High-Performance Task Distribution for Volunteer Computing

Abstract

Volunteer computing projects use a task server to manage work. Clients periodically communicate with the server to report completed tasks and get new tasks. The rate at which the server can dispatch tasks may limit the computing power available to the project. This paper discusses the design of the task server in BOINC, a middleware system for volunteer computing. We present measurements of the CPU time and disk I/O used by a BOINC server, and show that a server consisting of a single inexpensive computer can distribute on the order of 8.8 million tasks per day. With two additional computers this increases to 23.6 million tasks per day.