High-Performance Task Distribution for Volunteer Computing Rom Walton
Introduction What is Volunteer Computing? What is BOINC? Task Server Architecture Performance Measurements Performance Results Performance Limitations Query Optimization Potential Optimizations Questions and Answers
What is Volunteer Computing? A grid for the masses. Projects provide: Progress Reports. Discussion Forums. Screensaver. Credits. Data that needs processing. Volunteers provide: Computing Resources. Storage Resources. Enthusiasm. Support.
What is BOINC? Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing
Task Server Architecture
Performance Measurements Reference Server Computer: Dell PowerEdge 3850, 2GB RAM, 2x Intel Xeon 2.4Ghz Processors, Raid 0 - 3x160GB SCSI HD’s Linux ELsmp kernel MySQL (Max) BOINC tables are InnoDB Synthetic Workload: Instances = 2, Minimum Quorum = 2 100,000 Task Instances Generated Per Run. No input/output files were specified.
Performance Results
Performance Limitations Reference Client Computer: 1 GFLOP Computer Single Server Configuration: 8.8 Million clients can be supported. Estimated 4.4 PetaFLOPS of computational power Multiple Server Configuration: 23.6 Million clients can be supported.
Query Optimization Reduce Database Roundtrips Increase Memory Page Relevance Don’t request a BLOB unless you need it Batch Updates
Potential Optimizations Stored Procedures Reducing Database Roundtrips Modifying the Database Schema Vertical Partitioning
BOINC Deployments DB Server was $10K and the project server was $8K Climateprediction.net’s DB Server was £6K and the project server was £4K Both projects support over 100,000 nodes and run 80%-95% idle
Conclusion You can gain access to a vast computational engine with an inspiring idea and a modest investment in hardware. – TeraFLOPS ClimatePrediction.net – TeraFLOPS – TeraFLOPS – TeraFLOPS – TeraFLOPS Statistics brought to you by:
Questions and Answers BOINC Website: BOINC Development Mailing List: BOINC Projects Mailing List: SETI Farms and Stacks: