1. University of California, Berkeley
My Year in Review
David P. Anderson
University of California, Berkeley
July 2018

2. Outline Requests to projects Stuff I did this year
Making BOINC successful
Wild ideas for making BOINC successful

3. Requests to projects Assimilate project-specific source code mods
customizable functions, configurable features, #ifdefs
Upgrade BOINC server code
Participate in server testing

4. Stuff I did this year Streamlined registration and autoattach
Remote projects
Multiuser projects
Credit

5. Autoattach Goals: To use in your project: reduce signup complexity
move UI from Manager to web
To use in your project:
update server code
put your project ID in config.xml
run script to get client versions

6. User experience click Join fill out registration form
choose download options
run installer
done!

7. How it works login token download redirects through BOINC web site
client
check for login token file
update project list if needed
do “lookup login token” RPC to project

8. Improved navigation logic
Clear and complete options whether
user is logged in
user has account
BOINC already installed on computer
project is vetted

9. Vetted case

10. Non-vetted case

11. Remote projects Job submitters don’t log in to server Science Gateways
web interface to job submission
Supercomputer centers
command-line, scripting interfaces

12. Remote job submission Batch-oriented
estimate
submit
monitor
abort
retire
Jobs in a batch can have different apps, input templates, and parameters

13. Remote file management
Move files to public server
Give them unique names
Content-based file management
query/upload model
keep track in DB
reference count, access time flushing

14. Multi-user allocation
Job submitters have project accounts
Remote ops are associated with an account

15. Linear bounded model
balance
time

16. Linear bounded model
balance
time

17. Credit
Pre-assigned
Post-assigned
Runtime-based
Adaptive

18. Is BOINC successful? Volunteers: 150K Scientists: ~100
should be 100M
Scientists: ~100
should be 100K
Visibility in CS, HPC worlds: zero

19. Scientist’s view How can I get HTC? buy my own cluster
Institutional resources
apply for or buy XSEDE allocation
use AWS
use BOINC

20. Coordinated volunteer computing
Make it possible to guarantee a project a certain level of computing power, in advance
No need to do PR
Sporadic workload OK
Goal: create an clear economic argument for using VC

21. Umbrella projects Science gateways Scientific computing centers
nanoHUB
Scientific computing centers
Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC)

22. Branding and marketing
Projects no longer have to do it
The coordinator provides a single brand

23. The volunteer view Old model: too much work, too much information
Minimal approach: no account, no control
My view:
accounts with address
let volunteers pick science areas

24. Science United Serves as coordinator Simple volunteer interface
dynamically assigns volunteer hosts to projects
Simple volunteer interface
no techie terms; no leaderboards; minimal information; few knobs

25. Keywords Hierarchies Uses: Science areas locations project selection
job selection within a project
informational

26. User keyword preferences
Yes/no/maybe for each keyword
Yes means prefer, no means never

27. Project keywords
In projects.inc
Each keyword can have job fraction

28. Job keywords Optional argument to job submission
Optionally used in score-based job scheduling
Conveyed to client in scheduler reply

29. Science United: how it works
Project manager framework
Hosts are assigned to projects based on
Project keywords and user keyword prefs
processing resources (CPUs, GPUs, Vbox)
project allocations, using linear bounded model
Starvation prevention

30. Science United policies
What projects to vet?
What allocations to give projects?

31. Promoting Science United
Corporate
Area-specific nonprofits
social media
Blockchain/cryptocurrency
Game companies
Installer bundling
What else?

32. Wild ideas BOINCHub: an all-purpose BOINC project
Library of standard science apps as Docker images
Anyone can submit jobs (web, script, or cmdline interfaces) with keywords

33. More wild ideas
Can we make it even easier? Yes – integrate BOINCHub with end-user interfaces to HTC
Jupiter
Pegasus, workflow systems
Jetstream
Agave

34. More wild ideas Hardware-supported secure computing
Intel: Software guard extensions (SGX)
AMD: Secure encrypted virtualization (SEV)
ARM: TrustZone
No need for result validation
Allow computing with private data
e.g. genomics, commercial computing