SDCI NMI Improvement: Middleware for Volunteer Computing

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

National Science Foundation NSF Software Development for Cyberinfrastructure (SDCI) Program Office of Cyberinfrastructure Proposal Number: 0721124 Principal Investigator: David Anderson Institution: University of California-Berkeley Proposal Title: SDCI NMI Improvement: Middleware for Volunteer Computing Abstract This project will improve and maintain a middleware system supporting distributed computing on massive scale by turning personal computing platforms into a set of shared compute platforms. This system is called BOINC, and is best known in an earlier incarnation called SETI@Home. The system leverages volunteer computing, time and compute cycles donated by individual PC's, clusters, and soon gaming devices such as Playstation3. BOINC is the distributed client/server middleware on which science projects build applications. This proposal improves BOINC improves the versatility of the middleware, expands available platform usage, and supports and maintains the software base. The intellectual merit includes further exploration into the utility of volunteer computing, a specific and increasingly important distributed computing model. Broader impact is represented in the more than 30 current BOINC-based projects supporting a wide range of scientific disciplines. The proposed work promises to strengthen support for existing projects and lay the groundwork for new types of projects to make use of BOINC and the distributed resources it can access.