Folding@home client for BOINC in beta "soon".

[Rattledagger]

Vijay Pande, http://forum.folding-community.org/viewtopic.php?t=11772

For over a year, we have working with David Anderson's group at Berkeley to develop a FAH client for BOINC. We have been analyzing whether it would be an appropriate platform to add, as an additional client for Folding@Home (much like Google Compute is an additional client), considering the many complex aspects of a FAH/BOINC port.

After much planning, developing, and testing, we are now at the point where we will soon start a public beta. There will be more news soon. For now, we wanted to simply make an announcement of the existence of the FAH/BOINC client. A more open beta test will be forthcoming in the next days to weeks.

Finally, I want to make it completely clear that the FAH/BOINC client is an additional client for FAH, and thus FAH is not "switching" to BOINC. The development of the FAH client will continue as our main client, and we will port features to BOINC as appropriate.

Our goal is to make it as easy as possible to contribute to FAH, and with an even larger group of donors, we would be able to tackle even more complex and challenging problems -- which is the reason for FAH in the first place.

 

[JeffCos]

can someone give me a description of BOINC that a normal person would understand. i checked the boinc page, but they didn't have much of a description.

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: JeffCos
can someone give me a description of BOINC that a normal person would understand. i checked the boinc page, but they didn't have much of a description.

I would like to know this too. As far as I know BOINC seems to be a generalized (aka, possibly slower) platform for DC clients. I don't really see a reason to move away from the native client at this point.

 

[Uppsala9496]

Anyone know?

 

[BlackMountainCow]

BOINC is basically a platform that provides server conection, a points and ranking system, WU distribution and all the other basics that all DCs have in common. Ontop of that basic infrastructure, each different project just puts their BOINC compatible DC client, which then runs in this unified structure. It's a bit like with Windows. Microsoft gives developers the platform and the tools but they can create theit own content within the limits of Windows. Probably the BOINC client will be a tad slower - 'cause less specialized - than the classic F@H one, but then again, for ClimatePrediction.Net, the BOINC one is much faster than the original one, so there's no general tendency to see. The benefits are that you just download BOINC and that's the only thing you run. Then you just point BOINC to the different projects and BOINC does the rest. So you won't need a separate program for SETI, F@H and CPDN but just one.

Is that more understandable?

:beer:

 

[Rattledagger]

For Folding@home, the biggest change will be that instead of the folding@home-client you'll run the BOINC-client instead.

The BOINC "core client" has built in caching, multi-cpu-support, service-install, and multi-project-support. The BOINC-client will automatically download and upgrade science-applications to crunch a wu, just like the normal folding-client does.

You can "attach" to multiple projects if desired, preferences like how many days to cache and resource-share controls when to switch between projects. When one project is down, you'll just get more work from the other projects the computer is "attached" to, making sure never goes idle. You don't need any -local-switch and similar, preferences is web-based with upto 3 different sets of preferences you can group your computers under.

The BOINC "core client" is now a cli, normally running hidden. With the BOINC Manager, a gui-front-end, you can monitor and issue commands to the core client, like attaching to a project, show screensaver-graphics, pause/abort individual projects/wu and so on. You don't need to run the Manager all the time, atleast not when running as service. The BOINC Manager can also monitor/control other computers if you adds a remote_hosts.cfg-file to the other computers...

BOINC will not download work it can't crunch, example not enough memory or disk-space, or too slow computer or not enough resource-share in a project to return before deadline.

Don't know what choises Folding@home has made when it comes to crediting and deadlines, but in most other BOINC-projects the deadline is 1 or 2 weeks.
Crediting is variable based on actual crunch-time, this makes crediting cross-project-comparable, and external stats-sites can make total BOINC-rank and so on.
Only results passing validation is credited, this normally means needs 3 "success" results for a wu before any credit.
CPDN isn't using this method, here credit is instantaneous after a "trickle" is returned.
"Team"-credit will always stay with the team, while "personal" credit will follow a user regardless of part of a team or not.

Folding@home of course will most likely have multiple deadlines, since so huge difference between wu and so many wu-types.
Crediting is maybe based on their normal benchmark-computer, and maybe only sent to one computer just like with CPDN, except when an error pops up that is.

 

[Insidious]

Thanks for this info Rattledagger! :beer:

I don't know if I'll beta test or not, but I am very curious and BOINC sounds like it has tons of potential. :thumbsup:

-Sid

edit: Thanks BMC and Rattledagger for the explanations of BOINC! I didn't know what it was (thought it was a SETI thing or something).

 

[bluestrobe]

I would be interested in it.

 

[JeffCos]

interesting...

 

[BlackMountainCow]

Do you folks think that this is actually some real news or that this is an "April foo"l thing? I mean, I never heard F@H talk about BOINC before in ways of adapting to it and IIRC there even was an interview saying that they kinda dislike it even.

 

[Insidious]

I'm cool with it either way....

Vijay Pande pull off a practical joke? Well that'd be news all in itself! :laugh:

-Sid

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: BlackMountainCow
Do you folks think that this is actually some real news or that this is an "April foo"l thing? I mean, I never heard F@H talk about BOINC before in ways of adapting to it and IIRC there even was an interview saying that they kinda dislike it even.

I've heard some people (not any official F@H people) say in the past that F@H would "switch" to BOINC - something that I am relieved to see is not going to happen (partly because I'd loose a few years' worth of points that I've slowly accumulated).

That we will now have a F@H option on the BOINC platform, however, is a great thing to see!

 

[GLeeM]

I have been doing E@H on BOINC for a while and I really like it. BOINC has many great features

Maybe the BOINC FAH client will do deadlineless WUs.

Getting WUs back as soon as possible is a big priority at F@H. If a deadline is 30 days, they really would like it done in one or two days.

Because of the sequential nature of this project, it will produce more results (science) if it can get through the sequence faster.

I hope and pray that this new client will be good for both FAH and BOINC

 

[Rattledagger]

Originally posted by: BlackMountainCow
Do you folks think that this is actually some real news or that this is an "April foo"l thing? I mean, I never heard F@H talk about BOINC before in ways of adapting to it and IIRC there even was an interview saying that they kinda dislike it even.

Could have been an April-joke, except David Anderson posted about Folding@home's BOINC-version some days ago...

 

[MDE]

Eh, after hearing about BOINC\SETI problems I don't want to touch this with a 10 foot pole until it's been tested by other guinea pigs . Sounds nice but I'm still weary about a major switch like this.