1. SETI@home and Citizen Cyber-Science David P. Anderson Space Sciences Laboratory U.C. Berkeley

2. Citizen Cyber-Science The use of Internet and computer technology to involve the public in scientific research Volunteer computing Volunteer thinking Stardust@home, GalaxyZoo, FoldIt!

3. SETI@home Classic Volunteer PC SETI@home server Internet SETI@home client download, install

4. SETI@home Classic Volunteer PC SETI@home server Internet SETI@home client server request a job

5. SETI@home Classic Volunteer PC SETI@home server Internet SETI@home client server send data database get job

6. SETI@home Classic Volunteer PC SETI@home server Internet SETI@home client (process data)

7. SETI@home Classic Volunteer PC SETI@home server Internet server return results, request new job database store results get job SETI@home client

8. Problems with S@h Classic Hard to deploy new applications or versions Wasteful replication – “Always have work” policy No result validation Monolithic, inflexible server

9. Problems with S@h Classic Client only downloads 1 job at a time Client uses only 1 CPU Unit of credit is “job” Hard to participate in >1 project (e.g. Folding@home and SETI@home)

10. BOINC General-purpose “middleware” for volunteer computing Funded by NSF, 2002 - present Open-source (LGPL)

11. SETI@home/BOINC Volunteer PC Internet BOINC client download, install

12. SETI@home/BOINC Volunteer PC Internet BOINC client “attach” to project SETI@home server

13. SETI@home/BOINC Volunteer PC Internet BOINC client request jobs type of computer RAM, CPU speed connection interval SETI@home server scheduler BOINC DB get jobs

14. SETI@home/BOINC Volunteer PC Internet BOINC client job descriptions list of application files list of input files list of output files SETI@home server scheduler

15. SETI@home/BOINC Volunteer PC Internet BOINC client download program, input files SETI@home server data servers

16. SETI@home/BOINC Volunteer PC Internet BOINC client SETI@home server program (run applications)

17. SETI@home/BOINC Volunteer PC Internet BOINC client upload output files SETI@home server data servers

18. SETI@home/BOINC Volunteer PC Internet BOINC client report completed jobs SETI@home server scheduler BOINC DB Science DB assimilate validate

19. Problems solved Easy to deploy new apps Efficient replication – 2-fold, adaptive Errors, cheating are detected immediately Server is scalable, fail-soft Credit is based on FLOPS, not jobs Client can queue lots of jobs, use >1 CPU

20. Painful transition to BOINC (2005) Awkward registration process “techie” GUI Classic credit didn’t carry over User base: 500K -> 200K

21. The volunteer computing ecosystem projects CPDN LHC@home WCG attachments volunteers

22. Climateprediction.net

23. Einstein@home Gravitational waves

24. Other projects LHC@home Rosetta@home IBM World Community Grid Etc. – epidemiology, plant ecology, genetic linkage, phylogenetics, graph theory, number theory, cognitive modeling, fluid dynamics, galactic structure, quantum chemistry, nanotechnology, quantum computing, cosmology

25. History of volunteer computing Applications Middleware 1995 2005 distributed.net, GIMPS SETI@home, Folding@home Commercial: Entropia, United Devices,... BOINC Climateprediction.net Predictor@home IBM World Community Grid Einstein@home Rosetta@home... 2005 2000now Academic: Bayanihan, Javelin,... Applications

26. Performance Current – 500K people, 1M computers – 6.5 PetaFLOPS (3 from GPUs, 1.4 from PS3s) Potential – 1 billion PCs today, 2 billion in 2015 – GPU: approaching 1 TFLOPS – 1 ExaFLOPS: 4M GPUs * 0.25 availability – Freescale i.MX51: 2 GFLOPS, 200mw

27. Organizational models Umbrella projects Institutional – Lattice, VTU@home Corporate – IBM World Community Grid Community – AlmereGrid Research community – MindModeling.org Project publicity web development sysadmin

28. Stardust@home The Stardust mission Where’s the dust? Stardust@home – 23K volunteers – 43M viewings – 64 tracks found

30. jobs middleware people or computers identity accounting queuing assignment validation

31. What’s different? People vary Jobs may not be well-defined aptitude training

32. Bossa Open-source PHP-based middleware for volunteer thinking – http://bossa.berkeley.edu Policies – replication, volunteer assessment, job assignment – Bossa doesn’t provide policies, but makes it easy to implement a wide range of policies

33. Projects in development Hominids@home – Collect photos of Middle Awash (Ethiopia) – Look for hominid and other fossils AfricaMap

34. Conclusion Citizen Cyber-Science – volunteer computing – volunteer thinking Benefits to science Benefits to society