1. World Community Grid (WCG) Advancing humanitarian research through a combined computing effort.

2. World Community Grid Presentation Outline 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

3. World Community Grid - My introduction to it Requested to test by Martin Timmerman mid-2006 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

4. What is Volunteer Computing - The basics Volunteer computing is: 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

5. 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. WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid

6. What is Volunteer Computing - Project issues Issues all projects must deal with: 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 OSs 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

7. 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

8. What is Volunteer Computing - Early Grid Computing projects Early projects 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

9. 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 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

10. 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 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

11. What is Volunteer Computing - Other BOINC projects Some other BOINC projects, of the 27: seti@home spinhenge@home Einstein@home Climateprediction.net Chess960@home Malariacontrol.net rosetta@home WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid

12. World Community Grid - Introduction Mission statement To create the worlds 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

13. World Community Grid - Statistics Presently, WCG has almost 400 partners Over 411,000 users Over 21,000 teams Over 1,000,000 registered devices (somewhat inflated) Some of the largest partners or teams: Marist College Rochester Community and Technical College (RCTC) Slashdot Users Easynews Users WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid

14. World Community Grid - UW Team University of Waterloo team 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

15. World Community Grid - Projects The WCG projects (all states): 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

16. 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

17. BOINC Client Installation - The Install Install BOINC 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

18. BOINC Client - Managing & Maintaining Adjusting options Local settings override WCG site settings CPU% 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 CPUs. More CPUs 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

19. BOINC Client - Managing & Maintaining Monitoring tasks 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

20. 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) Cant 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

21. BOINC Client - Security Concerns Service install 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

22. 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

23. Questions? Hmmm… WatITis | Making the Future | December 2, 2008 | World Community Grid