Transcript World Community Grid (WCG) Advancing humanitarian research through a combined computing effort. World Community Grid Presentation Outline         My introduction to volunteer computing What is Volunteer.

World Community Grid (WCG)
Advancing humanitarian research through a combined computing effort.
World Community Grid
Presentation Outline
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My introduction to volunteer computing
What is Volunteer Computing
Why participate?
World Community Grid project
BOINC client installation
Managing BOINC
Security concerns
Conclusion
WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid
World Community Grid
- My introduction to it
 Requested to test by Martin Timmerman mid-2006
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Group director of CSS (Computing Systems Services)
Relationship with IBM
Asked me to research the feasibility in our training labs
Test deployment Nov 2006
Install required much tweaking, documenting
Full deployment early 2007
Been in ever since, through every term re-install
WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid
What is Volunteer Computing
- The basics
 Volunteer computing is:
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The creation of a very large supercomputer-like structure
Local management client, remote project servers
You provide CPU, RAM and HD to process tasks
Tasks run during idle time (System Idle Process)
User management client contacts project servers
User gets “credits” once completed tasks verified by a quorum
All public grid computing projects are volunteer
WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid
What is Volunteer Computing
- Why participate?
 This is the crux of the talk
 Many people join because of a personal connection or loss
 Cancer, AIDS, Muscular Dystrophy
Very direct method of aiding in research
Like donating to a Society
Very cost effective
Do get an incentive through “points” from the projects
Just like volunteering for a non-profit, some training
needed
 But do not expect immediate or direct results, this is only
a small part of a bigger chain.
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WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid
What is Volunteer Computing
- Project issues
 Issues all projects must deal with:
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Tasks should not interfere with perceived performance
The volunteer user is anonymous and essentially unaccountable
High user turnover
Client & task must operate on very different hardware and OS’s
Unstable systems produce bad results, thus quorum agreement
 Overclocking
 Bad RAM or other components
 Malicious users claim inflated credits, or worse…
 Some intentionally produce bad results.
WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid
What is Volunteer Computing
- Downsides to volunteering
 Some downsides to volunteer computing
 More power usage and associated costs
 Increased system uptime
 Small performance hits, but minimal on contemporary hardware
 CPU cache contention
 RAM limitations and paging
 Internal bus and external network contention
 Local client requires periodic maintenance
 Learning to troubleshoot issues
WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid
What is Volunteer Computing
- Early Grid Computing projects
 Early projects
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GIMPS in 1996 (Mersenne Primes)
DISTRIBUTED.NET in 1997 (RSA key cracking)
SETI@HOME in 1999 (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence)
FOLDING@HOME in 2000 (Protein Folding)
 Custom clients (SETI)
 Did the entire job: task management, communication, screen
saver, etc.
 Cannot update the task separate from the client
WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid
What is Volunteer Computing
- United Devices Client
 United Devices (UD) GRID client
 Started development in 1999
 Set up to "demonstrate the viability and benefits of large-scale
Internet-based grid computing”
 Shut down in 2007 after UD felt it had completed its mandate
 Had many issues, especially on emerging hardware
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Limited config, registry edits required for many options
Limited installation scenarios
Limited to Windows
No hyperthread or multi-CPU support
No viewable/editable user settings file
No mass deployment option
 No new client ever materialized
WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid
What is Volunteer Computing
- BOINC Client
 BOINC
 Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing
 Started in 2002 to support Seti@home (also from Berkeley)
 Open-source project, very active development
 Led by David Anderson, who runs Seti@home
 Addressed almost all the issues with UD
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Hyper-thread and multi-CPU support
Multi-platform: Windows, MAC OSX and Linux versions
XML (editable/viewable) user settings files
Many install scenarios
Still not simple to mass deploy
WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid
What is Volunteer Computing
- Other BOINC projects
 Some other BOINC projects, of the 27:
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seti@home
spinhenge@home
Einstein@home
Climateprediction.net
Chess960@home
Malariacontrol.net
rosetta@home
WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid
World Community Grid
- Introduction
 Mission statement
 To create the world’s largest public computing grid to
tackle projects that benefit humanity.
 Mostly humanitarian in focus: medical, climate change,
drug development and food research.
 IBM initiative
 IBM supported and funded, runs on IBM hardware
 Partnered with United Devices to develop the client
 Launched Nov 16, 2004
 First project was Human Proteome Folding Phase 1
WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid
World Community Grid
- Statistics
 Presently, WCG has almost 400 partners
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Over 411,000 users
Over 21,000 teams
Over 1,000,000 registered devices (somewhat inflated)
Some of the largest partners or teams:
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Marist College
Rochester Community and Technical College (RCTC)
Slashdot Users
Easynews Users
WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid
World Community Grid
- UW Team
 “University of Waterloo” team
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Created Nov 17, 2004
Team ranks #62 with over 110,000,000 points
IST joined Nov 10, 2006
Library systems joined March 3, 2007
Many other individuals
WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid
World Community Grid
- Projects
 The WCG projects (all states):
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Nutritious Rice for the World
Help Conquer Cancer
Discovering Dengue Drugs
Human Proteome Folding Phase 2
FightAIDS@home
AfricanClimate (inactive)
Help Cure MD (inactive)
Genome Comparison (completed)
Help Defeat Cancer (completed)
Human Proteome Folding phase 1 (completed)
WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid
BOINC Client Installation
- Pre-install Check
 1. Get a login to WCG
 Required to get software and authenticate local BOINC client to
WCG site
 2. Where to install the software
 Many factors affect this decision:
 Computer on all the time, hard disk protection, file systems,
private or public workstation
 3. How to install
 Casual vs power user
 Desktop vs laptop system
WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid
BOINC Client Installation
- The Install
 Install BOINC
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Very basic installer
Select your install folders
Choose your operating options
Reboot
 Setup BOINC for WCG project
 Select project (WCG)
 Enter credentials
 Machine is part of DEFAULT group
WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid
BOINC Client
- Managing & Maintaining
 Adjusting options
 Local settings override WCG site settings
 CPU%
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CPU & power supply stress & heat output
Power usage & costs
60% a good number
Very non-granular control of the CPU, large on/off slices measured in seconds
 # of CPU’s.
 More CPU’s used means more heat & RAM needed
 RAM limits
 XP vs VISTA, 1Gb vs 2Gb machines, RAM paging, “keep in memory” option
 Task queue
 How often is the network down?
 10 day limit
WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid
BOINC Client
- Managing & Maintaining
 Monitoring tasks
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BOINC is quite independent, but still needs monitoring
Task errors
Problematic machines
Tasks being returned in time
Viewing the graphics
WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid
BOINC Client
- Managing & Maintaining
 BOINC updates
 Data migration between BOINC versions
 Task data retention between OS re-images and re-installs
 The registry holds no important keys for BOINC
 Limited deployment options (MSI, imaging)
 Can’t deploy in an image
 Can deploy via MSI, but tricky
 WCG website
 Default & group configuration settings
 Grouping machines
WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid
BOINC Client
- Security Concerns
 Service install
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BOINC runs all the time
V6 uses account-based sandboxing
BOINC runs as USER in its own account
App/data folders protected on NTFS, not FAT32
Public workstation concerns
 No unsolicited communication from project servers
 Remote management using RPC
 Third-party BOINC clients
 BOINC trojans
WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid
World Community Grid
- Closing Comments
 Very little UW exposure so low uptake.
 No advertising, no education campaign
 Another app to package, deploy and manage
 Limited mass deployment options
 A competitive sport
 Bleeding edge hardware
 Team competitions
 WCG & BOINC websites & forums
 WCG e-mail newsletter
WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid
Questions?
 Hmmm…
WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid