Boinc (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing)

kriki

What is this?

Well, here is some detailed info : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_O ... _Computing or http://boinc.berkeley.edu/



But in short : it all started with SETI@home (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI@home). To detect signs of extraterrestrial intelligent life in radiosignals. This asked for a lot of processing power that only supercomputers have (at a very high cost). So they invented this system to use the processing power of PC's all over the world. Most PC's use very little CPU, so the idle time can be used for processing BOINC-projects.

At the moment there are a lot of other projects (search for cures for cancer, medicine, climatology, astrophysics, mathematics, ...). It can be you (=your PC) that discovers ET or a cure for all cancers or some other groundbreaking medicine (even if I doubt you will ever know it was your PC)!

At the moment the BOINC grid outperforms the existing supercomputers (http://www.gridrepublic.org/index.php?page=stats)!



I discovered about 2 months ago about BOINC and have been using it now for 2 months without any problems and I am very enthusiast about it. So I asked Luc if I could blog and post about it and making a Mibuso-team on BOINC.



So I create a Mibuso.com team on BOINC. In most projects, I created the team. If you find a project where the team doesn't exist, give me a sign (=a reply) so I can create it.



If you are interested, I give you some help to get you started.



1. Download the software (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php) and install it.
2. Create an account in a project manager. These are sites from which you can easily choose which projects you want to run, automatically create an account in that project and add it to your BOINC manager you just downloaded. This is a lot easier than adding projects manually (until I took the time to investigate what was a BOINC project manager I did it this way ...).

For the moment there are 2 project managers (Gridrepublic (http://www.gridrepublic.org/) and BAM! (http://bam.boincstats.com/ ) ).



I started with using GripRepublic. It is easier to start with and gives better information about the projects. But you can't automatically add teams. This is the choice if you want to be up and running in a few minutes (if you don't spend too much time deciding which projects to choose).



BAM! on the other hand has nicer statistics, you can add teams automatically. If you have multiple computers, it is easier to give them different projects to work on. This one is better if you have some more time to configure and also if you really want the mibuso.com team automatically added and also if you have multiple computers on which you want to run different projects.



So go to the project manager site, create an account and add some projects. Then In your Boinc Manager (the software you installed), subscribe to your project manager and this will connect the projects automatically (use the links I provided before when asked for the project manager link).

3. Probably you will want to play a little with the different parameters on how much CPU power to use and when to use it. How much disk-space you want to give your projects, how much work you want to download to work on while you're not connected to the internet, ....
4. Adding the Mibuso.com team to your account. This can be a little more annoying: Gridrepublic does NOT support teams. BAM! does. In case you select Gridrepublic, you need to join teams manually by going to the project website, logging in and joining the team.
5. Some extra info you need to get you started with BAM! (after you created your account and selected some projects):
1. For each computer you want to use, you need to add a new "host" in the "host list". This host name MUST be EXACTLY the same as your computername. It is possible you first need to connect your computer to BAM! before you can create the new host or maybe it does automatically (I created and set them up manually before switching project manager).
2. Once you have your host created, you need to add projects to that host and set the amount of resources you want it to use. So you must click the "attach"-column and give a "resource-share". It is possible you need to try this multiple times.
3. Once you have a value in column "resource Share %", you are ready to synchronize your Boinc manager (the software you installed).

6. If you are a Linked-in user, you can also join the Boinc users group (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=678497). (PS remember that also Mibuso has a Linked-in group [http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1374517]).
7. Some projects are NOT supported by one (or both) the project managers. These projects must be added manually from their site (IMPORTANT : use the same username/email/password as the one you use with the project manager. If they are added to the project manager, you can easily integrate the project)

I discovered these:

1. Not supported (or having some problems with) by BAM!:
* APS@Home : http://www.apsathome.org/
* World community grid : http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/ (I can really recommend to add this project)

2. Not supported (or having some problems with) by Gridrepublic:
* AQUA@home : http://aqua.dwavesys.com/
* orbit@home : http://orbit.psi.edu/oah/

If you find other projects not supported by one of the project managers, please let me know (=a reply).


Some of the projects also have a screensaver with some nice graphics:




I also created a blogpost for it : http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2009/01/07/boinc-berkeley-open-infrastructure-for-network-computing/