercise
lesson
exercise
(3 weeks)
exercise
(1 week)
exercise
lesson
exercise
lesson
lesson
exercise
lesson
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Berkeley Open Learning Technology (BOLT)

• DB-driven CMS and analytics engine for web-based
  teaching

content (lessons, exercises)
teaching engine (PHP) Sequencing, navigation
Students
student info, interaction DB
course structure (XML)
analytical tools
Educators
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DB and web integration
BOINC hosts applications jobs
BOLT lessons courses
BOSSA tasks
Accounts, teams and groups Communication Credit
and competition
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Background utility compatibility

• Background utilities
• disk defrag
• disk indexing
• virus scanning
• web pre-fetch
• disk backup
• Most run only when computer is idle
• volunteer computing gt they never run
• A) ignore zero-priority CPU activity
• B) Background manager
• intelligent decision about when to run activities