Why should BOINC use grids
- Resources in general more secure and owners trusted
- Can be used for result verification
- Resources are more stable, available, and often underutilized
- Easier to support low-latency jobs for example
- Resources often connected by high bandwidth links
- Could support data-intensive or data-parallel jobs
- Environment (in terms of software/libraries) tends to be more homogeneous and configurable
- Easy to run the BOINC client on a cluster and supercomputers by statically compiling a stand-alone client
- Examples: condor pools that run BOINC jobs when their machines are not in use
- Leverage existing grid software
- Job submission often simpler with web portals
- Single Scheduling Environment for both High Performance Computing (HPC) resources [Grids] and Volunteer Resources
Why should grids use BOINC
- Order of magnitude more computing power and storage at fraction of the cost
- Many grid jobs are already task parallel,
- Challenge
- Lack of mechanisms and standards to allow a job submitted on a grid to run easily in BOINC
- Cannot rely on the existence of a software stack
- Concept of an individual user or job (and access rights) in BOINC
- Credit accounting for these jobs
- HPC/Grid Submission Systems and efficient use of Grid resources (allotted grid computing hours)
- Problem 1: Scheduled Grid client runs when server has no work The client would be idle burning time from the users allotted computer hours.
- Problem 2: Grid Scheduler kills jobs after time expires Even with check pointing data processed on the last WU would be lost. The workspace would be scratched.
- Lack of mechanisms and standards to allow a job submitted on a grid to run easily in BOINC
Action Items
Incorporate some mechanism into the BOINC client to make it aware to a limited runtime environment.
Potential Fixes:
- NoWUEnd Parameter: If no work is available from the servers the BOINC client would end instead of deferring communication.
- MaxWUCount Parameter: After the max number of WU have been processed; the new client would not request new work and end gracefully.
Last modified 17 years ago
Last modified on Oct 4, 2007, 4:38:50 PM