1. An Overview of Volunteer Computing
David P. Anderson
Space Sciences Lab, UC Berkeley
Bruce Allen
U. of Wisconsin – Milwaukee and
the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics
29 May 2012

2. The consumer digital infrastructure (CDI)
1.5 billion PCs and laptops
mostly GPU-equipped
5 billion mobile devices
Commodity Internet

3. Volunteer computing Goal: use the CDI for computational science
Why do people volunteer?
contribute to scientific goals
community
competition
Survey result: 5% of computer owners would volunteer

4. Current status 700,000 active computers 70% availability
40% with usable GPUs
12 PetaFLOPS throughput
Projects
IBM World Community Grid
Climateprediction.net
... ~ 40 others

5. Example applications Analysis of large data
radio/optical/gravitational instruments
particle colliders
genetic mapping and analysis
Physical simulations
particle, molecular, global, cosmic

6. Cost (to funding agency) of 1 TFLOPS for 1 year

7. Volunteer computing in 5 years
Participation: 50M hosts?
Processing
CPU: 50M * 1 TFLOPS = 50 ExaFLOPS
GPU: 50M * 20 TFLOPS = 1000 ExaFLOPS
Storage:
50M * 10 TB = 500 ExaBytes
Network bandwidth
50M * 100Mbps = 5 Petabit/sec

8. Issues handled by BOINC
Heterogeneity
Handle untrusted, anonymous resources
Result validation
Credit
Consumer-friendly client
Technology directions:
GPU apps, OpenCL
apps running in virtual machines
BOINC on mobile devices (while plugged in)

9. Technology directions
GPU apps, OpenCL
Apps running in virtual machines
BOINC on mobile devices (while charging)

10. Organizational issues
Single-scientist projects
Umbrella projects
(Chinese Academy of Scientists)
World Community Grid (IBM)
U. of Westminster (campus desktop grid)
Potential organization
VC back end for existing grids, SC centers
unified branding/marketing campaign