1. High-Performance Task Distribution for Volunteer Computing Rom Walton rwalton@ssl.berkeley.edu

2. Introduction What is Volunteer Computing? What is BOINC? Task Server Architecture Performance Measurements Performance Results Performance Limitations Query Optimization Potential Optimizations Questions and Answers

3. What is Volunteer Computing? A grid for the masses. Projects provide:  Progress Reports.  Discussion Forums.  Screensaver.  Credits.  Data that needs processing. Volunteers provide:  Computing Resources.  Storage Resources.  Enthusiasm.  Support.

4. What is BOINC? Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing

5. Task Server Architecture

6. Performance Measurements Reference Server Computer:  Dell PowerEdge 3850, 2GB RAM, 2x Intel Xeon 2.4Ghz Processors, Raid 0 - 3x160GB SCSI HD’s  Linux 2.4.21-20.ELsmp kernel  MySQL (Max) 4.0.22 BOINC tables are InnoDB Synthetic Workload:  Instances = 2, Minimum Quorum = 2  100,000 Task Instances Generated Per Run.  No input/output files were specified.

7. Performance Results

9. Performance Limitations Reference Client Computer:  1 GFLOP Computer Single Server Configuration:  8.8 Million clients can be supported.  Estimated 4.4 PetaFLOPS of computational power Multiple Server Configuration:  23.6 Million clients can be supported.

10. Query Optimization Reduce Database Roundtrips Increase Memory Page Relevance Don’t request a BLOB unless you need it Batch Updates

11. Potential Optimizations Stored Procedures Reducing Database Roundtrips Modifying the Database Schema Vertical Partitioning

12. BOINC Deployments Einstein@Home’s DB Server was $10K and the project server was $8K Climateprediction.net’s DB Server was £6K and the project server was £4K Both projects support over 100,000 nodes and run 80%-95% idle Einstein@HomeClimateprediction.net

13. Conclusion You can gain access to a vast computational engine with an inspiring idea and a modest investment in hardware.  SETI@Home – 171.476 TeraFLOPS  ClimatePrediction.net – 28.597 TeraFLOPS  Einstein@Home – 25.232 TeraFLOPS  Predictor@Home – 7.657 TeraFLOPS  Rosetta@Home – 10.615 TeraFLOPS Statistics brought to you by:  http://www.boincstats.com/ http://www.boincstats.com/

14. Questions and Answers BOINC Website: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ BOINC Development Mailing List: boinc_dev@ssl.berkeley.edu boinc_dev@ssl.berkeley.edu BOINC Projects Mailing List: boinc_projects@ssl.berkeley.edu boinc_projects@ssl.berkeley.edu SETI Farms and Stacks: http://bhs.broo.k12.wv.us/homepage/staff/seti/farms.htm http://bhs.broo.k12.wv.us/homepage/staff/seti/farms.htm