BOINC Migration Announcement

[V_R]

I dont think we have many (if any) UD'ers here, but if you are running the United Devices agent you need to think about moving to BOINC, Details below.

World Community Grid is pleased to announce our BOINC migration plan. BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Networking Computing) is a software platform for volunteer computing and desktop grid computing.

World Community Grid members currently have the option of participating using either the United Devices (UD) or BOINC clients. While approximately 67% of devices are running on UD and 33% on BOINC at this time, this mix is changing with a greater proportion of new devices registering using BOINC (80%) than UD (20%).

The UD software helped launch World Community Grid with MetaProcessor 3.0. However, this version is no longer being supported by United Devices. Over the past 18 months we’ve been developing our BOINC strategy to ensure a secure, trouble free and user friendly environment for World Community Grid.

As part of this planning, you may have noticed many BOINC enhancements and new functionality on World Community Grid including: the BOINC simple GUI, the results status page, the ability to conduct large scale Beta testing with volunteers, the ability to select preferred projects, and the ability to control the CPU throttle via the website.

We would like to announce, effective immediately, that World Community Grid is migrating fully to BOINC. BOINC is a vibrant open source platform and should provide many years of service to World Community Grid.

Elements of the migration plan are as follows:

UD Platform:
1. World Community Grid’s two active projects, FightAIDS@Home and Human Proteome Folding 2, will continue to run on UD (in addition to BOINC).
2. Our plan is to run these projects on UD at least through the end of 2007 but no later than mid-2008.
3. No new projects will be available on the UD platform.
4. Before the end of October 2007, we plan to remove UD as one of the registration options.

BOINC Platform:
1. FightAIDS@Home and Human Proteome Folding 2 will run on BOINC until each of these projects end (in addition to running on UD).
2. All new projects will be available on BOINC Windows, Linux, and Mac.

Migration from UD to BOINC:

World Community Grid is asking members with devices on UD to begin migrating to BOINC at their convenience. The steps involved in migrating from UD to BOINC are as follows:

1. At the present time:
a. Uninstall UD:
Right click on World Community Grid’s icon in the lower right corner of your desktop tray and select "Exit.” This will stop the agent. Then you should be able to use the Windows Add/Remove program to remove “World Community Grid Agent”.

b. Register on BOINC:
• Go to World Community Grid’s home page and make sure that you are signed in.
• Click on the Join Now button.
• On the download page, the "BOINC for Windows" has been preset as the default. Scroll down and press the "continue" button.
• Follow the installer instructions.

2. After we modify the installer:
To simplify the migration from UD to BOINC, World Community Grid is modifying the installer to automatically uninstall UD from the device being registered as part of the BOINC registration. This feature should be available prior to the end of September, 2007 and will provide an easier migration path for members. We will let members know that this is available via the forum and a newsletter.

Mass Installations:
Members who have multiple devices installed on UD will be provided with documentation about how to do a mass-installation using BOINC. This document will be posted to the website prior to the end of October, 2007.

Communications:
The BOINC migration will be communicated to all members through a number of vehicles. It will be described through World Community Grid’s newsletter, which will be published in September of 2007. The newsletter article about the migration will target UD members and will provide them with information on migrating themselves to BOINC.

After September, 2007, we will continue to mention the migration in all World Community Grid email communications until all members are off of UD or until UD is no longer supported on World Community Grid.

During the first half of 2008, we also will send periodic reminders to members still returning results on UD that they need to migrate to BOINC. This communication will tell them the name of the computers running UD and the time that the last result was returned.

Information about BOINC:
Comprehensive information about the BOINC client was published in the March 2007 newsletter . You can review this information here.

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread?thread=15715