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Session 2658 DOGMA: An Open Source Tool for Utilization of Idle Cycles on Lab Computers

Nathan H. Ekstrom, Joseph J. Ekstrom Brigham Young University

Abstract Organizations often have many computers that are unused for much of the day. The desire to utilize these idle machines has spawned systems that attempt to harness the unused computer cycles for useful work. These include SETI, Globus, Condor, DOGMA, and recently SLURM. In the late 1990’s the Distributed Object Group Management Architecture (DOGMA) project was begun in the Network Computing Lab in the Computer Science department at Brigham Young University. DOGMA is a Java based system that allocates Java programs (jobs) to unused workstations. Although DOGMA currently has over 700 desktop workstations available for use overnight, there were several issues which impeded wide acceptance. These included robustness of the implementation, maintainability, and management issues. Many of these issues have been overcome in the most recent implementation.

This paper will discuss DOGMA including its basic design and the current status of the project. We will also discuss alternatives for its future evolution. It is interesting to observe that many of the unresolved issues are of little interest as Computer Science problems but may be of great interest to Information Technology researchers.

Introduction Figure 1 Organizations often have many computers that are unused for much of the day. The desire to utilize these idle machines has spawned systems that attempt to harness the unused computer cycles for useful work. These include SETI@home [1], Globus[2], Condor[3], DOGMA[4], and recently SLURM[5]. Each of these systems has unique characteristics and has evolved independently. At BYU DOGMA is being used to facilitate phylogentic research and 3D graphics rendering. These compute intensive applications are being executed at no cost through the use of idle cycles. This enables even undergraduates to have access to extensive computing resources.

Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & 1 Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education

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Ekstrom, N., & Ekstrom, J. (2005, June), Dogma: An Open Source Tool For Utilization Of Idle Cycles On Lab Computers Paper presented at 2005 Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--14591