Papers and talks on volunteer computing

Technical papers involving BOINC

High level

• David P. Anderson. 5th IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Grid Computing. BOINC: A System for Public-Resource Computing and Storage. November 8, 2004, Pittsburgh, USA. (Also available in ​Japanese)
• Derrick Kondo, Bahman Javadi, Paul Malecot, Franck Cappello and David Anderson. ​Cost-Benefit Analysis of Cloud Computing versus Desktop Grids. 18th International Heterogeneity in Computing Workshop, May 25 2009, Rome.
• D. Toth ​Volunteer Computing with Video Game Consoles. Proceedings of the 6th WSEAS International Conference on Software Engineering, Parallel and Distributed Systems (SEPADS 2007), February 16-19, 2007, Corfu, Greece.

Runtime system

• David P. Anderson, Carl Christensen and Bruce Allen. Designing a Runtime System for Volunteer Computing. Supercomputing '06 (The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis), Tampa, November 2006.

Server software

• David P. Anderson, Eric Korpela, Rom Walton. High-Performance Task Distribution for Volunteer Computing. First IEEE International Conference on e-Science and Grid Technologies. 5-8 December 2005, Melbourne

Scheduling

• David P. Anderson. ​Emulating Volunteer Computing Scheduling Policies. Fifth Workshop on Desktop Grids and Volunteer Computing Systems (PCGrid 2011), Anchorage (Alaska), May 20, 2011.
• Trilce Estrada, Michela Taufer, Kevin Reed. ​Modeling Job Lifespan Delays in Volunteer Computing Projects. 9th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid, 2009.
• Adam L. Bazinet, Michael P. Cummings. ​Subdividing Long-Running, Variable-Length Analyses Into Short, Fixed-Length BOINC Workunits. Journal of Grid Computing, September 2015.
• Eric M. Heien, David P. Anderson, and Kenichi Hagihara. Computing Low Latency Batches with Unreliable Workers in Volunteer Computing Environments. Journal of Grid Computing 7(4) Dec. 2009, p. 501-518.
• Trilce Estrada, Michela Taufer, David Anderson. Performance Prediction and Analysis of BOINC Projects: An Empirical Study with EmBOINC. J Grid Computing (2009) 7: 537. ​https://doi.org/10.1007/s10723-009-9126-3
• James Atlas, Trilce Estrada, Keith Decker, Michela Taufer. ​Balancing Scientist Needs and Volunteer Preferences in Volunteer Computing Using Constraint Optimization. ICCS 2009.
• Trilce Estrada, Michela Taufer, Kevin Reed, David Anderson. EmBOINC: An Emulator for Performace Analysis of BOINC Projects. 3rd Workshop on Desktop Grids and Volunteer Computing Systems (PCGrid 2009), May 29, 2009, Rome.
• Derrick Kondo, David P. Anderson and John McLeod VII. Performance Evaluation of Scheduling Policies for Volunteer Computing. 3rd IEEE International Conference on e-Science and Grid Computing. Banagalore, India, December 10-13 2007.
• David P. Anderson and John McLeod VII. Local Scheduling for Volunteer Computing. Workshop on Large-Scale, Volatile Desktop Grids (PCGrid 2007) held in conjunction with the IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS), March 30, 2007, Long Beach.
• Trilce Estrada, David A. Flores, Michela Taufer, Patricia J. Teller, Andre Kerstens, David P. Anderson. ​The Effectiveness of Threshold-Based Scheduling Policies in BOINC Projects. Second IEEE International Conference on e-Science and Grid Computing (e-Science'06), p. 88.
• M. Taufer, A. Kerstens, T. Estrada, D.A. Flores, and P.J. Teller: SimBA: a Discrete Event Simulator for Performance Prediction of Volunteer Computing Projects. Proceedings of the International Workshop on Principles of Advanced and Distributed Simulation 2007 (PADS'07), June 2007, San Diego, California, USA.
• M. Taufer, A. Kerstens, T. Estrada, D.A. Flores, R. Zamudio, P.J. Teller, R. Armen, and C.L. Brooks III: ​Moving Volunteer Computing towards Knowledge-Constructed, Dynamically-Adaptive Modeling and Scheduling. Proceedings of the First Workshop on Large-Scale, Volatile Desktop Grids (PCGrid'07), in conjunction with IPDPS'07 March 2007, Long Beach, California, USA.
• D. Toth ​The Impact of Multi-Core Architectures on Task Retrieval Policies for Volunteer Computing. Proceedings of The 20th IASTED International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing and Systems - PDCS 2008, November 16-18, 2008, pp. 330-335, Orlando, Florida, USA.
• D. Toth and D. Finkel ​Increasing the Amount of Work Completed by Volunteer Computing Projects with Task Distribution Policies. Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Desktop Grids and Volunteer Computing Systems (PCGrid 2008), in conjunction with IPDPS'08, April 18, 2008, Miami, Florida, USA.
• Chernov, I., N. Nikitina, and E. Ivashka. Task Scheduling in Desktop Grids: Open Problems. Open Engineering. Volume 7, Issue 1. Dec. 2017.

Integration with Grid and other systems

• Farkas, Z., P. Kacsuk, Z. Balaton, and G. Gombas. Interoperability of BOINC and EGEE. Future Generation Computer Systems, Volume 26, Issue 8, October 2010, Pages 1092-1103.
• Attila Marosi, Jozsef Kovacs, Peter Kacsuk. Towards a volunteer cloud system. Future Generation Computer Systems 29 (2014) 1442-1451.
• Kacsuk, P., Z. Farkas, and G. Fedak. Toward Making BOINC and EGEE Interoperable. 2008 IEEE Fourth International Conference on eScience. 7-12 Dec 2008.
• Adam Visegradi, Jozsef Kovacs, and Peter Kacsuk. Efficient extension of gLite VOs with BOINC based desktop grids. Future Generation Computer Systems 32 (2014) 13-23.
• Jozsef Kovacs, Peter Kacsuk, Andre Lomaka. Using a private desktop grid system for accelerating drug discovery. Future Generation Computer Systems 27 (2011) 657-666.
• Lopez-Perez, Juan Antonio. ​Distributed computing and farm management with application to the search for heavy gauge bosons using the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. PhD thesis, Jan. 2008.
• Myers, D. S., A. L. Bazinet and M. P. Cummings. 2008. ​Expanding the reach of Grid computing: combining Globus- and BOINC-based systems. Pages 71-85. In Talbi, E.-G. and A. Zomaya (Eds.) Grids for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Wiley Book Series on Parallel and Distributed Computing. John Wiley & Sons, New York.
• Artur Andrzejak, Derrick Kondo and David P. Anderson. ​Exploiting Non-Dedicated Resources for Cloud Computing. 12th IEEE/IFIP Network Operations & Management Symposium (NOMS 2010), Osaka, Japan April 19-23, 2010.
• Jakob Gregor Pedersen & Christian Ulrik Søttrup. ​Developing Distributed Computing Solutions Combining Grid Computing and Public Computing. Master's thesis from University of Copenhagen. March 2005. (Describes tools for transparently moving jobs between Condor and BOINC.)
• A. Marosi, G. Gombas, Z. Balaton, P. Kacsuk. ​SZTAKI Desktop Grid: Building a Scalable, Secure Platform for Desktop Grid Computing. CoreGRID Technical Report TR-100, 2008.

Data distribution

• D. Toth and D. Finkel. ​A Comparison of Techniques for Distributing File-based Tasks for Public-Resource Computing. Proceedings of The 17th IASTED International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing and Systems - PDCS 2005, November 14-16, 2005, pp. 398-403, Phoenix, Arizona, USA.
• Costa, F., L. Silva, G. Fedak and I. Kelley. Optimizing the data distribution layer of BOINC with Bittorrent. 2008 IEEE International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing 14-18 April 2008.
• Elwaer, A., A. Harrison, I. Kelley, and I. Taylor. Attic: A Case Study for Distributing Data in BOINC Projects. IEEE Ninth International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing with Applications Workshops, May 2011.

Host studies

• Derrick Kondo, Artur Andrzejak, and David P. Anderson. On Correlated Availability in Internet-Distributed Systems. 9th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Grid Computing (Grid 2008), Tsukuba, Japan, Sept 29 - Oct 1 2008.
• Anderson D.P., Reed K. Celebrating diversity in volunteer computing. HICSS-42 Conference; Waikoloa, Big Island, HI. 2009.
• Eric Heien, Derrick Kondo, David P. Anderson. A Correlated Resource Model of Internet End Hosts. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems 23(6), June 2012, 977-984.
• Eric Heien, Derrick Kondo, David P. Anderson. ​Correlated Resource Models of Internet End Hosts 31st International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, 2011.
• Bahman Javadi, Derrick Kondo, Jean-Marc Vincent, David P. Anderson. ​Discovering Statistical Models of Availability in Large Distributed Systems: An Empirical Study of SETI@home. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems 22(11), Nov. 2011, 1896-1903.
• Bahman Javadi, Derrick Kondo, Jean-Marc Vincent, David P. Anderson. ​Mining for Statistical Models of Availability in Large-Scale Distributed Systems: An Empirical Study of SETI@home. 17th Annual Meeting of the IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Modelling, Analysis and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems, Sept 21-23 2009, London.
• David P. Anderson and Gilles Fedak IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid, The Computational and Storage Potential of Volunteer Computing. Singapore, May 16-19, 2006.
• D. Toth and D. Finkel ​Characterizing Resource Availability for Volunteer Computing and its Impact on Task Distribution Methods. Proceedings of the 6th WSEAS International Conference on Software Engineering, Parallel and Distributed Systems (SEPADS 2007), February 16-19, 2007, Corfu, Greece.

Volunteer studies

• Oded Nov, Ofer Arazy, and David Anderson. Scientists@Home and in the Backyard: Understanding the Motivations of Contributors to Digital Citizen Science. Economics of Networks eJournal. Vol. 2, No. 108: Sep 10, 2010.
• Oded Nov, Ofer Arazy, and David Anderson. Technology-Mediated Citizen Science Participation: A Motivational Model. Fifth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM 2011), Barcelona, July 17-21 2011.
• Oded Nov, Ofer Arazy, and David P. Anderson. Crowdsourcing for science: understanding and enhancing SciSourcing contribution. The Changing Dynamics of Scientific Collaborations, workshop at CSCW 2010, Savannah GA, Feb. 7 2010.
• Oded Nov, David Anderson, and Ofer Arazy. Volunteer Computing: A Model of the Factors Determining Contribution to Community-based Scientific Research. Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on World Wide Web.
• D. Toth. “Increasing Participation in Volunteer Computing”. IEEE Parallel and Distributed Processing Workshops and Phd Forum (IPDPSW), Shanghai, 16-20 May 2011, pp 1878-1882.

MPI emulation

• Nagarajan Kanna, Jaspal Subhlok, Edgar Gabriel, Eshwar Rohit and David Anderson. A Communication Framework for Fault-tolerant Parallel Execution. The 22nd International Workshop on Languages and Compilers for Parallel Computing, Newark, Delaware, Oct 8-10 2009.

Result validation

• M. Taufer, D. Anderson, P. Cicotti, C.L. Brooks III. ​Homogeneous Redundancy: a Technique to Ensure Integrity of Molecular Simulation Results Using Public Computing. From 19th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS'05) Heterogeneous Computing Workshop. April 4 2005, Denver CO.

Other

• C.B. Ries and V. Grout, ​Code Generation Approaches for an Automatic Transformation of the Unified Modeling Language to the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing Framework, in Proc. International Conference on Soft Computing and Software Engineering (SCSE'13), San Francisco (USA): SF State University
• C.B. Ries, C. Schröder, and V. Grout, ​Model-based Generation of Workunits, Computation Sequences, Series and Service Interfaces for BOINC based Projects, in Proc. International Conference on Software Engineering Research and Practice (SERP'12), part of WORLDCOMP'12, USA, Las Vegas, July, 2012
• C.B. Ries, C. Schröder, and V. Grout, ​A UML Profile for the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC), in Proc. IEEE Conference on Computer Applications and Industrial Electronics (ICCAIE 2011), Malaysia, Penang, December, 2011
• C.B. Ries, C. Schröder, and V. Grout, ​Generation of an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC), in Proc. Seventh Collaborative Research Symposium on Security, E-learning, Internet and Networking (SEIN 2011), Germany, Furtwangen, October, 2011
• Marcin Cieslak. BOINC on JXTA (Thesis from Technical University of Wroclaw, Poland).

Project-specific papers

• Travis Desell, Malik Magdon-Ismail, Boleslaw Szymanski, Carlos Varela, Heidi Newberg, and David Anderson. Validating Evolutionary Algorithms on Volunteer Computing Grids. The 10th IFIP international conference on Distributed Applications and Interoperable Systems, June 7-10 2010, Amsterdam.
• Travis Desell, David Anderson, Malik Magdon-Ismail, Heidi Newberg, Boleslaw Szymanski and Carlos Varela. An Analysis of Massively Distributed Evolutionary Algorithms. 2010 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation. July 18-23 2010, Barcelona.
• Stephen Pellicer, Yi Pan and Minyi Guo. Distributed MD4 Password Hashing with Grid Computing Package BOINC. Grid and Cooperative Computing – GCC 2004. Third International Conference Wuhan, China, October 21-24, 2004 Proceedings.
• Alejandro J. M. Repetto. Hybrid Architecture for Constructive Interactive Simulation: Evaluation and Outcomes. Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2010.
• Christian Benjamin Ries and Christian Schröder, COMSOL Multiphysics Conference, [​http://christianbenjaminries.de/research/PAPER-COMSOL_Conference_2010-Ries-Schroeder.pdf ComsolGrid? - A framework for performing large-scale parameter studies using Comsol Multiphysics and Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC)]. Proceedings of the COMSOL Conference, ISBN: 978-0-9825697-6-4, France, Paris, 2010
• Christian Benjamin Ries, Thomas Hilbig, and Christian Schröder, ​A Modeling Language Approach for the Abstraction of the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) Framework, in Proc. IEEE International Multiconference on Computer Science and Information Technology (IMCSIT), Poland, Wisla, October, 2010
• Ignacio J. General, Eliana K. Asciutto and Jeffry D. Madura. Science@Duquesne: ​Structure of Aqueous Sodium Perchlorate Solutions,
  10. Phys. Chem. B, 2008, 112 (48), pp 15417–15425.
• Stephen Pellicer, Nova Ahmed, Yi Pan, and Yao Zheng. Gene Sequence Alignment on a Public Computing Platform. Proceedings of the 2005 International Conference on Parallel Processing Workshops (ICPP@'05), 2005.
• ​The Challenge of Volunteer Computing With Lengthy Climate Model Simulations. Carl Christensen, Tolu Aina and David Stainforth. First IEEE International Conference on e-Science and Grid Technologies. 5-8 December 2005, Melbourne
• ​Reporting@Home: Delivering Dynamic Graphical Feedback to Participants in Community Computing Projects. Stuart Ozer, David E. Kim, David Baker (Microsoft Research Technical report MSR-TR-2007-17).

Other papers on volunteer computing

Overview

• Nouman M. Durrani, Jawwad Shamsi. Volunteer computing: requirements, challenges, and solutions.
  10. Network and Computer Applications, 2014
• Tomasz Fabisiak and Arkadiusz Danilecki. Browser-based harnessing of voluntary computational power. Foundations of Computing and Decision Sciences 42.1 (Mar. 4, 2017), pages 3–42.

Simulation

• Fast and scalable simulation of volunteer computing systems using SimGrid. Bruno Donassolo, Henri Casanova, Arnaud Legrand, Pedro Velho. HPDC, 2010

Result validation

• Sarmenta, L.F.G. Sabotage-tolerance mechanisms for volunteer computing systems. Future Gener. Comput. Syst. 18(4), 561–572 (2002)
• Sonnek, J., Chandra, A. Weissman, J. Adaptive Reputation-Based Scheduling on Unreliable Distributed Intrastrucutres IEEE Trans. on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 18 (11), Nov. 2007.
• Silaghi, G. , Araujo, F. , Domingues, P. , Silva, L. M. , Arenas, A. ​Defeating Colluding Nodes in Desktop Grid Computing Platforms. in Proceedings of the 22nd IPDPS conference, PCGrid2008 workshop, Miami, USA, April 2008.
• Golle, P. and I. Mironov. Uncheatable Distributed Computations. Proceedings of the 2001 Conference on Topics in Cryptology: The Cryptographer's Track at RSA.
  16. 425-440. April 08 - 12, 2001.
• Christoforou, E., A. Anta, C. Georgiou, and M. Mosteiro. Algorithmic Mechanisms for Reliable Master-Worker Internet-Based Computing. IEEE Transactions on Computers 63(1):179-195 · January 2014

Other systems

• Sarmenta, L. and S. Hirano. Bayanihan: building and studying web-based volunteer computing systems using Java Future Generation Computer Systems. Volume 15 Issue 5-6, Oct. 1999. Pages 675-686
• James Baldassari, David Finkel, and David Toth. ​SLINC: A Framework for Volunteer Computing, Proceedings of the 18th IASTED International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing and Systems - PDCS 2006, November 13-15, 2006, Dallas, Texas, USA.
• T. MacWilliam? and C. Cecka. CrowdCL: Web-based volunteer computing with WebCL. In High Performance Extreme Computing Conference (HPEC), 2013 IEEE, pages 1–6, September 2013.
• Baratloo, M. Karaui, Z.M. Kedem, P. Wijckoff. Charlotte: Metacomputing on the Web. Future Generation Computer Systems Volume 15, Issues 5–6, October 1999, Pages 559-570
• Tomasz Fabisiak and Arkadiusz Danilecki Browser-based Harnessing of Voluntary Computational Power. Foundations of Computing and Decision Sciences: The Journal of Poznan University of Technology. Volume 42: Issue 1, 04 Mar 2017
• Chorazyk, P., M. Godzik, K. Pietak, and A. Byrski. Lightweight Volunteer Computing Platform using Web Workers. Procedia Computer Science 108:948-957· December 2017
• Bernd O. Christiansen, Peter Cappello, Mihai F. Ionescu, Michael O. Neary, Klaus E. Schauser, and Daniel Wu. Javelin: Internet-based parallel computing using Java. Concurrency: Practice and Experience 9.11 (1997), pages 1139– 1160.
• John P Morrison, James J Kennedy, and David A Power. Webcom: A Web Based Volunteer Computer. The Journal of Supercomputing 18.1 (2001), pages 47–61

Cost

• Simon Ostermann, A. Iosup, N. Yigitbasi, R. Prodan, T. Fahringer, D. Epema. “A Performance Analysis of EC2 Cloud Computing Services for Scientific Computing”. Cloud Computing - Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering Volume 34, 2010, pp. 115-131.

Scheduling

• Kan Watanabe, Masaru Fukushi, Susumu Horiguchi. Optimal Spot-checking to minimize the Computation Time in Volunteer Computing. Proceedings of the 22nd IPDPS conference, PCGrid2008 workshop, Miami, USA, April 2008.
• Liu, C.L. and J.W. Layland. Scheduling algorithms for multiprogramming in a hard-real-time environment. Journal of the ACM 20,1 (1973), 46-61.

Talks on video

• ​Francois Grey at Lift, Feb 2008
• ​David Baker talks about Rosetta@home
• ​David Anderson talks about the origins of BOINC (2006)

Powerpoint

• A Brief History of BOINC, talk at the 10th BOINC Workshop, 29 Sept 2014, Budapest.
• Volunteer Computing: Planting the Flag, keynote address at the PCGrid 2007 workshop held at the IPDPS conference, March 30, 2007.
• Talk on client scheduling at the PCGrid 2007 workshop held at the IPDPS conference, March 30, 2007.
• A Million Years of Computing, talk at the Singapore National Library, May 2006.

Popular articles

• Public Computing: Reconnecting People to Science. David P. Anderson. Conference on Shared Knowledge and the Web. Residencia de Estudiantes, Madrid, Spain, Nov. 17-19 2003. (A paper about BOINC's goals. Also available in HTML, ​HTML/German, ​HTML/Dutch, ​Japanese).
• Distributing Science, by D. Carroll, C. Rahmlow, T. Psiaki, and G. Wojtaszczyk, July 2005.
• Using volunteered resources for data-intensive computing and storage, Institute for High Energy Physics, Beijing, April 2012.

Books

• C.B. Ries, ​BOINC - Hochleistungsrechnen mit Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, Berlin Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, ISBN: 978-3-642-23282

PhD Thesis

• C.B. Ries ​UML for BOINC: A Modelling Language Approach for the Development of Distributed Applications based on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing,

Ph.D. dissertation, Glyndwr University of Wales (UK), Department of Computing (approx. 12 MB, pdf)