SI2-SSI: Next-Generation Volunteer Computing

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

By 2015, the global consumer digital infrastructure will include two resource pools of importance to scientific computing: a billion GPU-equipped desktop and laptop computers with a capability of roughly 100 ExaFLOPS, and 10 billion mobile devices with a capacity of about 20 ExaFLOPS and energy efficiency about 20 times better than larger devices. Volunteer computing is a proven approach by which these resources can be used for scientific computing. BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) is the dominant middleware for volunteer computing. This project will extend BOINC to create the technology for the next generation of volunteer computing, focusing on the following areas: 1) Computing on mobile devices: support for scientific computing on smart phones and other mobile devices based on Android; 2) Virtual-machine applications: support for applications that run in virtual machines. This reduces heterogeneity issues and, by providing a strong form of sandboxing, allows untrusted applications to be run on volunteer computers; 3) Multi-user projects: server-side features that allow the resources of a BOINC-based project to be shared fairly among many scientists. This will allow BOINC to be used effectively by science portals. In addition we will add other new capabilities to BOINC, and will add support for new operating system versions, GPU types and models, and language systems such as OpenCL. By providing scientists with access to huge and essentially free computing power, this will enable new research in fields such as nanotechnology, proteomics, genomics, climate modeling, epidemiology, cancer care, bio-fuels, battery technology for electric vehicles, earthquake engineering, volcanic activity, pharmaceutical engineering, microelectromechanical systems, and modeling of biological ecosystems, to name a few. In addition, by attracting millions of ?citizen scientists? who volunteer their computing resources, we will increase public awareness of and interest in science, and will expand the public outreach and education channel provided by volunteer computing