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Distributive Computing Spreads Out ; UC Researchers Tap Idle PCs to Tackle Scientific Mysteries

Posted on: Monday, 30 August 2004, 06:00 CDT

Call it the United Way of Big Science.

University of California, Berkeley researchers have launched an Internet computer program that allows those with spare computer time to divide that time among as many so-called "distributive computing" projects as they wish.

Want to join the search for intelligent life in the universe, help the hunt for new drugs and maybe dabble in climate-change modeling? It's possible under BOINC -- Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.

Distributive computing programs offer researchers a way to tackle super-computer-sized problems without the high-priced, high-powered hardware.

They work by dividing big, data-intensive problems into little bits and spreading the workload among a network of ordinary desktop personal computers. Perhaps the most famous example -- and the longest-running program -- is SETI@home, a UC Berkeley effort to scan radio waves from deep space for alien radio signals.

Other projects afoot seek to predict climate change, unfold complex proteins, develop new drugs, crack physics problems, even find the largest prime number. All rely on network of idle computers in offices, laboratories, homes and dorm rooms combining as a "virtual" processing center many times faster than the brawniest supercomputer.

SETI@home, for instance, has 5 million members and on any given day last week was crunching numbers with twice the speed of the fastest supercomputer on Earth.

But there's such a thing as too much power, and that's where BOINC comes in, said creator David Anderson, who also leads SETI@home.

"With computers getting faster all the time, we actually had more computing power than we knew what to do with," he said. So he developed a pro-

gram to divert participants to other projects.

Until now, users had to dedicate their CPU to one project alone. BOINC lets computer users participate in many different ones and control the amount of time each gets.

Anderson also sees BOINC as a way to the AOL-using masses. "If we take this idea of using home PCs to do science out of the techie science-fiction corner and into the mainstream ... it becomes essentially the norm -- you buy a home PC and this is what most people do."

That would help David Frame, project coordinator for Climateprediction.net, a distributed computing project seeking to fine-tune climate-change models.

The year-old project has 65,000 users -- a fraction of SETI@home's. Still, the program has completed 35,000 calibration runs -- models of 45-year-

periods where greenhouse gases are first held constant and then doubled. The next largest ensemble, from a supercomputer in England, is 50 runs, Frame said.

"On a modern PC, it takes about a month to run the 45 years," Frame said. More runs means a better overall model. But to get there he needs more participants.

There are some glitches. The Web site isn't as user friendly as, say, America Online. And BOINC's menu offers only three distributed computing programs now, though more are planned.

"They are definitely stumbling a little bit, but they are stumbling in exactly the same way SETI@home initially did," said Kirk Pearson, an engineer with Sun Microsystems Inc. in Denver, Colo., who tracks distributed computer programs as a hobby. "Their problem is too many users. ... It's a good problem to have."

Despite BOINC's attempt to provide an entry for the masses, Pearson suggests a novice start with a particular program, then move to BOINC. "After you understand the terminology, it's easier to participate," he said.

But with the typical PC capable of crunching 500 million calculations a second, either way beats letting that power go unused for much of the day, Pearson said.

"They don't even have to understand the science. I certainly don't," he said. "But I look at is as a way to contribute something that would go to waste otherwise, and it gives me the opportunity to learn something new."

Information about BOINC is available at the UC Berkeley Web site, www.bo-

inc.berkeley.edu. Kirk Pearson keeps links to dozens of active distributed computing programs at www.aspenleaf.com/distributed

Contact Douglas Fischer at dfischer@angnewspapers.com.

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