Distributed Computing "Advances"

Quirk writes "NewScientist is reporting on..."Software to be launched in January will let PC users run as many "distributed computing" projects as they like. The program will let PC users search for aliens, help predict climate change and perform advanced biological research - all at the same time."'It is called the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC). BOINC acts like a software platform that can run a number of screen-saver style applications on top of the PC's own operating system.'"

Comments

pretty sweet

[lotas]

im already running boinc on a few of the machines at home and work and it works cool. i especially like the built in queing and multi processor support.

Re:pretty sweet

[lotas]

they have a beta test on their site (http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/ap/). i just downloaded it, setup an account on the site and it works.

Good news for standards

[Palverone]

Even though you *can* do multiple projects at one time, you have to run seperate applications (if I'm correct) so this would be a good integration into one application that handles multiple projects and allows your machine to be used more efficiently.

Stuff to read again...

[BillGodfrey]

If you didn't read it first time, here it is again...

My Primer on building a distributed computing project.

(It still needs updating.)

seti@home wasnt the first distributed process

[Indy1]

typical reporters fscked their facts in the story.

qoute "The first and easily the best known is SETI@home, which since 1999 has enlisted half a million people to analyse data from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, looking for signs of alien life."

I believe distributed.net's client was the first program of its type to download information from a remote server, use idle cpu cycles to calculate whatever, then resubmit it back to the central server. I ran distributed.net back in 98, more then a year before seti came out.

Re:seti@home wasnt the first distributed process

[dcw3]

According to their site the first release was on 6/8/98. Not sure if distributed.net was before that, but you weren't running it "more then a year before seti".

They were way off on the user stats by nearly an order of magnitude. The statistics page shows over 4,800,000 users.

Re:seti@home wasnt the first distributed process

[Darkness Productions]

the GIMPS project has been around longer than both of them, and unless I'm mistaken, is the longest running DC project currently available.

Re:seti@home wasnt the first distributed process

[Nugget]

Yes, this is absolutely true. GIMP was around when d.net started and they're still going strong today. There was also Rocke Verser's DESCHALL group which had a head start on distributed.net by a couple months, but they shut down when they completed the RSA Labs DES challenge.

Seti came well over a year later.

For d.net, at least, our first assigned block was in early March 1997.

http://www.distributed.net/history.html.en

Re:Who is Benefiting?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the Folding@home website FAQ:

"Who "owns" the results? What will happen to them?

Unlike other distributed computing projects, Folding@home is run by an academic institution (specifically the Pande Group, at Stanford University's Chemistry Department), which is a nonprofit institution dedicated to science research and education. We will not sell the data or make any money off of it.
Moreover, we will make the data available for others to use. In particular, the results from Folding@home will be made available on several levels. Most importantly, analysis of the simulations will be submitted to scientific journals for publication, and these journal articles will be posted on the web page after publication. Next, after publication of these scientific articles which analyze the data, the raw data of the folding runs will be available for everyone, including other researchers, here on this web site."

http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/folding /

Didn't see anyone else post this yet...

[xaoslaad]

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

I didn't see it in the story either. Pardon me please if I'm just blind/illiterate

Re:Wont we get this in longhorn with...

[grub]

Well, in fairness to NUMA it allows a shared memory pool and single system image. These fancy SGI Linux machines with loads of CPUs running a single system image wouldn't exist without NUMA.

NUMA memory may be slower than RAM but it's far faster for interprocessor communications and shared RAM than is a beowulf cluster (which doesn't do shared RAM afaik)

SETI@home source is available.

[SETIGuy]

A meta-app that exists to download yet more closed-source code without telling me... nope, that's over the line.

The SETI@home (under boinc) source code is available under the GPL. The AstroPulse code should be available shortly. Yes, now you can see how bad my code really is.

What you won't get with the code is our code signing key (which is under lock and key on an isolated machine) or the ability to distribe your version from our servers, but you are welcome to compile versions for use on your machines and/or distribute your own versions. We won't guarantee to anyone that your version doesn't erase harddrives or distribute child porn, though.

Re:graphics and Boinc

[SETIGuy]

Too bad Boinc can't uses the GPU like what was covered here on Slashdot under the BrookGPU project yesterday...

Some people have expressed interest in getting BOINC to do that. It may happen.

Re:What about licensing?

[SETIGuy]

BOINC was initially distributed under the Mozilla Public License. The reason for the (temporary) change to the BOINC public license is described here.

Re:Overuse of "quotation marks"

[melee]

"Your suggesting, then, that bold-faced type or other forms of often inappropriately-selected HTML markup is a superior method of adding emphasis or delineating portions of one's comments?"

Yes. Quotation marks, in case you missed it, are for demarcating *quotations*, much as I have done above. To use them otherwise, regardless of what limitations the medium might have, really only serves to show that you probably haven't been paying attention.

If you think that there are no viable alternatives for emphasis than overloading the use of such a well-defined and widely-used punctutation mark, I suggest you simply go without. Good writing doesn't need emphasis markup anyway: I suspect that you'll find no bold typefaces in the nearest novel or newspaper to hand, nor quotations used for emphasis. (Unless you have one of the perticularly trashy examples of these media.)

http://ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/quotation.h tm
http://www.juvalamu.com/qmarks/#current

Re:What about licensing?

[Deraj DeZine]

After reading the linked news item, apparently the BOINC source code cannot be used in commercial applications and is therefore not Open Source as defined by the OSI.

HOWEVER, this non-commercial clause is to be in effect for 18 months or until the collapse of United Devices, at which point the code becomes real Open Source.