Met Eireann EC-Earth Earth System Model

[jkforde]

Hey

Just sent Met Eireann a message asking if they plan to release a BOINC version of the Earth System Model - maybe a few more emails to them from IB members might highlight the IB computing resource.

;]

[John37309]

That is very interesting JK,

Fair dews to you for at least trying!. I read the bit on the met.ie website, then i googled it and it seems to be run from here; http://www.ecmwf.int/about/special_projects/hazeleger_EC_EARTH/index.html . Its run and organized from Holland and the names of the people involved all look like European names, there is no Irish names.

So even though met.ie are a partner in it, it seems to be organized and run by the team in Holland.

Defiantly worth the try though. But words of advice, this website is just a place for volunteers to learn about the projects and get involved. If you want to suggest that a scientist use BOINC for a project, send them to the BOINC website; http://boinc.berkeley.edu/.

But it does sound like the perfect application that could be modeled and run as a BOINC project! JK that is the best attempt in a long time to try promote BOINC in Ireland. Well done!!. If you have any other idea's, i will help you if you want help!

{EDIT} I just sent a detailed email to them with information!

John.

[jkforde]

Hey John,

Met Eirean (sic) are mentioned in the list of other researchers on the ECMWF site so hopefully they might be listening to BOINC participants here (I got a autorespond from someone in ME who's back at his desk on Monday so we'll see...). And I might send a quick message to the principal investigator to see what he says about the idea of opening up the computation to us BOINCers.

Take it easy and thanks for the encouragement! ;]

[John37309]

I sent the same email to 3 of the relevant email address's on the Met Eireann website, that was fine. I tried to email the principal investigator on the dutch website with the email address listed there, but the email bounced and said the address did not exist. I stopped trying after that.

Without any doubt, its the Dutch guys that are running the show, its them we should be telling.

But the other side of this is that Meteorology in general is a good target area for telling scientists working in the field about BOINC software. LOL... its just that people watching the TV waiting to hear the latest weather forecast will just have to wait for the next batch of work units to be returned before they get their forecast...LOL

John.

[jkforde]

LOL, ole Winky himself would have to come on the telly and plead with BOINCers to stop throttling their CPUs so they could get a decent forecast...

I fired off a message to David Lynch in UCD but he's not going to BOINC out the modelling since they have the brand new ICHEC to play with....

....so much for that idea! any other Irish-based research modelling out there that can be coaxed into the BOINC net? how well know is home-based DC in Ireland anyhow?

[John37309]

Hmmmm.... So i Googled the words; http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=research+modelling+ireland&meta=

The google search does come back with several excellent target candidate research institutions, a few with dot ie address's, some uni's and stuff.

We could spend a bit of time at this, it is a worthwhile venture. We would need to have a well written email with careful thought as to briefly explain the pro's and con's for scientists. Then sculpt the email to individualize it for different people.

This is the email i sent to Met Eireann;

I read a recent news story about your Earth Model System, EC-EARTH.

I am involved in the development of BOINC software which is software for distributed and grid computing developed by Berkeley University in the US. BOINC software would be ideal for the EC-EARTH project as its a ready made open-source software that is very easily adapted to Climate Change modeling. BOINC is currently being used by Oxford University in the UK for the ClimatePrediction.net project. ClimatePrediction.net has proven to be very successful in modeling climate change and is one of about 60 universities and organizations around the world using BOINC software for grid computing..

The BOINC website; http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

Information about trying the BOINC software; http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/ProjectMain

If you need any more information, help or if you have any questions, please do contact me.
Thank you,
John.
{Full name, email, tel, and website details here(Removed)}

John.

[John37309]

So i had a reply from Ray Mc Grath, Head of R&A Division of Met Eireann. We had a chat on the phone for a few minutes. He explained a bit about EC-EARTH and i told him a bit about BOINC. He did seem interested in the idea and he said that he would raise the issue at one of their next meetings.

So JK your idea is working and we are getting results!

John.

[jkforde]

Hey John

Gave up on BOINC for a while over the summer but back at it again....

I'm going to start again looking into the universities on the island that are crunching on central systems and see if there's any interest in BOINCing out some of the load... HEANET is one centre maybe worth contacting what with NAMA etc., sponds will be short and BOINC might be an alternative to paying for supercomputer time

Later

[John37309]

Hay JK,
Good to have you back again, sorry for the late reply.

The only institution in Ireland that are using BOINC, apart from general volunteers, is Trinity collage, and its just experimental usage by a computer scientist called Peter Lavin, i know him well. Peter travelled to Geneva with me to a BOINC workshop. Other than that, i don't know anyone else apart from volunteers, about 4,000 in Ireland.

JK if there is anything you would like to change on this website or if you want to write articles or add any information, let me know and i can give you higher level access to this website if you want to make any changes. Just let me know! I will help you in any way i can.

John.

[jkforde]

Cheers John. I got a response (below) from a Gareth Eason with HEANET who said that they don't manage the network resources of the individual institutions but encouraged me to contact the various university\IT administrators to suss out whether the NC community here can be put to use in a 'Guaranteed Irish' sort of way!

He said...
"While we provide networking and host a number of supercomputing and
similar resources on behalf of our clients, we do not have a policy
independent of our client institutions.
Specific to the BOINC project, we provide the interconnecting network,
of course, but we do not manage the desktop computing resources that are
typical of each of our clients. Typically, each institution would have
an IT service department or similar who would be responsible for
maintaining these resources and setting policy as to their use.
If you have a particular project or resource pool in mind for BOINC,
perhaps you could contact your local educational institution and see if
they have an interest in collaborating."

I'll tip away at it, no harm I suppose in trying to raise the awareness of the institutions' IT admins to the NC\BOINC community here. And thanks for the offer for more access for BI - if I think of something that I want to contribute I'll get back here with a new thread or I'll PM you.

John

[John37309]

Thats cool JK,
Generally speaking, many collages, Uni's and institutions would be unaware that BOINC software is a free resource that any scientist could use to investigate or model something. Many people would have vaguely heard of SETI@home, but would just assume it was for volunteers, they might never really think that the BOINC software used by SETI@home can be used by anyone for any purpose.

Its good to raise awareness anyway JK,
John.

[Mack]

Would it be worth our while to give some of the gaming companys a heads up and ask them for some computing cycles.
Electronic Arts - BioWare European Support Centre
Activision Blizzard - European Support Centre
Havok - Gaming engines
Steam - are in the process of opening an office here.
not to mention our friends in Google - Ebay - PayPal - Apple - HP - Intel.

John since you have the best track record for getting the name out there do you want to try and run with it.. or will we try as a team to make up a nice PDF outlining all the Good KARMA they will get. :)

[John37309]

Sorry about the late reply Mack,
Yep, its good to spread the word about BOINC any way you can. But its difficult to get several people involved. If you want to try something yourself, that would be cool. Let us know how it goes.

John.