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 meeting room is "Sala Pi i Sunyer", with capacity for 42 people.

The workshop is supported in part by IBM. ​Fundació.cat also provides the funds for the meeting room.

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.

Reports and webcasts

For those who can't attend this workshop there are other ways to follow this event.

• Follow the ​BOINCworkshop twitter account
• Read the open-source Notes blog at ​blog.os-tools.net
• We intend to record most of the workshop and later make it available through YouTube or similar.

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: Tools to Ease Writing Applications: PyMW and GenWrapper
Attila Marosi (SZTAKI) talk: 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) talk: Volunteer Computing Research @ INRIA
Fernando Costa (U. Coimbra, Portugal) talk: Expanding the scope of BOINC: Beyond Embarrassingly Parallel Applications
Gianni De Fabritiis (UPF)
Ghengis Rios Kruger (Cath. Univ. of Peru) Talk: The Legion desktop grid computing system.
Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein
Jack Schultz
Jarno Rantala (CERN) Talk: VMwrapper
Jaspal Subhlok (U. of Houston) talk: Volpex Communication for Volunteer Computing (pref. Thur)
Jeremy Cowles (UC Berkeley) Talk: PyMW implementation and usage
Jordi Portell (IEEC/UB) talk: Data compression for BOINC
Kevin Reed (IBM) talk: WCG: connecting with our community
Malek Smaoui (UH)
Marc Garbey (UH) talk: Update on the Virtual Prairie project (pref. Thur)
Reinhard Prix (MPI)
Michael H.W. Weber (Rechenkraft.net e.V. / Philipps-University of Marburg)  talk: RNA World
Nico Mittenzwey (Rechenkraft.net e.V.)
Nicolas Maire (Swiss Tropical Institute) Talk: Estimating parameters for mathematical models of malaria epidemiology
Oliver Bock (MPI) talk: Optimizing BOINC project databases
Oscar Diaz Barriga (Cath Univ of Peru)
Paco de Vega (U Extremadura)
Tolu Aina (Oxford)
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 (Rechenkraft.net e.V.)
Zoltan Balaton (SZTAKI) talk: 3G-Bridge: Bridging the Gap between BOINC and Other Systems (pref order: Balaton, Kornafeld, Marosi)

possible:
Andrey Voronkov
Bruce Allen (MPI)

Schedule

Thu 22 Oct

9:00-10:40: welcome and talks

• Jordi Portell: Opening remarks
• David Anderson: BOINC: the year in review
• Derrick Kondo: Volunteer Computing Research @ INRIA

10:40-11:00 coffee break

11:00-12:40 talks

• Adam Kornafeld: Tools to Ease Writing Applications: PyMW and GenWrapper
• Jeremy Cowles: PyMW implementation and usage
• Jaspal Subhlok: Volpex Communication for Volunteer Computing
• Zoltan Balaton: 3G-Bridge: Bridging the Gap between BOINC and Other Systems

12:40-14:00 lunch

14:00-15:40 talks

• Fernando Costa: Expanding the scope of BOINC: Beyond Embarrassingly Parallel Applications
• Jordi Portell: Data compression for BOINC
• Toni Giorgino: Submitting and managing distributed computations: the researcher's interface to a BOINC project
• Oliver Bock: Optimizing BOINC project databases

15:40-16:00 coffee

16:00-18:00 talks

• Benjamin Knispel: Einstein@home's Arecibo Binary Pulsar Search
• Marc Garbey: Update on the Virtual Prairie project
• Nicolas Maire: Estimating parameters for mathematical models of malaria epidemiology (20 min)
• Travis Desell: Robust Asynchronous Optimization for Volunteer Computing Grids

Fri 23 Oct

9:00-10:40: talks

• Attila Marosi: Virtualization for Desktop Grid Clients
• David Garcia Quintas: VM controller infrastructure
• Jarno Rantala: VMwrapper

10:40-11:00 coffee break

11:00-12:40 talks

• Daniel Lombraña: BOINC on USB
• Ghengis Rios Kruger: The Legion desktop grid computing system.
• Kevin Reed: WCG: connecting with our community
• Michael Weber: RNA World - A BOINC-based distributed supercomputer for high-throughput bioinformatic studies to advance RNA research

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 (see the information in the attachment below); 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

​Google map with hotels around the workshop venue.