Evolution@home: observations on participant choice, work unit variation and low-effort global computing
Authored by Laurence Loewe
Date Published: 2007
DOI: 10.1002/spe.806
Sponsors:
Leverhulme Trust
Platforms:
C++
Model Documentation:
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Model Code URLs:
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Abstract
Many simulation efforts in ecology and evolutionary biology employ
individual-based models that are well suited for including many
biological details. These models often pose serious computational
challenges if all biologically interesting parameter combinations are to
be explored. The challenges are even greater for biologists who often
lack supercomputing facilities and the manpower for implementing complex
global computing systems such as SETI@home. Under such limiting
conditions, evolution@home started as a one-man effort to distribute
simulations of Muller's ratchet to Internet-connected computers of
participants from the general public. This paper addresses experiences
in low-effort global computing made with evolution@home over more than
four years. It shows how allowing participants to choose the class of
computational complexity they want to contribute to can help to deal
with the bewildering variety of computational complexities that easily
result from individual-based models. Results suggest that, as a first
rough approximation, participants' complexity choices are distributed
surprisingly even over all reasonable classes of CPU-time and RAM
requirements. More often than not, participants tend to finish the
simulations they start, if they are committed enough to submit any
results at all. Potential uses of intermediate simulation results are
discussed and the error of magnitude is introduced to help to deal with
imprecise CPU-time predictions. Experiences with the choices of over 300
users who have contributed more than 100 000 simulations with a total of
over 80 years CPU time are reviewed. Copyright (C) 2007 John Wiley \&
Sons, Ltd.
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