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DISTRIBUTED PROJECTS DIRECTORIES



ACTIVE DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING PROJECTS

This list contains active distributed computing projects organized by platform. Many publically funded projects are moving to the BOINC platfrom. To the casual user there appears to be only around 5 viable distributed computing platforms in use today: Alchemi , BOINC , Parabon Computation and United Devices and a few lesser projects using Java applets.


Notes on current distributed computing projects

There is some ambiguity with respect to the current state of distributed computing. The following industry observations must be made in order to lessen ambiguities with respect to how the industry has organized itself. There has not been any recent in-depth journalistic research in 2006 on the size and extent of the distributed computing community that is easily accessible.
  • The success of any distributed computing platform (like BOINC ) is somewhat hard to judge as there is no equivalent " Nielsen Ratings System " for distributed computing projects.

  • Some distributed computing projects use more than one platform, like World Community Grid , which is offering both its projects Human Proteome Folding Project and FightAIDS@Home under both the BOINC and United Devices agents.

  • BOINC is supported by the US National Science Foundation through awards SCI/0221529, SCI/0438443 and SCI/0506411.

  • There are at least 2 Java VM based distributed computing platforms in use, but their total CPU time contribution has been historically minimal. This is based on the observation that computer applications are more likely to be installed by users as opposed to Java applets.

  • There are some substantial benefits of using more than one distributed computing platform. Thus the practice of using multiple platforms will probably continue into the near future.



BOINC platform projects



Distributed.net (non-profit)

s and breaking RC5 -72 encryption. They have also completed many previous encryption projects.


13th Labour (Alternate Reality Game)

Perplex City , an Alternate Reality Game created by the British company Mind Candy , features puzzle cards which can be solved to earn points on a leaderboard and earn clues to help understand the game. One of these cards, "The 13th Labour", features what players have determined to be a block of RC5 -64bit encryption, which is now being brute-forced, using a distributed computing client created by one player; available here .


Folding@home (non-profit)

and whose goal is to understand why Proteins Misfold . Folding@home uses Cosm client architecture with broad set of scientific cores {Link without Title} .


Parabon Computation (commercial)

Parabon.com client uses a Java VM technology, but little is known about its current workload as the company is commercial in nature, does not update its website very often and some commercial secrecy prevails with respect to its day to day operations.
  • .



United Devices (commercial)

  • platform funded by United Devices as a testbed for its own software, hosting large scale research studies.

  • United Devices {Link without Title} in collaboration with Oxford University and NCFR, aims to find drugs for panreatic cancer and leaukemia.



World Community Grid

World Community Grid, formally IBM, using United Devices and BOINC software, aims to create the largest public computing grid benefiting humanity


Custom software

Custom software encompasses distributed computing projects that do not make use of a third-party generic client-server infrastructure. These can be roughly divided into two subcategories based on whether or not the client is based on the Java VM.

Native-binary projects:


Java VM projects

  • .

  • , Smallpox , Ebola and SARS and other potentially devastating infectious diseases.

  • , allowing users to see how the Internet looks from their home.

  • JHDC {Link without Title} — Open source programmable Java distributed computing system.

  • applications.



Project's ranking



By overall processing power (TFLOPS)

It is assumed that the FLOPS figures quoted are based on a monthy moving average. ''Because of national holidays, weekends and other perturbances a 1 week or 2 week moving average would be less representational of average computational speed.''
# Folding@home , the most powerful distributed computing project, has been able to sustain over 200 TFLOPS .
# SETI@home computes data at more than 100 TFLOPS .
# As Of June 2005 , GIMPS is sustaining 17 TFLOPS , while Einstein@home is actually crunching more than 50 TFLOPS against 167 TFLOPS of its theoretical computing speed.


By active users

''Because of national holidays, weekends and other perturbances a 1 week or 2 week moving average would be less representational of average number of active users.''


PROPOSED PROJECTS

There are several proposals for distributed computing projects on the web.


COMPLETED OR INACTIVE PROJECTS

These projects have been been completed or are inactive. Some projects may have been absorbed into other distributed computing efforts.

Completed



Abandoned

  • Operation Project X originally The Neo Project, was an effort to discover the encryption key for Xbox software by brute force, to allow Homebrew (and effectively pirated) software to run on the platform without a Modchip . Since it is a 2048 bit key, the project by its own admission was very unlikely to succeed, and was shut down presumably for legal reasons a few months after its debut.

  • software v3.2 by brute force. Since the Keyspace consisted of 20 characters secured by a SHA-1 hash, the project by its own admission was very unlikely to succeed, and was shutdown due to server scaling issues a few months after its debut.



Out of business



PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS

These projects attempt to make large physical computation infrastructures available for researchers to use:



EU funded distributed computing research

The European Union (EU) values distributed computing as part of the EU's overall quality of life governancy philosophy. Thus, the EU has funded many distributed computing research projects. All of these projects use customized software in order for the research to be conducted and have varying levels of public access to project research.
  • Akogrimo Research project addressing "Access to Knowledge through the Grid in a mobile World".

  • CoreGRID "European Research Network on Foundations, Software Infrastructures and Applications for large scale distributed, Grid and Peer-to-Peer Technologies"

  • DataMiningGrid Research project addressing "Data Mining Tools and Services for Grid Computing Environments".

  • HPC4U Research project addressing a "Highly Predictable Cluster for Internet-Grids".

  • InteliGrid Research project addressing "InteroperabilIty of Virtual Organisations on Complex Semantic Grid".

  • K-WF Grid Research project addressing a "Knowledge-based Workflow System for Grid Applications".

  • OntoGrid Research project paving the way for knowledgeable Grid services and systems.

  • Provenance Research project addressing "the enabling and supporting of Provenance in Grids for Complex Problems".

  • NextGRID Research project addressing the development of architectures for the "Next Generation Grid".

  • SIMDAT Research project addressing "Data Grids for Process and Product Development using Numerical Simulation and Knowledge Discovery".

  • UniGridS Research project addressing development of "Uniform Interface to Grid Services".

  • MediGrid Research project addressing development of "Mediterranean Grid of Natural Hazards Data and Models".



DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING SOFTWARE PLATFORMS

The following are generic software platforms or infrastructures used to implement some of the projects listed in the previous section.


  • Amoeba Distributed Operating System that is designed for distributed computing tasks.

  • project

  • Condor {Link without Title} is a flexible high-throughput distributed computing scheduler

  • to transform existing computer systems, storage, and networks into a powerful resource used by the United Devices Cancer Research Project , World Community Grid , and other public projects hosted by Grid.org .

  • Moab Cluster Suite -- improves utilization with workload management

  • Sun GridEngine -- a distributed resource management system, similar to Condor

  • Cosm {Link without Title} Publicly re-launched in March 1999, Cosm Phase 1 is a set of open protocols and applications designed to allow computers all over the world to work together on projects. The project may be a mathematical challenge, or rendering an animation, or writing. These have recently been termed distributed computing, or GRID applications. Cosm also involves building the libraries, APIs, and standards that are required to make those types of applications easy to develop for every kind of system.


Java based platforms: