BOINC projects with open source code?

[9600]

With Ubuntu on Parallella board you should be able to apt-get install boinc-app-seti to install an ARM port of the SETI@home application, and there should at least be the MilkyWay@Home app too. But you get the best support when BOINC enabled projects provide direct support for a platform — where the BOINC client can automatically download a current version of the app binary when it connects — as versions of BOINC apps in Linux distributions can fall behind to the point where their results won't validate.

Obviously it will also be necessary for the BOINC applications to be developed to take advantage of the Epiphany hardware, otherwise they will just run on the ARM cores, and it looks like . May also be that BOINC need to define Parallella as a new platform that is comprised of ARM plus Epiphany (and does this mean we also need a new Linux arch to identify ARM plus Epiphany, e.g. "armep"?), otherwise clients may just appear as generic ARM-based systems.

Due to fears over badly maintained or purposely modified code polluting results, many BOINC apps are closed source, so that means that a community porting effort would have to focus on one of a smaller selection of projects. But we should also encourage the closed source projects to support Parallella and offer support where we can.

I for one look forward to being able to try out a Parallella optimised BOINC client and compare the results with

[ChrisGranger]

9600, I saw your blog post about your solar powered cruncher a few months ago. I love the idea of a 'BOINC appliance'...

Enigma@home is another project that already supports ARM. Hopefully we can encourage them to make a Parallella port as well. I love the idea of attacking a WWII-era encryption scheme using 21st century technology.

[gtg302v]

Einstein@home has an opensource application, including an opencl app:

http://albert.phys.uwm.edu/license.php

i crunch for einstein and the opencl compatibility is one of the main reasons i backed the project. I'm not a developer by trade, but i'm going to try to get this up and running on the ARM platform and with the epiphany accelerator. I'll look forward to posting any successful results and collaborating with other members of the community!

jonathan

[Litehouse43]

I work with NumberFields@Home (http://numberfields.asu.edu/NumberFields/index.php) and we are interested in making a port. With research being done in algebraic number theory, parallel CPU chips yields itself quite nicely to the project. Currently the application is written for intel/amd but as we get closer to release of parallella an ARM core release could be possible.

If enough people show interest in this I'm sure most of the major projects will create a port. For CPU based projects an ARM port should be no issue.

[ChrisGranger]

I'm really glad to see project developers taking an interest in this new platform. I would certainly run NumberFields@home on Parallella if it was available. I detached after reaching a milestone goal of 100k points (ranked 351 overall as of this writing), but I will definitely come back if/when it can be run on Parallella since the electricity requirements will be so much smaller.

Also Jonathan, thanks for your efforts with Einstein@home!

[Gedece]

While my final goal is to run World Community grid on parallella, I realize now that what's really needed is projects where the project developers are interested already, because that is what's going to lead to other projects noticing the greatness they are missing.

So I'd be probably helping other projects at first to make parallella a must in BOINC projects. So, project leaders, you now know, first come, first served.


BTW; I got an email back from David Anderson, he thanked me for volunteering for the future alpha testing of BOINC on Parallella.

[LamsonNguyen]

I did a very rough, conservative estimate of the aggregate performance of purchased boards and it comes out to 100 TFLOPS. If NumberFields@Home makes an optimized Parallella port, I'm sure they would see a significant boost in performance, which would definitely make other projects take notice. Team Parallella ftw!

[Gedece]

There's an open science community on Google+ communities, this weekend I posted about the Parallella boards and the idea of using BOINC on them, I got a small but good feedback. I think every bit of awareness counts, so I'm going to keep up these postings wherever I see a suitable group.

[Litehouse43]

[dcarrion87]

theSkyNet POGS is another one:

I've been involved in porting some apps for ARMv6 (Raspberry Pi) -

I'll definitely be poking and prodding when I get my Parallellla boards to see what I can do with those Epiphany cores.

Cheers

Daniel