志愿者计算与大智慧探索

dream2006210482

来源：http://www.distributedcomputing.info/news.html
原载：http://www.technewsworld.com/story/61943.html
标题：Volunteer Computing and the Search for Big Answers，志愿者计算与大智慧探索
作者：Brad King
日期：2008年3月4日(星期二)
概要：对 BOINC 及志愿者计算的发展做了简要的介绍。

正文翻译：

"There is a social component to [volunteer computing]," said Richard Mitrich, a 66-year old resident of Highland Park, N.J., who is currently working on six projects. "Every project has forums with topics. You get nothing for these points, though, but that doesn't matter. There are people doing science here, so if you waste six hours for them, you've wasted everyone's time. To me, this is just a great joy."

“对于志愿者计算来说，他们也是社会的组成部分”一位住在美国新泽西州高地公园的66岁高龄的老人，Richard Mitrich，这样说道，他本人在参加六个志愿者计算的项目。“每个项目都在论坛上有一个主题。从参加项目本身得不到什么利益，但是我们不在乎这个。每个项目都是一些科学家们用来做科学实验的，因此如果你浪费了他们六个小时，那就是你在浪费每个人的时间。对于我来讲，参加这种项目是件乐事。”

The Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley is nestled into the Berkeley Hills just off the fire trail where runners from around the area come to take on the brutal 3.5 mile climb. The lab, though, doesn't feel like it's part of Berkeley. It's located a few miles from the iconic Sproul Hall and People's Park, Berkeley institutions that were home to numerous student rebellions during the '60s. It's easy to miss, removed as it is from the school's infrastructure , which dominates much of downtown Berkeley.

加州大学伯克利分校的太空科学实验室坐落在伯克利山丘上，离救火道有3.5英里，周围想去实验室的人们需要艰苦的攀爬才能到达那里。尽管如此，实验室感觉还是不像伯克利的一部分。它位于距离标志性的Sproul Hall和人民公园几英里远的地方，在六十年代，伯克利分校的机构是众多叛逆学生的家。由于远离管理很多市区伯克利分校的学校总组织，它很容易被忽略。

What's going on inside the lab, though, is more radical than anything the student protesters could have imagined 40 years ago. This is ground zero for one of the largest volunteer, distributed computing organizations in the world: the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC).

那实验室内部情形怎么样呢，学生的主张比较激进，在40年前都难以想象的到。这就是“爆心投影点”组织，一个世界上拥有最多志愿者的分布式计算组织，BOINC。

BOINC's three-person team, led by research scientist Dave Anderson, developed software tools that enable scientists to harness the power of computers from around the world in order to tackle problems that require massive computing power.

由科学家Dave Anderson带领的BOINC三人组，开发了一个工具软件，可以使科学家们利用世界各地的计算机资源来解决那些需要巨大运算量的的问题。

Division of Labor
The premise of BOINC's distributed computing software is simple: Scientists who need to crunch data break their statistical information into small projects. Anyone interested in helping downloads a desktop application for a specific project. As of now, there are roughly 1 million people who are participating in the various projects. When that person's computer goes into sleep mode, it begins processing data in the background. Once the task is complete, the data is uploaded back to the scientist.

劳动分工
使用BOINC的分布式计算软件的前提是很简单的：那些需要处理数据的科学家们把他们的统计信息拆分成多个小的项目。任何一个想帮助他们的人可以下载一个桌面程序来计算某个特定的项目。截至目前，有大约一百万的人在参加着不同的项目。当这些人的电脑进入睡眠模式时，它就开始在后台处理数据。一旦任务完成，数据就会上传给科学家们。


It's a simple, elegant solution to a rather enormous problem: how to find enough computing power to solve some of science's greatest problems. Anderson's answer: volunteer computing.

对于一个相当庞大的问题来说，它是一个简单的，完美的解决方案：怎样找到足够的计算能力来解决科学上的大问题。Aderson’s答案是志愿者计算。

"Volunteer computing is interesting because there are about a billion private computers in the world," Anderson told LinuxInsider. "Some fraction of people who own them will allow them to be used by causes that they support. Scientists who need a lot of computing power can set up a volunteer computing project and get tens of thousands of nodes working for them."

“志愿者计算是很有意义的，因为世界上约有十亿的个人电脑”Aderson告诉LinuxInsider网站“拥有这些电脑的一部分人允许自己的电脑被使用。”需要大量计算能力的科学家可以建立一个志愿者计算项目来获得数以万计的结点机为他们工作。

All Volunteers
Like developers who become part of the open source   movement, the people who populate these volunteer programs are rabid in their desire to get involved. There is no money to be made. There are no grand accolades, outside the generous thanks from the scientists who work couldn't be done without them.

志愿者们
像那些开源运动的倡导者一样，这些推动志愿者项目的人很渴望被牵连进来。没有钱可以赚，没有很大的赞美，除了来自那些没有他们就不能完成工作的科学家们的衷心的感谢。

Yet, small collectives have formed through BOINC and the more formally run IBM's World Computer Grid. Just because there's no money involved, it doesn't mean there isn't recognition for those teams that power through issues. Now, teams receive medals -- in the form of icons that designate a pecking order -- based upon the number of projects completed.

然而，通过BOINC，一些小团体还是成立了并且更多的人在参与IBM的世界计算机网格。只是因为没有涉及到钱，对这些展示计算能力的团队来说，这并不意味着没有赞誉。现在，这些团体基于项目的完成数量接收到很多奖章，奖章以排名的图标方式授予。

In other words, BOINC's software -- which now powers the World Computer Grid -- has turned science social.

换而言之，BOINC的掌控世界计算机网格的软件已经把科学社会化了。


"There is a social component to this," said Richard Mitrich, a 66-year old resident of Highland Park, N.J., who is currently working on six projects. "Every project has forums with topics. You get nothing for these points, though, but that doesn't matter. There are people doing science here, so if you waste six hours for them, you've wasted everyone's time. To me, this is just a great joy."

“对于志愿者计算来说，他们也是社会的组成部分”一位住在美国新泽西州高地公园的66岁高龄的老人，Richard Mitrich，这样说道，他本人在参加六个志愿计算的项目。“每个项目都在论坛上有一个主题。从参加项目本身得不到什么利益，但是我们不在乎这个。每个项目都是一些科学家们用来做科学实验的，因此如果你浪费了他们六个小时，那就是你在浪费每个人的时间。对于我来讲，参加这种项目是件乐事。”

Signs of Life
The idea for Anderson's flavor of distributed computing began with his work on the SETI@home project, which is where the original BOINC software was developed in 1999. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project had always faced the data-crunching problem. With so much information streaming to Earth, there was no way to keep up. SETI@home -- which still attracts volunteers -- was born. The application enabled people to sift through bits of radio waves, looking for signals that might indicate intelligent life.

生命迹象
Aderson的分布式计算始于SETI@home项目，该项目原是BOINC软件在1999年开发的。搜寻外星文明（SETI）这个项目一直面临着数据处理的问题。伴随着外星大量的数据信息流向地球，我们没有办法来得及处理。因此SETI@home项目诞生了，这个项目仍在需要志愿者。这个应用程序使得人们可以通过无线短波来寻找可能隐藏智能生命的信号。

The project itself was a smashing success in terms of volunteer computing. Tens of thousands of people joined the project. The press fell in love with the idea of the general public looking for E.T.

在志愿者计算方面，工程本身就是一个了不起的成功。数以万计的人们加入该项目。媒体也深深爱上了这个普通大众寻找E.T.的项目。

Anderson, though, wondered if there was a way to adapt the software into a more ubiquitous platform that other scientists could use. He received a grant from the National Science Foundation in 2002. His goal: make it possible for any scientist to create projects for volunteer computing.

尽管如此，Aderson想知道是不是有一种方法可以把这个软件改编成一个普通的平台，其他的科学家都可以使用。在2002年，他获得了美国国家科学基金会的认可。他的目标就是使每一个科学家都能利用志愿者计算来创建自己的项目。

He decentralized open source software. Today, there are more than 20 projects powered by BOINC.

他分散了这个开源软件。今天有20多个项目由BOINC控制。

"We develop software," said Anderson. "It's open source software. Anyone who wants to create a volunteer project simply puts that software on their server and then uses the API (application programming interface) to port that information. BOINC has no control over who sets up these projects. We just make the enabling software."

“我们开发了软件” Aderson说，“这是一个开源软件。任何一个想创建自己志愿者项目的人只要简单地把软件安装在他们的服务器上，然后使用API来传输数据。” BOINC没有权利去控制谁建立那些项目。我们只是做扶持的软件。”

Power of the Grid
Distributed computing now reaches far beyond the academic and scientific fields. In fact, distributed computing is the reason you can quickly order books from Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN)  without serious lag times and the reason Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)  can search the Web so quickly.

网格的力量
现在分布式计算到达的领域已经远远超出了学术和科学。事实上，分布式计算是你之所以能快速地而不是严重滞后地从Amazon网站（纳斯达克股票代码：AMZN）上订书，和能在Google（纳斯达克股票代码：goog ）上快速搜索网页的原因。

The business application of distributed computing, called cloud computing, takes grid computing -- which allows one node to tap into a distributed network  for a short time -- to its next logical step.

分布式计算的商业应用，所谓的云计算，就是采用的网格计算来完成下一个合乎逻辑的步骤，它允许一个结点在很短的时间内进入到分布式网络中。

In the past, companies would have one main database of information. Every transaction would take place in the database -- either inputting data or outputting data. That model works well until the entire world is on the Web.

过去，大多公司都有一个主要的信息数据库。每一次交互都发生在数据库，不管是输入数据或是输出数据。在整个世界都在互联网上自强，这种模式运作得良好。

Today, not so much.

今天，这些不够了。

"Databases used to be the center of everything," Geva Perry, chief marketing  officer for Gigaspaces, a New York City-based middleware company. "You always had to go to the database, but you can't use the database for high performance computing or Web applications  with many users looking for multiple functions that come with fast, real-time performance."

“数据库曾经是一切的中心”纽约市做中间件技术的公司Gigaspaces的首席营销官Geva Perry说，“你总是不得不去访问数据库，但是在很多用户要求快速，实时地寻找函数时，你不能用数据库来做高性能计算或Web应用。”

Cloud computing allows companies to set up a series of duplicate servers between the user and the database, called "middleware." Each database has the entire set of business rules and data sets contained within the box. As users type in dynamic information, such as ordering a book from Amazon.com, that data is stored in the in-memory data grid on the server. Once the transaction is complete, the server dumps all the data into the main database.

云计算允许公司在用户和服务器之前设立一系列服务器的副本，叫做“中间件”。每个数据库在程序的框架里，都有一整套的业务规则和数据集。当用户输入动态信息时，比如说从Amazon.com网站订购一本书，这个信息就被存储在那些数据库网格中的记忆体上，当交互完成后，服务器就把全部的数据传送到主数据库上。

Limiting the times a database is hit and localizing real-time information transfer creates a more stable -- and scalable -- experience.

在特定的时代，数据库就是要寻找和定位实时信息传输，创造一个更稳定和可扩展的经历。（这句不会翻译哦，感觉好别扭啊）

Small Project, Big Army
Anderson rejects the notion that cloud computing and grid computing is similar to the idea of volunteer computing. He's careful to lay out the benefits -- and drawbacks -- of each.

小项目，大队伍
Aderson排斥云计算和网格计算与志愿者计算是类似的这种想法。他认真地列出了个它们各自的好处和缺点。

Volunteer computing is done anonymously so you're never sure the results are accurate, but you have a chance to get one billion people working for you. In cloud computing you risk CPU (central processing unit) failure because of the heat and power strains, but it's very cheap to do high-performance computing. Grid computing is nothing more than an individual computer accessing data from somewhere else, although that would allow institutions to focus on one particular topic.

志愿者计算是匿名工作的，因此不能确保结果是准确的，但是你有机会获得十亿人的电脑为你工作。而云计算呢，你的风险就是CPU失败，因为散发的热量和电压，但是它做高性能的成本非常低。网格计算只不过要个人电脑来访问其它地方的数据，尽管如此这讲允许一些研究机构把重点放在特定的主题上。

For his money, though, volunteer computing is the most interesting. There are problems. Scientists by and large aren't programmers, so there is no way to get every scientist who needs help set up with a BOINC project, without going through IBM.

尽管如此，金钱来方面讲，志愿者计算是最应该注意的。因为存在一些问题，科学家们大都不是程序员，因此没办法使那些需要帮助建立BOINC项目的科学家们，不通过IBM来完成工作。

He and his team plug along, looking for little solutions to big problems.

他和他的团队一直在寻找一些大问题的小的解决方案。

In practice, I have to get grants from the National Science Foundation to fund these projects," Anderson said. "It's a little project, me and two other computer scientists, but we have a giant army of volunteers from testing to programming to translating and writing documentation."

“实际上，我已经得到美国国家科学基金会的赞助来资助这些项目” Aderson说，“这是一个小项目，我和其它两位科学家，但是我们有一个巨大的志愿者队伍来测试，编程到翻译和写文档。”