1. A Roadmap for Volunteer Computing in the U.S.
David Anderson
UC Berkeley
17 August 2011

2. The consumer digital infrastructure
1.5 billion PCs, 5 billion mobile devices
100 ExaFLOPS
capable of most scientific computing
Cost of sustained HPC:
volunteer < dedicated << rented

3. The original BOINC vision
All the PC owners
in the world
All the computational
scientists
in the world
Better science gets more computing power
The public learns about science

4. ... but it hasn’t worked out that way
Volunteership: fairly large, but declining
450K computers
marketing: incoherent, ineffective
Scientist adoption: small and stagnant
~30 projects
many of them primes/crypto stuff
mostly not well funded

5. The HPC world Departmental IT Campus computing center Grids,
Supercomputer
centers

6. The HPC world Departmental IT Campus computing center Grids,
Supercomputer
centers
$$$
hardware vendors
funding
agencies

7. You can’t run Real Science applications
on home PCs

8. Anyway, PCs are on their way out

9. Open Science Grid is the #1 useron

10. What we need Much more scientific adoption
The HPC world working with us, not against us.
A coherent marketing strategy

11. Scientific adoption Single-scientist projects are a dead end
Umbrella projects: current
IBM WCG (~10 scientists)
Ibercivis
Umbrella projects: potential
campus: (~100 scientists)
supercomputer center
Open Science Grid

12. Removing technical barriers
Virtualization
Pilot jobs
BOINC on grids
grids on BOINC
BOINC/Grid bridges

13. Marketing strategy Fewer brands are better Got milk?
Brands should correspond to volunteer motivations
Possible top-level brands: national/regional
ScienceUSA.org

14. Brands need not be projects
BOINC’s Account Manager architecture:
which projects
should I run?
Account
Manager
client
project 1
project 2
project 3

15. ScienceUSA.org which projects should I run? ScienceUSA.org client SDSC

16. Coping with the HPC world
Create new empire-building opportunities
Get the funding agencies interested

17. ScienceUSA.org which projects should I run? ScienceUSA.org client
allocation committee
funding agencies:
fund these,
reduce funding
for dedicated
hardware