1. IDGF-SP International Desktop Grid Federation - Support Project
WP4 – Addressing Scientific Organisations
IDGF-SP Project 2nd Review Meeting
24th March 2015, Brussels
Tamas Kiss, University of Westminster, WP Leader
IDGF-SP is to be supported by the FP7 Capacities Programme under contract nr RI

2. Work package objectives
Broaden scientific user communities of Desktop Grids on local (private grids), national (NGI) and European (EGI) level by
increasing awareness regarding the applicability of desktop grid computing in scientific research and industrial conduct,
providing success stories, participation in events, flyers and expanding the already established International Desktop Grid Federation,
promoting technologies developed by the EDGI, EDGeS and DEGISCO projects extending the usability and increasing the quality of service provided by desktop grids
organising training events for scientific and industry end-users, applications developers and systems administrators

3. Work package objectives
Support scientific organisations in establishing local desktop grid infrastructures and in collaborating to utilise these infrastructures with best efficiency.
Provide support for application developers for porting and deploying applications on desktop grid infrastructures, and support the certification of new Application Development Centres based on the IDGF Application Development Methodology.
Provide application validation service, and support the establishment and certification of new Application Validation Centres based on the IDGF Application Validation Procedure.
Support the operation of ported applications on the production infrastructure by operating a central IDGF helpdesk, and by supporting the establishment and accreditation of 2nd tier helpdesks and expert groups.
Collect and disseminate best practices in application development and user support within existing and potential new IDGF user communities

4. Results of year 2 – Task 4.1
Task Activities to increase the awareness and understanding of desktop grid technologies within scientific user communities
disseminating the latest results and technologies of desktop grid computing towards scientific user communities (success stories, workshops, conferences)
organising training courses - training the trainers
scientific organisations will be supported in setting up local desktop grid infrastructures
Related deliverables:
D4.1.1 Report on scientific user community involvement - M12
D4.1.2 Report on scientific user community involvement (update) - M27

5. Results of year 2 – Task 4.1
Disseminating the latest results and technologies of desktop grid computing towards scientific user communities
Organising a Virtual Team within EGI (Virtual Team Promoting Desktop Grids) – participants from 11 countries, from November 2013)
74 dissemination activities (presentations, papers, posters, interviews, announcements) targeting scientific communities during year 2 (
Organising specific IDGF events - Citizen Science Technology Platforms Workshop, IDGF Technical Member Meeting
Several presentations at European level events (e.g. ISC Cloud'14, Grid'2014 Russia, EGI Community Forum, International Conference on Research Infrastructures, Citizen Cyberscience Summit)
Directly targeting key user communities (e.g. BioVeL, agINFRA, Dirac, CRISP, ELI, AutoDock and We-NMR user communities)
Supporting non-EU IDGF members (Russian Chapter, South-East Asian Chapter)
Active contribution to the BOINC community (hosting the 2014 BOINC Workshop)

6. Results of year 2 – Task 4.1
Organising a Virtual Team within EGI (Virtual Team Promoting Desktop Grids) – participants from 11 countries
Major joint results:
Promote and train the Desktop Grid related technologies in the EGI communities  Tutorial on EGI Community Forum, Inspired newsletter (Feb 2015), videos with EGI scientists, EGI members at Crowd Computing 2014
Increase the number of heavily used EGI applications on the integrated (Desktop Grid) infrastructure with focus on widespread tools/solutions/approaches  WeNMR is in mass-production: bridged jobs accounted
Improve documentation, e.g. Road maps, training materials, manuals  new EGI Collaboration Working Group with Wiki, updated Roadmap sections
Complete the final remaining steps for full integration  IDGF Operations centre under EGI is fully functional (DG sites availability: 100%)

7. Results of year 2 – Task 4.1 Organising training courses
20th IDGF Tutorial and Workshop – part of the EGI community Forum, 19 May 2014, Helsinki, Finland
21st IDGF Tutorial – part of the 6th International Conference on Distributed Computing and Grid-technologies in Science and Education - Grid'2014, 2 July 2014, Dubna, Russia
Setting up local Desktop Grid Infrastructures
Supporting universities and research institutes in setting up local DG infrastructures: University of Portsmouth, Brunel University, Perdana University
Identifying and helping to solve challenges – both technical and organisational (“political”)
All DG infrastructures are operational
On-demand local desktop grids (on the cloud) + local test, development desktop grids at several universities  WP2

8. Results of year 2 – Task 4.2
Task 4.2 – Analysis of potential applications to be ported to desktop grid platforms
analysing the feasibility of applications of potential new user communities on IDGF supported platforms.
collect information about the applications
analyse the feasibility of the porting
identify user requirements.
Related deliverables:
D4.2.1 Report on IDGF application porting and user support activities - M9
D4.2.2 Report on IDGF application porting and user support activities (update) – M24

9. Results of Task 4.2 Applications identified and analysed in year 1
Biome-BGC and Biome-BGC MuSo (multilayer soil module) applications used and operated by the BioVel (Biodiversity Virtual e-Laboratory) project
Riemann-Siegel Zeta Search - mathematical application for localizing the outliers of the Riemann-Siegel Zeta mathematical function by ELTE University
Dirac pilot job framework – enables the execution of various applications in diverse application domains
HADDOCK – Modeling of bio-molecular complexes (WeNMR)
Arnold 3D animations rendering for University of Portsmouth
Low Energy BOINC – to support IDGF-SP WP5 activities
Charity Engine commercial applications (e.g. Acellera CellMD molecular modelling application, BOINC-enabled Bitcoin miner, Litecoin miner and CUDAminer, extreme weather simulation)

10. Results of Task 4.2 Applications identified and analysed in year 2
DGVE – Desktop Grid Video Encoder to support the Camtasia Relay service. This service captures video from presentations and re-encodes the output (University of Portsmouth).
PanOptSolver - Parameter sweep of linear programming solvers (University of Pannonia)
Spatial Biome BGC - Terrestrial ecosystem modeling (BioVel Project)
Spatial Biome BGC Muso - spatially explicit simulation using the Multilayer Soil module (BioVel Project)
Foksor - computing of the degree sequences of all possible graphs with a given vertex-count (ELTE University)
Mathematica - library and system for technical and mathematical computing (Wolfram Research + CE)
OpenSensorDB - stand-alone storage engine for sensor data, utilized by the Low-Energy BOINC application (SONY)
BodyScanner - Profiling patient data for obesity and metabolism research

11. Results of Task 4.2 Applications identified and analysed
Applications from non-EU IDGF Chapters
(Russian Chapter)
modelling several phenomena of collective behavior of multi-agent systems
solving logical cryptanalysis problems for stream ciphers based on a shift registers
searching new systems of diagonal Latin squares of order 10 (new pairs of orthogonal diagonal Latin squares of order 10 were found in
NetMax - modelling telecommunication networks (Russian Chapter)
- solving large-scale optimization problems (Russian Chapter)
G-VATA - Grid-Enabled Application for Viral Antigenic Transmission Analysis (South-East Asian Chapter)

12. Results of year 2 – Task 4.3
Task 4.3 – Supporting application developers
Technical support for established and new application developers
Related deliverables:
D4.2.1 Report on IDGF application porting and user support activities - M9
D4.2.2 Report on IDGF application porting and user support activities (update) – M24

13. Results of year 2 – Task 4.3
Application specific support for developers 
DGVE – Desktop Grid Video Encoder (UoP)
PanOptSolver (University of Pannonia)
Spatial Biome BGC (BioVel Project)
Spatial Biome BGC Muso (BioVel Project)
Foksor (ELTE University)
Mathematica (Wolfram Research + CE)
OpenSensorDB (SONY)
BodyScanner (UoW)

14. Applications in action – profiling patient data
Results of year 2 – Task 4.3
Applications in action – profiling patient data
obesity and metabolism research
supporting world leading research community in the area
programmed analysis of full-body MRI scans
combining BOINC DG with cloud-based storage and data solution
thousands of records to be analyzed – very large dataset

15. Applications in action – PanOptSolver
Results of year 2 – Task 4.3
Applications in action – PanOptSolver
One of the main algorithms solving LP problems is the simplex algorithm. For large-scale real-life problems the solution time can be very high. The aim of researching and improving the simplex algorithm is to create sophisticated methods to improve the speed of the algorithm.
The aim of our project is to investigate the parameterization of such systems. The parameter space of a simplex based LP solver is around a hundred. Parameters are usually numerical values or strings or integers.
The main scientific results are:
A proper subspace is identified within the whole parameter space, where the performance of the solver good and stable.
A general parameter sweep method has been developed for optimization system, which can be easily used to define parameter sweeps for any kind of optimization systems
Publications:
Péter Tar, István Maros: Parameter sweep of a linear programming solver on distributed computing infrastructures, presented at: 17th Spring Wind Conference, Debrecen, March
Péter Tar, István Maros: Parameter sweep of a linear programming solver on distributed computing infrastructures, in proceedings of the 17th Spring Wind Conference.
Péter Tar, József Smidla, István Maros: Parameter sweep for the simplex method, presented at: 20th Conference of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies, Barcelona, July 2014.
Péter Tar, József Smidla, István Maros: Run-time parameter tuning of optimisation systems, presented at: 15th International Conference on Operational Research, Osijek, September 2014.

16. Applications in action – Zeta-search
Results of year 2 – Task 4.3
Applications in action – Zeta-search
The aim of this project is locating as many large values of the zeta function as possible on the critical line for statistical analysis to understand the distribution of prime numbers.
In 2014 the largest known Z(t) is: Z(t) > for t = found by Jonathan Bober and G. Hiary. Only 6 known values are known where Z(t) > Americans found only a few hundreds where Z(t) > 1000.
10 billion WUs have been processed so far, 40,000 candidates found where Z(t)>1000.
New results found by SZTAKI Desktop GRID (and
8-10 pieces have been found where Z(t) > They can be considered as New World Record. Final validation is in progress (compute intensive, not for DG, running on a cluster). Once done new articles will be published…

17. Results of year 2 – Task 4.4 Task 4.4 – Application validation service
central IDGF Application Validation Certification Service and local IDGF certified application validation centres
Related deliverables:
D4.2.1 Report on IDGF application porting and user support activities - M9
D4.2.2) Report on IDGF application porting and user support activities (update) – M21

18. Results of year 2 – Task 4.4 Application validation procedure reviewed
The IDGF Application Validation procedure (developed by EDGeS and EDGI) has been reviewed
New procedure takes into consideration new application development and deployment models (GBAC virtualisation technology, production IDGF DGs)
7 new applications uploaded to the EDGI Application Repository
DGVE (3 separate applications), PanOptSolver, Spatial Biome BGC, Spatial Biome BGC Muso, BodyScan

19. Results of year 2 – Task 4.4
7 new applications uploaded to the EDGI Application Repository

20. Results of year 2 – Task 4.5 Task 4.5 – User support
central IDGF helpdesk and expert group
coordinates the establishment and operation of local helpdesks
2nd tier local helpdesks and user support centres
responsible for the day to day operation of the local infrastructure and user support
Related deliverables:
D4.2.1 Report on IDGF application porting and user support activities - M9
D4.2.2 Report on IDGF application porting and user support activities (update) – M24

21. Results of year 2 – Task 4.5 IDGF Central Helpdesk
Message board (user forum) -

22. Results of year 2 – Task 4.5
IDGF Support unit in EGI

23. Results of year 2 – Task 4.5 User support for IDGF user communities
User community
Application
Target desktop grid site
Institute providing the support 1.
SZTAKI DSD department
KOPI
SZTAKI Desktop Grid
SZTAKI 2.
ELTE university
Numsys 3.
BIOVEL project
BBGC
EDGIDemo 4.
DIRAC project
Various apps 5.
Autodock portal users
Autodock, Autodock VINA 6.
Molecular docking community
University of Westminster Local Desktop Grid (WLDG)
UoW 7.
3D animation and games students
MentalRay 8.
Mathematical Institute of Leiden University
ABC sieving finder
University of Leiden 9.
University of Pannonia
PanOptSolver
10.
WeNMR community
HADDOCK
and EDGIDemo

24. Results of year 2 – Task 4.6
Task 4.6 – Best practices in application development and user support
elaborating and disseminating best practices for application developers and end-users who intend to utilise the IDGF related infrastructures
provide recommendations regarding application porting, validation and operational practices
Related deliverables:
D4.2.1 Report on IDGF application porting and user support activities - M9
D4.2.2 Report on IDGF application porting and user support activities (update) – M24

25. Results of year 2 – Task 4.6
Some of the latest best practices on the field of application development has been collected and presented by the documentation wiki site
Best practices in operation and other topics have been collected and published in the Road map document titled “Crowd Computing for eScience”

26. Any questions?