1. A Brief History of BOINC
David P. Anderson
Space Sciences Lab
University of California, Berkeley
MICS 2015
April 10, 2015

4. Scientific computing
Consumer electronics
BOINC

5. Scientific computing High-performance computing (HPC)
High-throughput computing (HTC)
Many independent jobs
Rate of job completion matters, not per-job turnaround time

6. HTC applications Simulation of physical systems particle collisions
atomic/molecular (bio, nano)
Earth climate system
Need for many jobs:
Uncertainty (perturbed initial conditions)
Parameter sweeps
Fit model parameters to observed data

7. HTC applications Compute-intensive data analysis
Particle colliders (LHC)
Astrophysics
pulsar search
gravitational wave search
Genomics

8. HTC applications Biology-inspired optimization algorithms
genetic algorithms
flocking
ant colony

9. Units of computing speed
Floating-point operation (FLOP)
GigaFLOPS (109/sec): 1 Central Processing Unit (CPU)
TeraFLOPS (1012/sec): 1 Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)
PetaFLOPS (1015/sec): 1 supercomputer
ExaFLOPS (1018/sec): current Holy Grail

10. Approaches to HTC Supercomputing Cluster computing Grid computing
lots of closely-coupled processors
Cluster computing
lots of Ethernet-connect PC-type nodes in a room
Grid computing
share clusters between organizations
Cloud computing
rent cluster nodes, e.g. Amazon EC2
Volunteer computing
use computers owned by consumers

11. Consumer electronics Bitcoin mining, Steam Computing devices
Desktop and laptop computers
Mobile: tablets, smartphones
Game consoles
Set-top boxes, DVRs
Wearable (watches, glasses)
Appliances
Commodity Internet
Cable, DSL, fiber to the home, cell networks
Bitcoin mining, Steam

12. Performance potential
1 billion Desktop/laptop PCs
CPUs: 10 ExaFLOPS
GPUs: 1,000 ExaFLOPS
5 billion smartphones
CPUs: 20 ExaFLOPS
GPUs: 500 ExaFLOPS

13. Volunteer computing Consumers donate computing capacity to History
support science
be in a community
compete
History
1997: GIMPS, distributed.net
1999:
2003: BOINC

14. Limiting factors Volunteership PC availability
Study of college students [Toth 2006]
5% would “definitely participate”
10% would “possible participate”
PC availability
Study in [Kondo 2008]
65% average availability
35% of PCs are available 24/7

15. Cost of 1 TeraFLOPS/year

16. BOINC: middleware for volunteer computing
Supported by NSF since 2002
Open source (LGPL)
Based at UC Berkeley

17. BOINC software client server GUI (C++ or Java) BOINC client (C++)
Job handling
(C++)
application
Web interfaces
(PHP)
BOINC API (C++)
Tools (Python)

18. Volunteer computing with BOINC
projects
volunteers
CPDN
attachments
WCG
volunteer computing “ecosystem”

19. How to volunteer

20. Choose projects

21. Configure the client

22. Community

23. Account manager architecture
Examples: BAM!, GridRepublic
BOINC
client
account manager
projects
projects
projects

24. Creating a BOINC project
Install BOINC server software
on a Linux box
on a VM
Build apps for Windows/Mac/Linux
Attract volunteers
develop web site
generate publicity
communicate with volunteers

25. Volunteer computing today
500,000 active computers
50 projects
10 PetaFLOPS

26. Some BOINC-based projects
IBM World Community Grid
Climateprediction.net (Oxford)
(CERN)
(UC Berkeley)
(U. Wash)
(Max Planck Inst.)

27. How BOINC works project home PC BOINC server BOINC client
get jobs
BOINC
server
download data, executables
BOINC
client
run jobs
upload output files
report/get jobs
… all over HTTP

28. Issues handled by BOINC
Heterogeneous computers
“Plan class” functions
can program run on host? how fast? resource usage?
Intelligent choice of app version
Job size matching
job
app
app
versions
platform

29. Issues handled by BOINC
Untrusted, anonymous computers
Result validation
replication, adaptive replication
Credit: cheat-proof accounting
Consumer-friendly client
Job runtime estimation

30. Issues handled by BOINC
Server performance and scalability
Shared memory
Job cache
scheduler
feeder
validator
per app
assimilator
MySQL DB
transitioner
db_purge
file_deleter

31. Using GPUs BOINC detects and schedules GPUs Issues NVIDIA, AMD, Intel
multiple/mixed GPUs
various language systems (CUDA, OpenCL, CAL)
Issues
non-preemptive GPU scheduling
no paging of GPU memory
identifying GPUs

32. Multicore apps Next-generation CPUs may have 100+ cores
BOINC supports multi-core apps
OpenMP, MPI
OpenCL CPU apps

33. Using VM technology
Problem: building and maintaining versions for different platforms is hard
Even making a portable Linux executable is hard

34. Guest operating system
Virtual machines
application
Guest operating system
Host operating system

35. Virtual machines
application
Debian Linux 2.6
Windows 7

36. BOINC VM support Create a VM image for your favorite environment
Create executables for that environment
VirtualBox
executive
BOINC
client
Vbox
wrapper
VM instance
shared directory:
executable
input, output files

37. VM advantages Develop in your favorite environment
No need to learn Visual Studio, Xcode
A VM is a strong “sandbox”
Can run untrusted applications
Free checkpointing
VirtualBox snapshot mechanism
base VM
image
image Δ
image Δ

38. Use of BOINC at CERN CERN uses mostly VM-based computing CERN servers
Co-Pilot
BOINC
client
CernVM
job queueing
system
software
archive
CVMFS
ATLAS, CMS, LHCb, Theory

39. BOINC on Android New GUI Battery-related issues Released July 2013
Google, Amazon App Stores
~50K active devices
Branded versions
HTC: Power to Give
Samsung: Power Sleep

40. The future of volunteer computing
How to benefit more scientists?
How to attract more volunteers?

41. Integrating with mainstream HTC
HTCondor
nanoHUB
TACC
adapter
adapter
adapter
BOINC
server
BOINC
server
BOINC
server
consumer PCs
projects
projects

42. Science@home Single “brand” for volunteer computing
Volunteers register for science areas rather than projects
biomed, environmental, physics, astro, …
Computers are attached to projects based on prefs

43. Implementing Science@home
Use BOINC account manager architecture
BOINC
client
projects
projects
projects

44. Summary Volunteer computing is BOINC provides software infrastructure
Useful for many HTC applications
A path to ExaFLOPS computing
A way to popularize/democratize science
BOINC provides software infrastructure
Many challenges remain
Many research opportunities

45. Contact info