What is Superlink@Technion

Superlink@Technion helps geneticists perform genetic linkage analysis, which is a statistical method used to associate functionality of genes with their location on chromosomes. It typically serves for detecting mutated disease-provoking genes. This analysis can be extremely computationally intensive and has been parallelized for simultaneous execution on many computers. Geneticists submit the data for the analysis via Superlink-online linkage analysis portal. The tasks are then automatically parallelized and scheduled for execution on many computers in the Technion, in the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and also on many computers all over the world.

Your computer can help geneticists perform their analysis faster! All you need to do is download and install a small client, called BOINC. The client will start the computations according to the predefined scheduling policy, which by default is configured to start jobs only at nights and during weekends. The client will pull the data and the executable from our server, perform the computations and then return the results back to the server. The program that will perform the actual computations is called Superlink. It is a well known genetic linkage analysis program developed in our laboratory, and thoroughly tested to make sure that it cannot corrupt any local data. You will also be able to configure your BOINC client to restrict the use of your computer.

BOINC infrastructure we use for our project has been developed at UC Berkely for over 6 years and is installed in millions PCs worldwide, performing various scientific tasks (such as search for intelligence from outer-space signals SETI@HOME - see http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu).

Join Superlink@Technion

The brief instructions are below. For detailed information please see our rules, policies and instructions.
Download BOINC client from the table below. If you do not have administrative rights on your Windows computer, please follow these instructions.
When prompted for Project URL, verify that it is http://cbl-boinc-server2.cs.technion.ac.il/superlinkattechnion/.
When prompted, enter your e-mail and password to create new account (e-mail will not be disclosed). This is required for you to be able to change the policy of how Superlink@Technion will use your computer.
You are done! By default, your computer will be used at nights and during weekends and only as long as the BOINC manager is active. So you will not see any computations started right after the installation. See scheduling policy below to learn how to change it. You can always ask any question or express your concerns via e-mail (marks-at-cs-dot-technion-dot-ac-dot-il) or by posting them to the forum.

MS WindowsScheduling policyVersion
BOINC installer (3.73 MB)
recommended
Run according to your policy (by default 22.00-8.00) and 24 hours a day during weekends (Fri, Sat)
5.8.16
BOINC installer (3.73 MB)
Run according to your policy (by default 22.00-8.00) only
5.8.16

Linux
BOINC installer (4.05 MB)
Run according to your policy (by default 22.00-8.00)
5.8.17


Superlink@Technion scheduling policy

It is possible to configure the policy according to which your computer will be used. To minimize the interference with your work, we configured the default policy to allow computations only at nights (22.00-8.00) and only if you are not using the computer. You can change this policy as well as configure the restrictions on using your computer, such as the amount of RAM, CPU, network and disk allowed, by logging into your account, created when you first connect to the project. You can also override a small subset of these policies by using the "Preferences" button in the BOINC manager.

In addition, we modified the original version of BOINC installer by adding special weekend schedule for using your computer continuously during Friday and Saturday. If you do not want to apply such a schedule, please uninstall BOINC and install the version "Run according to your policy only" in the table above. If you only want to temporarily disable the weekend schedule, go to " Scheduled tasks" in the Condor panel and delete the entry "BOINC at weekends". When you restart BOINC next time, the entry will be reinserted.

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