On Some Super Cool BOINC Stats and on the Optimization of BOINC

BOINC is just a synthetic super computer. It basically (figuratively, not literally) takes everyone's home personal computers around the globe and combines them together to create a veritable Voltron of Science. It doesn't cause slow down to your computer either, it just uses spare CPU resources when they are available. The three most popular programs on BOINC, I believe, are World Community Grid, Rosetta@Home, and Seti@Home.


I'm just going to focus on the two most popular for the sake of simplicity (in making my argument following the presentation of the cool cool statistics).

Ok, so now here are the basic stats of BOINC's current computational power levels:

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What does the scouter say about BOINC's power level !?

Total BOINC processing power (average recorded as of Dec. 14, 2012): 7.3 petaFLOPS

Total processing power of Seti@home (average as of Nov. 12, 2012): 597 teraFLOPS

Total processing power of World Community Grid (average as of Dec. 6, 2012): 501 teraFLOPS

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Alright, what's a "FLOP" you may ask? It stands for "floating point operations per second" and it is a measure of computational speed, or a power level if you will. A "peta" is a flop to the 15th power (meaning fifteen zeros after the number) and a "tera" flop has only 12 zeros after the number. So, a "petaflop" is 7300000000000000 floating point operations per second. Pretty snazzy eh, all them flopsy-mopsies?

The synthetic Voltron super computer is currently running at 7.3 petaflops, and it is running about a dozen programs on it. Programs like Seti@Home, Rosetta@Home, MilkyWay@Home, World Community Grid, and others.

The two most popular programs that home users are setting their BOINC up to are Seti and WCG.

That's the basics.

Optimizing BOINC

Okay, now I'll get into my opinions on optimizing BOINC which are as follows,

(A) Get More People On BOINC
(B) Make Faster Processors
(C) Stop Giving a Fuck about Greasy-Ass Aliens that you're Never gonna Find

Firstly, (A) there are currently 2.5 million users who have connected their personal computers to the BOINC network. That's not half bad.

Yet, it is estimated that the total number of personal computers in human households is nearing the 2 billion mark (likely by 2014). So, that means only about 0.125 % of global humans are contributing to BOINC presently.

If BOINC is generating a pretty decent 7.3 petaFLOPS off of 0.125% of the total computers in households around the world then what would it run at on 100%? It still has 99.875% of its theoretical potential at this juncture. That's really interesting, it's not even running at 1% of its capabilities.

Yes! Yes! I Feel like 5.84 exaFLOPS!

Theoretically, with 2 billion household computers Voltroned-up to the grid...it could run at 5.84 exaFLOPS (which is one level higher than a petaFLOP). Cool.

Nextly, (B) is sort of obvious. If new processor chips are designed to speed up computers...then obviously it would compound the compounds of each unit and increase the floppage.

It's (C) that's the one I think is the least obvious and most controversial method of optimzing BOINC....

Stop Giving a Care about those Silly old Aliens

Out of the 2.5 million or so users that are hooked up to BOINC, more than half are running Seti@Home. About 1.3 million boinc users run seti.

What is seti? Researchers send out high frequency radio signal into the darkest coldest regions of outer space...and hope aliens hear them and respond.

The ones on Seti are likely the most hardcore geeks too with the fastest home computers, and they are using up 597 teraFLOPS of BOINC's current power level to try and find some greasy-ass dirty aliens in outer space. Yeah, I dunno 'bout this.

When I first got BOINC I looked at the @homes they had, and back then it was mostly space stuff. I chose Milkyway@home which is trying to map out the known universe. I never gave one iota of interest to Seti@home. I thought it was dumb. I know that statement will make a lot of geeks very mad, but it's true.

When I first heard about IBM's World Community Grid and how it uses BOINC flops to conduct research on diseases, clean energy, plant proteins, and other more down to earth things...I immediately downloaded it and left just a few resources for milkyway@home and gave most of my computer's idle resources to World Community Grid.

No. Let's not...

Down to earth research is far more interesting sounding and beneficial. Using global computational power to search for aliens is a huge waste and I think everyone pretty much knows that.

Jodie Foster isn't gonna find some alien signal from shooting out radio waves, a Vulcan isn't gonna come down to earth and teach us how to make spaceships, or anything like that. That's just in movies guys, not real life.

Getting the 1.3 million Seti@Home users to switch onto a less pointless program (go to MilkyWay even if you want to stay in an outer space one), is another great way to optimize BOINC. I truly believe that Seti is a big waste, sorry....but it's true.

Forget stupid aliens...


END NOTE: If you are interested in BOINC, you might want to find out what sort of power your geographic area runs off of. I've been reading lately (thanks to a heads up from a friend of mine) that keeping computers idle in an area where the grid runs off of coal (or other fossil fuels) is highly inefficient and highly undesirable. Coal is the most pollutant form of energy production and since some BOINC programs are even about pollution reduction and clean energy research...it would be ironic to run BOINC off of energy from burning coal.

Places like South Africa, Poland, China (though the Three Gorges Dam is a GREAT start to help them get off of coal), Kazahkstan, India, Japan, Germany, Russia, both Koreas, Australia, parts of the United States (Texas and Ohio are almost all coal powered, whilst Vermont and Rhode Island are coal free), and parts of Canada (Alberta is all coal for instance, while many others are coal free).

It's possible that a globally interlinked, highly efficient, up-time/down-time fluctuation-calibrated, minimal polluting hydro-electric power grid would be desirable for the optimal optimization of the BOINC network.

While one half of the world is awake, the uptime is calibrated to their hemisphere, while the other side sleeps the downtimed lesser-load would be optimal time used for computations and calculations benefiting science and humanity (and vice-versa while the other half of the world goes to sleep at the end of their day). Thus exercising the utmost efficient use of energy in order to balance both the rat-race-to-and-fro world and the calculations/research necessary to the advancement of science and the livingry of humanity.

How to Turn the Montreal Student Strike Lemons into Montreal Student Strike Lemonade

The face of Education is changing, many US and UK universities make all their curriculum and research available online (a year ago I wrote about this on this blog: https://writingsonsubjects.blogspot.com/2011/05/free-educationget-it-while-it-hot-and.html).

Coupled with BOINC (the combined hive-computer/voltron synthetic super computer), the educational value of the internet trumps traditional universities and may make them extinct in the future. In fact, universities of the old age are nothing more than mere glorified book clubs where snobs mentally masturbate all over each other.

Oh my Gawd! I hate school...I'm going on strike you guyz!

Knowing that, I find it harder and harder to care for these greasy students (who are all liberal art students or other hipsters anyway). They are fighting over an increase of about 400 bucks...and with the tuition credits they'll get on their federal and provincial taxes when they join the real world will absorb those costs anyhow. Do they really have to block all the roads and mess with the metro (subway) over this?

One of the sillier demands of one of the student groups behind the strike is to cut funding to universities research budgets. This is so strange in the fact that Quebec universities have made significant discoveries (including these last year alone: http://www.quebecscience.qc.ca/decouverte2011), and the student groups want to pull the money out of research so every little hipster can go to mental masturbation liberal arts book clubs for free.

The politicians and cops have made matters 1000 times worse by being so violent in their handling of this strike (as stupid as is it) that they have made more members of the public support the students than ever before.

This toy for example, the ARWEN 37mm Less Lethal System, that fires huge hard plastic "batons" at 242 feet per second should not have been used under any circumstances against citizens. Whoever gave the order for the police to use this weapon should be fired. The plastic batons, tear gas, sound cannons, and non-bodily marking torture techniques have only made things worse.


Now, how can you take a lemony situation such as this and make it into a lemonade situation?


...By Creating the Newest and Kewlest Spectator Sport the World has Evar Seeeeen!

This strike has made world wide news, and you know what they say..."all publicity is good publicity." Thus, someone with ingenuity must devise a way to turn this heavily publicized kerfuffle into something that is fun for everyone and a boost for the economy.

The Montreal Canadiens didn't make the playoffs this year, so we have a totally vacant arena with the seating capacity of 21,273. So, all they have to do is, pass an emergency law that states that all protests must be held at the Bell Centre. Then you sell tickets at $20 a pop, hire a bunch of concession and beer vendors and bam you got yourself some lemonade out of this nonsense.

What is the sport you ask? It's called Extreme Evasion and is heavily based off of the greatest TV show of all time, American Gladiators. The police are in essence the American Gladiators and the students are the contestants. If you've never heard of it before, this is a short briefing...

That video displays my man Wesley "Two Scoops" Berry running through the "gauntlet." Now picture a student trying to break through a police kettle formation for cash prizes! It's genius, it really is.

The police will get paid good money for taking part, the students will compete for luxurious prizes (free scholarships for breaking a kettle? How 'bout that?). The public will love this shit because it would be as entertaining as hell, and it would create jobs for vendors, ushers, scalpers, and a whole lot of other folks.

To include the politicians in this too (bums like Jeans Charest, and Pauline Marois), the Extreme Evasion halftime show will feature a dunk tank where a politician will be placed upon a board above a tank of water. Lucky spectators chosen at random will be brought down to the playing grounds and be given three chances to hit a target with a ball...if they connect the politician will fall into the water and get all wet. How's that for entertainment? Am I right or am I right?