Hello all,

I'm trying to study the feasibility of using BOINC to create a local grid. My problem is that I have a physics simulation application that takes hours for making simulations. The issue is simulations cannot be broken down into tasks. It has to run as a single task with a single process, which is however multi-threaded.

I had two questions:
1- I'm confirming that, can the BOINC wrapper run any kind of software written in any language? Any special considerations? Since I won't be able to modify this software's code.
2- The application can run from a command line interface. Can I run this application process as a single instance on multiple hosts simultaneously?

I can't make multiple instances of the same process otherwise all instances will just run the whole simulation and no time is saved. This is a Windows application but if for some reason I should run the Linux version of it and convert to Linux, please let me know.

Thanks

1- I'm confirming that, can the BOINC wrapper run any kind of software written in any language? Any special considerations? Since I won't be able to modify this software's code.

See http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/WrapperApp for a lot more information, but in essence, it doesn't matter what own language the application uses, the wrapper app will be able to run it.

2- The application can run from a command line interface. Can I run this application process as a single instance on multiple hosts simultaneously?

As far as I know, the app cannot be run from the command line in a wrapper app. However, to be sure about that, best ask at the BOINC Projects email list. This list needs registration, but you will be answered by other project admin and/or the developers, and that normally within a day.

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Thanks Ageless,

I've read the page you provided. My problem is that BOINC distribute tasks to host as one or more tasks per host in the grid. I can't do that in this application. The application has a single task tha takes a lot of work. My question is: Can I run this single task (without dividing it into smaller subtasks) on multiple hosts in the grid distributing processing on all hosts at the same time? Can the BOINC client do that somehow?

No, that is not possible with BOINC.

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Can I run this single task (without dividing it into smaller subtasks) on multiple hosts in the grid distributing processing on all hosts at the same time?

How many techniques do you know which transform a device cluster into the representation of a single computer?
Would you like to try out software approaches like "Condor^®" or "Beowulf"?

I was hoping to stay away of clustering since these computers are not dedicated that software, but you're probably right.

One can't have everything now can he?