The 5th Pan-Galactic BOINC Workshop

A workshop on volunteer computing and BOINC will be held 22-23 October 2009, at the ​Catalan Academy of Letters, Sciences and Humanities in Barcelona, Spain. ​Map

The workshop is supported in part by IBM.

The objective of this workshop is to share information about BOINC and projects using it, through short presentations and informal discussions, in a relaxed, open and friendly atmosphere. The workshop aims to stimulate new developments and activities related to volunteer computing, by allowing participants to share their experience and requirements, giving developers the opportunity to outline their plans, and stimulating new collaborations between participants.

Who should attend

The workshop is for researchers, scientists and developers with significant experience with BOINC. It will be smaller and with a more technical focus than in previous years. Areas of interest include:

• GPU and multi-thread applications; CUDA and OpenCL
• Virtual machines as application container
• Genetic optimization algorithms for volunteer computing
• Scheduling goals and policies
• High-level job submission interfaces: workflows and master/worker systems
• Integrating BOINC with clouds and grids
• Desktop grid computing with BOINC
• Data compression in BOINC transfers

All participants will present and discuss their work. Slides will be published on the web, but there will be no papers or proceedings.

Registration

The workshop is free but attendance is limited. If you are interested in attending, or have any questions, please email David Anderson|k=01o5RAw95mV48kf6x-NVERig==&c=RSUgx-KG3aii0O1aEHoRwV0obvhd9SciJkpE21FkRJ0=)?, indicating your areas of interest.

Tentative attendees:

probable:
Adam Kornafeld (SZTAKI) talk: The EdGES project
Attila Marosi (SZTAKI) talks: 1. GenWrapper: Generic wrapper for BOINC 2. Virtualization for Desktop Grid clients
Bahman Javadi (INRIA)
Ben Segal (CERN)
Bernd Machenschalk
Benjamin Knispel (MPI) talk: Einstein@home's Arecibo Binary Pulsar Search
Bill Bovermann (IBM)
Christian Beer
Daniel Lombraña (U Extremadura) talk: BOINC on USB
David Anderson (UCB) talk: BOINC: the year in review
David Garcia Quintas (CERN) talk: VM controller infrastructure
Derrick Kondo (INRIA)
Gianni De Fabritiis (UPF)
Ghengis Rios Kruger (Cath. Univ. of Peru) Talk: The Legion desktop grid computing system.
Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein
Issal Al-Azzoni (INRIA)
Jack Schultz
Jarno Rantala (CERN) Talk: VMwrapper
Jeremy Cowles (UC Berkeley) Talk: TBA
Jordi Portell (IEEC/UB) talk: Data compression for BOINC
Kevin Reed (IBM)
Malek Smaoui (UH)
Marc Garbey (UH) talk: Update on the Virtual Prairie project
Reinhard Prix (MPI)
Michael Weber
Martin Bertheau
Nico Mittenzwey
Nicolas Maire (Swiss Tropical Institute) Talk: TBA
Oliver Bock (MPI)
Oscar Diaz Barriga (Cath Univ of Peru)
Paco de Vega (U Extremadura)
Toni Giorgino (UPF) talk: Submitting and managing distributed computations: the researcher's interface to a BOINC project
Travis Desell (RPI) talk: Robust Asynchronous Optimization for Volunteer Computing Grids
Uwe Beckert
Zoltan Balaton (SZTAKI)

possible:
Andrey Voronkov
Bruce Allen (MPI)

Tentative schedule

Thu 22 Oct

9:00-10:40: welcome and talks

10:40-11:00 coffee break

11:00-12:40 talks

12:40-14:00 lunch

14:00-15:40 talks

15:40-16:00 coffee

16:00-18:00 talks

Fri 23 Oct

9:00-10:40: talks

10:40-11:00 coffee break

11:00-12:40 talks

12:40-14:00 lunch

14:00-14:45 parallel BOF session #1

14:45-15:30 parallel BOF session #2

15:30-16:00 coffee

16:00-17:00 BOF presentations

17:00-18:00 Round-table discussion

(total of 10 1/3 hours of talks)

Recreation

As usual, there will be a hike the day after the workshop (24 Oct, Saturday).

Possible destination: ​Montserrat. Some useful information: ​Trains from Barcelona, ​Montserrat train, and ​Montserrat gondola. Some hints:

• From the city center, take the Metro L3 (green) to Espanya (~10 minutes, ~1EUR)
• Take the "Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya" (FGC - one of the train lines here), line R5 (Manresa), and stop at Montserrat-Aeri or Monistrol de Montserrat (not sure - should be the first one). It should be ~1h and ~4EUR
• Once in the base of Montserrat, you can either start climbing right there (more information here soon); or you could take the "Aeri" (gondola) or "Cremallera" (steep train) to the Sanctuary, and from then follow the signs to the summit (2-3h, yet somehow strenuous).

Alternative destination: ​Santuari de Núria (Pyrenees), arriving by train to Queralbs (~3h walking, ~800m uneveness, fairly easy - and we can return by the "cremallera" train). Lovely sightseeings. Probably a bit cold by those dates.

Possible cultural tourism in Barcelona and surroundings: ​Literat Tours (from a SETI.cat colleague)

Hotels

Cheap hotels near the conference:

​Hotel Curious (50m from conference; free Wi-Fi and breakfast; 80€/night)

Hotel Inglés, Barcelona (70€/night)

Hotel Canton (72€/night)

Residencia La Ciutadella Precios: E65 single, E86.50 double