Characterizing Resource Availability for Volunteer Computing and its Impact on Task Distribution Methods

Abstract:- Volunteer computing uses computational resources that would otherwise be unused, to solve computationally intensive projects [1]. We have collected data from several different types of computers about the durations of periods when the computers were able and unable to participate in volunteer computing projects. We found that those periods differed significantly, indicating that a single method of task distribution for a volunteer computing project may not be adequate to make the best use of the donated CPU cycles. The data we have collected will also be useful in future work, to analyze portions of volunteer computing clients in an attempt to reduce the wasted resources and increase the productivity of volunteer computing and to compare the amount of work that can be completed by using different types of volunteer computing clients