Primates@Home Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing

Primates@Home - Getting started

Participating in Primates@Home

What is Primates@Home?

Primates@Home is an ongoing test of BOINC, the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.

Primates@Home is currently being used to test BOINC's forum software for possible use by another project, Interactions in Understanding the Universe. At present Primates@Home is not doing any real scientific computation, we are just 'playing' with BOINC.

Primates@Home was previously used to develop experience and software (including a nifty screensaver) for Einstein@Home, a distributed computing system which is searching for evidence of gravitational waves. We encourage you to join and contribute your spare computing cycles to the effort.

 

It's easy to participate in Primates@Home:

• Read the Rules and Policies. It is important that you understand how Primates@Home will use your computer, our privacy policy, and other important information.

• Download and install BOINC. Simply download the BOINC software from here, and run the installer script.

• Attach to the Primates@Home project. During the installation dialoge, when asked for the project URL, enter: http://primates.spy-hill.net/. You can then create an account on the project by entering your e-mail address and your choice of password.

That's it!

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How BOINC works

When you run BOINC on your PC, it works like this:

1. Your PC gets a set of instructions from the project's scheduling server. The instructions depend on your PC: for example, the server won't give it work that requires more RAM than you have. The instructions may include many multiple bunches of work. Projects can support several applications, and the server may send you work from any of them.
2. Your PC downloads executable and input files from the project's data server. If the project releases new versions of its applications, the executable files are downloaded automatically to your PC.
3. Your PC runs the application programs, producing output files.
4. Your PC uploads the output files to the data server.
5. Later (up to several days later, depending on your work buffer preferences) your PC reports the completed results to the scheduling server, and gets instructions for more work.

This cycle is repeated indefinitely. BOINC does this all automatically; you don't have to do anything.

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Credit

The project's server keeps track of how much work your computer has done; this is called credit. To ensure that credit is granted fairly, most BOINC projects work as follows:

• Each work unit may be sent to several computers.
• When a computer reports a result, it claims a certain amount of credit, based on how much CPU time was used.
• When at least two results have been returned, the server compares them. If the results agree, then users are granted the smaller of the claimed credits.

Please keep in mind:

• There may be a delay of several days between when your computer reports a result and when it is granted credit for the result. Your User page shows you how much credit is 'pending' (claimed but not granted).
• The credit-granting process starts when your computer reports a result to the server (not when it finishes computing the result or uploading the output files).
• In some cases (e.g. if errors occur on one or more computers) you may never receive credit for a computation.

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