1. Volunteer Computing David P. Anderson U.C. Berkeley Space Sciences Lab Nov. 15, 2006

2. Volunteer computing ● Distributed computing using volunteered computers – Early projects: GIMPS, distributed.net, SETI@home, Folding@home ● What makes volunteer computing hard? – anonymous, untrusted – heterogeneous, intermittent, high churn – require incentives ● What makes it interesting? – More/cheaper computing power than other paradigms – Leverages consumer product R&D – Education/outreach

3. BOINC ● Software platform for volunteer computing – Open-source (LGPL), NSF-funded – Supports wide range of application characteristics – Encourages multi-project participation ● Goal: create a new computing paradigm (not just a static set of projects) Volunteers Projects (constantly changing)

4. Some BOINC-based projects ● Climateprediction.net – Oxford; global climate change study ● Einstein@home – LIGO; gravitational wave astronomy ● Rosetta@home – U. Washington; protein study ● SETI@home – U.C. Berkeley; SETI ● LHC@home – CERN; accelerator simulation ● Africa@home – STI, U. of Geneva; malaria epidemiology ●...and about 30 others

5. Computing power and cost ● ~450,000 active computers ● Hardware cost: ~ $1/GFLOP ● Future: game consoles (e.g. Playstation 3) – ExaFLOP computing feasible

6. Organizational alternatives ● Research group ● Industry-funded meta-projects – e.g. IBM World Community Grid ● University-level meta-projects – Virtual Campus Supercomputing Center ● Others? BOINC project overheads: -Server/DB management -Web site development -Customer support, PR -Multi-platform development Too much for most scientists