Download Boinc 6.4.5

Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing is a distributed computing platform available for Linux, Mac OS X, Unix, and Windows. A number of grid projects make use of this platform, such as SETI@home, rosetta@home, Leiden Classical and Hydrogen@Home. For more information about the how and what of Boinc, we refer you to this page. The developers released a new version in mid-December, which has been labeled stable. The version number is fixed at 6.4.5 and only available for Linux and Windows. The biggest change is it support from Nvidia’s Cuda platform so that the existing GPU can be used. The list of changes for the 6.4 branch looks like this:

Version 6.4.5:

Note: In order to limit the number of issues we had to deal with for the 6.4 release we shipped it with the manager that shipped as part of the 6.2 release. We have no plans to release 6.4.x for the Macintosh at this time, because we can’t run BOINC CUDA applications on the Mac until NVIDIA makes some changes in their Mac software.

• Public stable release or 6.4 branch!
• client: tweak CPU scheduling policy. When there’s a coproc job; Windows: don’t saturate CPUs, Unix: saturate CPUs
• client: in round-robin simulation, remove code that sets CPU shortfall for projects with no active results. (This is now wrong because there coproc apps might have pending results. Also remove nidle_cpus > 0 conditional that increments CPU shortfall; I think this is vestigial code.)
• client: include deviceOverlap and multiProcessorCount in XML for CUDA devices. They were mistakenly omitted.
• client: in round-robin simulation, don’t count a project in total resource share if it has coproc jobs and no CPU jobs.
• MGR: fix the terms of use wizard page.

Version 6.4.4 ALPHA:

• client: app_info.xml’s are parsed before p_fpops is known, so avp->fpops is zero. Fix this by filling in zero avp->fpops later on.

Version 6.4.3 ALPHA:

• client: work-fetch tweak: don’t increment overall CPU shortfall if any jobs pending in simulation.
• client: use FLOPs, rather than CPU time, as the basis for estimating job completion times. This should improve estimates for GPU apps, and prevent the DCF from getting messed up.
• client: estimate time to completion based on elapsed time, not CPU time (improves estimates for coproc apps).
• client: compute duration_correction_factor based on elapsed time, not CPU time (otherwise it doesn’t work for coproc or multi-proc apps).
• client: in estimate of job completion time, weight the estimate based on fraction done more heavily (quadratic rather than linear).
• Remove the notion of “CPU efficiency” from both client and server. This wasn’t being measured correctly for coproc/multithread apps, and its effect is now subsumed in DCF.
• client: fix calculation of CPU shortfall; don’t fetch work from projects with zero CPU shortfall.
• client: fix compiler warning.
• client: parse checkpoint_elapsed_time from state file; if missing, use checkpoint CPU time.
• client: enforce CPU schedule: if we’re running a coproc job, keep CPU utilization strictly less than NCPUS.
• client: fix last checkin
• WININSTALL: Disable “Protected Application Execution” mode by default.
• WININSTALL: Turn off the check for Internet Explorer 5.x

Version 6.4.2 ALPHA:

• Mac: Fix XCode project to build old Manager with Grid Views; rename SetVersion.C to SetVersion.cpp.
• client: in round-robin simulation, only increment CPU shortfall (per-project or overall) if there are no pending tasks. (This is needed when there are coproc (ie CUDA) jobs; CPUs may be idle because pending jobs are waiting for active jobs to release coprocs. In this situation the CPU idleness should not be counted as shortfall; otherwise (if there are only coproc jobs) there will always be a shortfall, and the client will fetch infinite work.)
• DIAG: On Windows move the symbol store directory under the BOINC data directory structure. Depending on the version of Windows, sometimes the temp directory was being set to the system temp directory which is not setup for everyone to use. It is just best to use our data directory structure.
• GUI RPC: add optional terms_of_use field to project config. If present, the manager will display this text in a yes/no dialog before attachment continues.
• MGR: Make the error message processing work for the get_project_config rpc, use the same scheme as the ACCOUNT_OUT structure.
• MGR: Make the error message processing work for the get_project_config rpc, use the same scheme as the ACCOUNT_OUT structure. I missed the Account Manager scenario in the first checkin.
• client, Win: 32-bit client running on a 64-bit machine should report winx64 as primary platform.
• MGR: Remove the Account Key page from the Wizard.
• MGR: Add a Terms of Use page to the Wizard.
• MGR: Make the Terms of Use text control read-only
• MGR: fix exit dialog so that both the Mac and Linux clients don’t display the ‘close core client…’ checkbox.
• WININSTALL: Change the default to not use protected application install.
• WININSTALL: Change the advanced install text to point out that on Windows Vista CUDA applications won’t work with protected application installs.

Version 6.4.1 ALPHA:

• fixing the localization file names to work with the 6.4 manager.