Black Hole Sun

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Tamiya
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by Alex JUNG

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Grid computing: what is it?

For certain types of scientific data, the processing power required to compute is so huge that only very expensive super-computers can handle them. As scientific research budgets are often very limited, buying or hiring very expensive super-computers is not an option. So projects go for grid computing.

The huge amount of work is sliced in many very small pieces called "workunits" that are left available to volunteers over internet. Users download an application that will compute them on their hosts while they are idle (not to interfere with the host usage). This application (or "client") downloads a workunit it will process and will return the result to the project server prior to download another workunit. The first large-scale application of this new computing architecture was developed by the University of Berkeley for the Seti@Home project. Other projects created then similar architectures to process their data with the help of millions of volunteers around the world.

Participating in a distributed (or grid) computing project does not interfere with the use of the computer because the processes only use the available power: when another task requires all the processor power usage, the calculation processes suspend immediately. But on average, the processor usage is typically inferior to 20% when using Word or Excel. The remaining power is just unused, so the grid computing application can benefit from this left processing power.
The same demonstration applies when surfing the net, listening to music...

What is Boinc?

Boinc is an acronym for Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. It is a software platform designed for distributed projects. It supports the communication management between volunteers hosts and project servers.

When using Boinc, scientific project teams can entirely focus on the project itself and do not have to worry about the rest.

Boinc was created by the Seti@Home team. From May 1999 to December 2005, this project gathered more than 2 millions of volunteers in the world and generated more than 2.500.000 years of computing time.

Based on this long lasting experience, the development team improved the concept and made it ready for other scientific projects to use it. Today, Boinc welcomes over a hundred projects that benefit from the computing power of volunteers hosts. Boinc overall computing power is way beyond the most powerful supercomputer existing so far.

The scientific projects using Boinc can be classified in 5 broad categories: astronomy, physics and chemistry, mathematics, bio-medical and climate study.

Although it is not an explicit rule, projects using Boinc commit to publish and share their results with the scientific community, and place them in the public domain. Quite obvious since the results have been processed by volunteers. Any project that would not share its results would definitely be boycotted by volunteers anyway.

Can this harm my computer?

Good question: answer is NO.

Using permanently the full capacity of the processor will not damage it. Processors are designed to operate 100% of their power 24/24h, 7/7d for years (about twenty years). You will have refurbished your computer years before it turned the corner of its "teenage" years.

Concerning the computer itself, leaving it continuously running it the best guarantee for its durability. Like all electronic devices, your computer suffers every time you boot it. Indeed, they must be 100% fully operational within a few milliseconds: as soon as you wake up in the morning, you can't line up for the Olympic Games 100m finals. Yet, this is exactly what we require from an electronic device when we switch it on. That's why manufacturers created the sleep mode on many consumer electronic devices (like TV): the device remains in a permanent warm up state, waiting to sprint as soon as we press the remote control.

Many ITs now require users to leave their computer on continuously to reduce their failure rate. Of course, it causes an additional power consumption cost. But this energetic cost is by far inferior to the cost of hardware failures due to switching computers on and off all day long. Not to mention the user can not work anymore while his computer and data are unavailable during the repair. More and more government agencies, universities and companies leave their computers on at night and during week ends: do not believe users forgot to switch them off.

Security issues ?

Very important question: to make it concise, answer is no specific risk.

To explain this: reading this page means you are connected to internet, which implies data transfers between your computer and the server hosting this website. For these transfers to occur, data has to pass through an open door on your computer (called a port). Same thing for Boinc: it needs to communicate with project servers. Of course, an open door on your computer can let a virus infect it (or any other web plague). But Boinc doesn't open any additional port on your computer: it uses the same as your web browser to read this page. Anyway, you will be the one who has to authorize Boinc to connect to internet (the first time you run it, your computer will ask you).

Boinc is secured both on user and server sides. Identification protocols must be respected for Boinc to accept communications with a project server and to authorize a project program to run. Even if a project server is hacked and the hacker succeeds in perverting the project program (by inserting a virus), Boinc will refuse to run the program on your computer. Securities also apply to workunits, either when you download them or when you send them back.

As a result of all these security mesures, Boinc (and Seti@Home before it) never suffered any security related problem besides the great attraction it represents for hackers given the huge number of computers they'd like to infect (almost 4.000.000 computers as per march 2009).

So it is legitimate to consider there is no security risk for using Boinc on a computer.

Privacy policy

This is another important matter given the increasing number of spam mails filling our mailboxes.

All project, without exception, commit to guarantee at their best the confidentiality of participants personal data. The unique personal data being the email address used to join each project. No cession or sale of these addresses is allowed and project can not use our addresses to send us commercial "information".

Moreover, all project commit themselves to store participant addresses on very secured servers that are not directly connected to the internet.

Distributed Computing in general, and Boinc in particular never suffered the slightest confidentiality problem. Know that you can even use a specific mail address to join the projects (Google offers the free Gmail service that is a handy solution).

The Alliance Francophone

This is my team for computing with Boinc.
It was created to gather any French-speaking team and user who participate to any Boinc project. Our goal is to create a French-speaking community in grid computing, to share information, help each other and learn to know us. We are over 12.000 users spread over all continents and we are the world most powerful computing team.

For information and/or help in French about Boinc and the scientific projects, I suggest you visit us at:
- the Alliance Francophone website (the gold mine fore information)
- the Alliance Francophone forum (for help and to meet us)
- Seti and distributed computing section on the Hardware.fr forum

Because an image is worth a thousand words:

(Pronounce: we need you to help the Alliance)

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