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Category: Support
Forum: Suggestions / Feedback
Thread: WCG future platform choice |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 4
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
So far, the science applications have been ported to Windows and Linux. However, there is a lot of other stuff out there. I have seen repeated pleas for support for the Macintosh, BSD and various esoteric Unix flavours.
Why not run a poll to see which platform should be targetted next? Or, why not concentrate effort on writing a cross-platform (non-optimised) version of at least one of the science applications? Cross-platform isn't all that hard to do, given a wise choice of libraries to abstract away all the environment differences, and a compiler for each target platform. Remember: if it is open source, the work need not all fall to IBM. Let the polling begin! |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hi Didactylos,
The next on the list is Mac OS X, but we have to board new projects and continue with adapting BOINC, so I am not guessing when it will be convenient to add it. mycrofth |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Glad to hear it - but not nearly so glad as my team mates will be (me being one of those who consider one mouse button to be not enough, and Mac OSs < 10 to be the work of beelzebub himself).
What exactly are you doing to BOINC? Is it just back-end changes to accommodate your website and scoring system? You mention a list. Is it your firm intention to cover as many platforms as reasonably possible, or do you have an early cut-off, where you deem the effort not worthwhile? I'm guessing in the not-too-distant future you will be forced to switch your porting efforts to 64 bit. Obviously I don't know the ins and outs, but potentially many science applications are going to benefit hugely from 64 bit architectures. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hello Didactylos,
List is a bit grandiose. We started out in 2004 almost promising Mac OS X and now it is firm. But past that, whatever seems most worthwhile. As far as I know, no final decision has been made. At some point, we might find that effort to expand the number of supported languages will pay better returns than supporting another platform. There are a lot of small changes and additions needed server-side to accomodate BOINC. knreed is the one who knows how much remains to do. As for 64-bit computing, no one has told me anything but I would not expect much of a rush yet. The main benefit is the additional set of registers, which allows compilers to produce code that runs 10% - 15% faster. The new game consoles are mostly designed with 3 cores because 3-4 cores max out the bandwidth that can be fed to a chip currently. So with BOINC allowing multiple threads, we are prepared to make excellent use of quad-core CPUs when they come out even without 64-bit applications. So our best way to expand is by gaining more members. All this is just my view of the situation. mycrofth |
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