Survey and Taxonomy of Volunteer Computing

Abstract

Volunteer Computing is a kind of distributed computing that harnesses the aggregated spare computing resources of volunteer devices. It provides a cheaper and greener alternative computing infrastructure that can complement the dedicated, centralized, and expensive data centres. The aggregated idle computing resources of devices ranging from desktop computers to routers and smart TVs are being utilized to provide the much needed computing infrastructure for compute intensive tasks such as scientific simulations and big data analysis. However, the use of Volunteer Computing is still dominated by scientific applications and only a very small fraction of the potential volunteer nodes are participating. This article provides a comprehensive survey of Volunteer Computing, covering key technical and operational issues such as security, task distribution, resource management, and incentive models. The article also presents a taxonomy of Volunteer Computing systems, together with discussions of the characteristics of specific systems in each category. To harness the full potentials of Volunteer Computing and make it a reliable alternative computing infrastructure for general applications, we need to improve the existing techniques and device new mechanisms. Thus, this article also sheds light on important issues regarding the future research and development of Volunteer Computing systems with the aim of making them a viable alternative computing infrastructure.

Hybrid Task Coordination Using Multi-Hop Communication in Volunteer Computing-Based VANETs

“…Using volunteer computing, resource-intensive tasks can be performed without the use of expensive computing infrastructure. VC has previously been applied successfully in a variety of domains to solve computation-intensive tasks [ 42 ]. The number of vehicles on roads is growing rapidly and the resources of vehicles in the form of on-board units (OBUs)—the small computers mounted on vehicles for communications and computation—are often left idling, and can be utilized with the help of volunteer computing.…”

VANET-Based Volunteer Computing (VBVC): A Computational Paradigm for Future Autonomous Vehicles

“…High-level computational requirements and minimal participation of volunteers is a problem that needs to be tackled. To overcome this issue, additional computational resources and participantion of volunteers is required [4]. In this context, in a volunteer cloud system a multi-state Semi-Markov process-based model is developed to predict future availability and reliability of nodes.…”

“…Similarly, the cuCloud [7], [8] is a system that can be called a genuine volunteer cloud computing system, which manifests the concept of VCaaS that finds significance in edge computing and related applications. Moreover, for VANETs it must be done in a way, which is autonomous and involves maximum participation of volunteers, thus utilizing resources more efficiently [4].…”

Challenges of Influence Dynamic and Interactive Events on Resource Discovery Functionality Outside of Distributed Exascale Systems

“…In traditional computing systems, both sets of application nature and request attributes are fixed during the implementation process of resource discovery-related activities. This makes it clear from the point of view of the resource discovery if the resource discovery focuses on the RNS, a resource, and if it is based on RAS, is more than one source capable of responding to the process request (Mengistu, T. M., & Che, D., 2019;Alzboon, M. S., Mahmuddin, M., & Arif, S., 2019).…”

“…There is a response constraint in the first model, and if the request is accepted, the computational element is responding to an acceptable request. In the second model, there is no response constraint, and at any moment of the response process, there is a lack of accountability (Mengistu, T. M., & Che, D., 2019;Mengistu, T. M., & Che, D., 2019).…”