The 3The 3rd rd Pan-GalacticPan-Galactic

WorkshopWorkshop

Schedule9:00 – 10:00 BOINC status report10:00 – 10:15 Break10:15 – 11:30 BOINC plans11:30 – 12:30 Discussion12:30 – 1:30 Lunch1:30 – 2:15 Breakout session 12:30 – 3:15 Breakout session 23:30 – 4:00 reports4:00 – 5:00 Wish list, discussion, wrap-up

BOINC status report

David P. Andersondavea@ssl.berkeley.edu

Sept. 6, 2007

Outline

The state of volunteer computing The state of BOINC What’s happened since the last workshop

and what hasn’t happened What’s in the works What’s in the future

The state of volunteer computing Folding@home leads the way

200 TFLOPS from PCs, 50 TFLOPS from GPUs, 600 TFLOPS from PS3s

Storage@home BOINC-based activity

~40 projects 500 TFLOPS from PCs

No big discoveries so far Grid.org shuts down April 07 IBM WCG transitions to BOINC Volunteer population: stagnant No major (> 10K hosts) projects in last year

The state of BOINC Über-goals

use all computers in the world for important work enable new science involve the public in science

BOINC’s role provide software technology catalyze/enable communities

Partners: projects, BAM!, GridRepublic, translators, alpha testers, volunteers, ...

Staff: me, Rom Walton, Charlie Fenton 50% Contributors

Kevin Reed, John McLeod, Rytis Slatkevicius, Nicolas Alvarez, David Barnard, Frank Weiler, many others

Funding: new NSF grant, 9/07-8/10

Requests for BOINC projects

If you need a new feature: talk to me about it first develop it yourself but stay in synch

Upgrade server software frequently Participate in email lists Include some BOINC funding in your grant

proposals Tell me about publications

What’s happened since the last workshop?

BOINC now uses trac

Trac bug-tracking system replaces BOINCzilla Subversion replaces RCS

sandboxes Milestones Documentation is Wiki-fied

please participate!

Facilitating project creation

VMware BOINC server run on Windows/Mac/Linux all software pre-installed, compiled

Wrapper application handles sequence of “legacy” apps, which use

stdin/stdout or named files checkpointing at “sub-job” level

make_project improvements reasonable config.xml defaults

Client software releases 5.6 (Sept 06)

new CPU scheduler Mac sandbox

5.8 (Dec 06) Simple view Snooze button CPU throttling memory usage prefs

5.10 (May 07) Project selection menu Advanced prefs dialog Grid-based views

Multi-platform support

client scheduler

supported platforms:win64win32

applicationversion number

platform

Some hosts can run >1 type of binary

Homogeneous redundancy

Multiple HR types each classifies hosts based on numerical properties per-application HR types

Feeder reserves shared-memory slots per HR class in proportion to RAC

“Census” program computes ratios Feeder DB queries scans all unsent results

feeder

win32

scheduler

linux/x86 mac new

shared mem

scheduler. . .

Load-aware scheduler

client scheduler

job deadline CPU time remaining1 17 42 35 12...

For each candidate job J:if run J with existing jobs,are any new deadlines missed(or missed by more)?If not, accept J

Client simulator

Simulates 1 client and N projects

Uses actual client code Web interface Uses:

study new scheduling policies debug client optimize preferences for a particular client

project description

host description

cc_config.xml

global_prefs.xml simulator

optionsgraphical timeline

message log

figures of merit:idle CPUwasted CPUshare violationmonotony

Recruitment and retention

Newsletter support Reminder email support

dropouts initial failures

Grass-roots PC magazine publicity campaign http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/BoincPr

BOINC-wide teams

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/teams create BOINC-wide teams here offers list of teams/founders by Web RPC

team_update.php (periodic task) fetches team list creates users and teams as needed

BOINC-wide teams are automatically created on new projects

Skype-based “customer support”

Volunteer registration languages projects

Server polls Skype status Users can call or email Users can rate volunteers

Scheduler and daemons

Nov

20072006

Oct AugJulJunMayAprMarFebJanDec

use reliablehosts for retries

homogeneousredundancy

changesmulti-platform

supportabort,abort-if-unstarted

EDF simulationbased on workload

Client

Nov

20072006

Oct AugJulJunMayAprMarFebJanDec

memory-awarescheduling

“suspend if idle”preference

security-relatedchanges

auto-update

log availability info

improvednetwork BW estimates

improved slot dirmanagement

Manager

Nov

20072006

Oct AugJulJunMayAprMarFebJanDec

per-applicationslide show

project selectionmenugrid-based

viewscompleteskin mechanism

preferences dialog,day-of-week prefs

API and runtime system

Nov

20072006

Oct AugJulJunMayAprMarFebJanDec

supportmemory-aware

apps

kill unresponsive

apps

message-passingmore robust

multi-jobwrapper

Web features

Nov

20072006

Oct AugJulJunMayAprMarFebJanDec

certificateof computation

private messages

forum moderationfeatures

team foundershiptransfer

show all projectson user page

Paypal donationsystem

mass host merge

Web RPCs and AMS support

Nov

20072006

Oct AugJulJunMayAprMarFebJanDec

AMS can specifyprefs, venue,

resource share

team historydelta

BOINC-wide teams

Google gadget

Simulators

Nov

20072006

Oct AugJulJunMayAprMarFebJanDec

client simulator

SIMBA(global simulator)

What did we not get around to?

Document app development using Cygwin, MinGW, FORTRAN

Disk space management Revised credit system

better FLOPS accounting generalized credit system

Community features buddy lists cross-project profiles, message boards

BOINC protocols as Internet standards

What’s in the works?

Version 6 application graphics Old: graphics in separate thread New: graphics in separate program

takes –fullscreen option has logical name “v6graphics”

Library support: supply render function, input-handling functions

Support for shared memory between app and graphics

BOINC client

graphics appmain app

BOINC manager,screensaver

shmem

Other V6 changes

Windows Sandboxing: create unprivileged account for BOINC Move data directory out of C:Program Files Wix-based installer

Mac/Linux Use memory-mapped files instead of shmat()

V5/V6 transition

V6 client is compatible only with V6 apps Scheduler change:

API version is attribute of app version Can have both V5 and V6 app versions Scheduler will send only V5 apps to pre-V6 clients

Projects can maintain backwards compatibility as long as they want

What’s in the future?

Berkeley@home Campus-level “meta-project” Applications

6 pilot apps: climate, geophysics, nanotechnology, genetics, phylogenomics, scientific decision systems

Volunteers 1,000 instructional PCs 5,000 faculty/staff 30,000 students 400,000 alumni general public

NSF proposal submitted

Multi-threading support What’s in a $1000 PC?

2007: dual-core CPU, 4 GFLOPS, 1 GB RAM 2010: 80-core CPU, 100 GFLOPS, 8 GB RAM Volunteer computing provides a use for all those cores,

but you may run out of RAM BOINC support for multi-thread apps

Languages/libraries for parallel programming Open MP Titanium, Cilk, ...

core client app

Try to use N cores

OK, I’m using M cores

Non-PC platforms

Sony Playstation 3 Support from Sony: on hold PS3Grid.org

Other game consoles TV set-top boxes Hand-held devices

not clear if feasible

Energy and volunteer computing

Computing == energy usage [== carbon emission ] Energy-aware computing

dynamic clock rate shut-off when idle disk spin-down

BOINC must be energy-aware friendly “compute while in use” by default allow auto-shutoff don’t assume constant clock rate

Make sure volunteers are aware of energy cost Computer as space heater

How to validate results and credit? Redundancy

homogeneous redundancy: messy heterogeneous: must write fuzzy validator wastes computing power

Non-redundancy (CPDN, Rosetta) result consistency checking (application-specific) granted credit: constant, or based on project-wide

distribution Variable redundancy?

hosts start with 2X redundancy, asymptote to 1X redundancy as trust increases

(doesn’t solve comparison problem)

Skill aggregation (human computing) Web-based vision tasks

Stardust@home, Clickworkers, galaxy classification Amazon “Mechanical Turk” Validation Formulation as multi-person game

Louis von Ahn: image tagging Motivational axes:

competition

community

Rosetta@home plan

Protein structure prediction low-res: combinatorial, spatial, intuitive; humans do

better than computers high-res: computers do better

Interactive “protein manipulation” program Teams as management structures

tasks are given to (possibly multiple) teams managers organize and schedule sub-groups with

particular skills or resources communication paths between sub-groups

Berkeley Open System for Skill Aggregation (BOSSA)

DB-driven web-based system Tools for community, competition, collaboration,

and organization Teams, groups, sub-groups Communication mechanisms Tasks, validation, credit

Integration with BOINC for tasks that involve large computation or storage

How to verifiably train volunteers? Interspersed lessons and exercises

Optimal refresh for long-term retention

Analytics for content assessment/refinement

Adaptive teaching Volunteer computing and skill aggregation

provide an ideal venue for education research

lesson exercise lesson exerciseexercise

lesson exercise (3 weeks)(1 week) exerciseexercise

lesson

lesson

lesson exercise

Berkeley Open Learning Technology (BOLT)

DB-driven CMS and analytics engine for web-based teaching

content(lessons, exercises)

course structure(XML)

teaching engine (PHP)Sequencing, navigation

student info,interaction DB

Students

analytical tools Educators

DB and web integration

Accounts, teams and groupsCommunication

Credit and competition

BOINChosts

applications

jobs

BOLTlessonscourses

BOSSAtasks

Background utility compatibility

Background utilities disk defrag disk indexing virus scanning web pre-fetch disk backup

Most run only when computer is idle volunteer computing ==> they never run

A) ignore zero-priority CPU activity B) Background manager

intelligent decision about when to run activities