Making free science free

Science in difficult times: open science meets volunteer computing

Transcript

1. Making free science free Juan Julián Merelo Guervós Free Software Office http://osl.ugr.es & GeNeura Team University de Granada @jjmerelo Identi.ca/jjmerelo
2. Free science free | @jjmerelo 2 Why?
3. Free science free | @jjmerelo 3 My wishlist • Low entry threshold • Massive scalability • All in one system • Fault-tolerance (except byzantine failures)
4. Free science free | @jjmerelo 4 (In)Volunteer computing • BOINC as a paradigm. • Infraestructure based in PHP/MySQL • Handling 8 million request/day
5. Free science free | @jjmerelo 5 OK, I buy it. What do I need? • Tasks • Users • Groups • Statistics • GUI
6. Free science free | @jjmerelo 6 What do you want it for? • Low cost or free science • Citizen science • Evolutionary algorithm experiments (or any other, for that matter) • Web science: social distributed computers
7. Free science free | @jjmerelo 7 That's why We need an object store
8. Free science free | @jjmerelo 8 What can we use
9. Free science free | @jjmerelo 9 Software as a service
10. Free science free | @jjmerelo 10 Almost, but not quite • Usually freemium services (pay after a use level) • Heroku, OpenShift, Amazon, Google AppSpot... • There's science in it: optimize the number of requests to the server to avoid charges.
11. Free science free | @jjmerelo 11 Can do nothing without you • Eventually, somebody has to lend CPU time to an experiment. • AJAX provides a perfect environment for doing that. • COMET (server-push) too. • New tech: WebWorkers, apps. •
12. Free science free | @jjmerelo 12 Free as in free speech • The whole process must be transparent: Open Science • People won't give you cycles if they don't trust you. • Release early, release often, release all: data, source, papers...
13. Free science free | @jjmerelo 13 What have you done? • Distributed Computing on Rails: • Ruby on Rails + AJAX on client = Distributed evolutionary algorithms • Experiment with up to 1000 clients • AGAJAJ: same thing (pretty much) with mod_perl.
14. Free science free | @jjmerelo 14 EvoSpace • UGR + UEX + Tijuana tech. • Redis + Django based distributed evoluitionary computation engine • Embedded wetware: valid for interactive evolution • Now moving to Heroku
15. Free science free | @jjmerelo 15 Doing free science is great But it's better if it's just a choice Looking for partners for EC projects? Contact me jjmerelo@gnail.com
16. Making free science free Juan Julián Merelo Guervós Free Software Office http://osl.ugr.es & GeNeura Team University de Granada @jjmerelo Identi.ca/jjmerelo Imagen de sunlight in a jar en http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunlightinajar/1111631 514/in/photostream/
17. Free science free | @jjmerelo 2 Why? Imagen de la izquierda de http://www.flickr.com/photos/cipherswarm/2414578959/ Christopher Bowns, de la derecha de ario_ http://www.flickr.com/photos/ario/4422273371/in/photostrea No todo el mundo puede contar con un supercomputador. La computación voluntaria tiene su origen en el proyecto SETI@Home de análisis de señales procedentes del espacio buscando regularidades.
18. Free science free | @jjmerelo 3 My wishlist • Low entry threshold • Massive scalability • All in one system • Fault-tolerance (except byzantine failures) Foto subida por Texas_mustang a Flickr en http://www.flickr.com/photos/astros/3977731447/in/photostr
19. Free science free | @jjmerelo 4 (In)Volunteer computing • BOINC as a paradigm. • Infraestructure based in PHP/MySQL • Handling 8 million request/day Dato del trabajo de D. B. Anderson, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=157 Imagen de http://www.flickr.com/photos/23497193@N07/2870438187/ por frseti
20. Free science free | @jjmerelo 5 OK, I buy it. What do I need? • Tasks • Users • Groups • Statistics • GUI Imagen de UnitedBOINC http://www.unitedboinc.com/en/website-info/39-site-info/97- Imagen del esquema de BOINC http://bof.linuxforum.dk/2005/slides/Carlos/tappingthematrix
21. Free science free | @jjmerelo 6 What do you want it for? • Low cost or free science • Citizen science • Evolutionary algorithm experiments (or any other, for that matter) • Web science: social distributed computers Imagen de StudioTempura en http://www.flickr.com/photos/zero101/4783232763/in/photo
22. Free science free | @jjmerelo 7 That's why We need an object store Imagen de Michael Flick en http://www.flickr.com/photos/17773534@N03/3237000861/ Object Store en general se define por oposición a una base de datos tradicional, en la que las columnas son fijas y se estructuran en tablas que tienen relación unas con otras. Una object store, o key-value store, o base de datos NoSQL, almacena documentos indexados, habitualmente, por una clave.
23. Free science free | @jjmerelo 8 What can we use
24. Free science free | @jjmerelo 9 Software as a service There are many free services out there. Picture by Steve Rhodes http://www.flickr.com/photos/ari/5281508652
25. Free science free | @jjmerelo 10 Almost, but not quite • Usually freemium services (pay after a use level) • Heroku, OpenShift, Amazon, Google AppSpot... • There's science in it: optimize the number of requests to the server to avoid charges.
26. Free science free | @jjmerelo 11 Can do nothing without you • Eventually, somebody has to lend CPU time to an experiment. • AJAX provides a perfect environment for doing that. • COMET (server-push) too. • New tech: WebWorkers, apps. •
27. Free science free | @jjmerelo 12 Free as in free speech • The whole process must be transparent: Open Science • People won't give you cycles if they don't trust you. • Release early, release often, release all: data, source, papers...
28. Free science free | @jjmerelo 13 What have you done? • Distributed Computing on Rails: • Ruby on Rails + AJAX on client = Distributed evolutionary algorithms • Experiment with up to 1000 clients • AGAJAJ: same thing (pretty much) with mod_perl.
29. Free science free | @jjmerelo 14 EvoSpace • UGR + UEX + Tijuana tech. • Redis + Django based distributed evoluitionary computation engine • Embedded wetware: valid for interactive evolution • Now moving to Heroku
30. Free science free | @jjmerelo 15 Doing free science is great But it's better if it's just a choice Looking for partners for EC projects? Contact me jjmerelo@gnail.com