Simulation Software

At its core, NanoHive@Home uses the NanoHive-1 Nanospace Simulator to calculate the simulations. NanoHive-1 is a modular simulator used for modeling the physical world at a nanometer scale. Two important issues that NanoHive-1 was designed to handle are

  1. The number and complexity of factors that play a part in simulating nanospace
  2. The computational intensity required to calculate those factors for each atom per time and space quantum
To that end, the architecture of the simulator provides a plugin framework for key simulation functions such as the physical interactions between atomic and molecular entities, and the traversal of atomic and molecular entities in time and space. A detailed description is available here. The BOINC platform is integrated with NanoHive-1 via two plugins:
  • BOINC_PIC_Control plugin. This plugin interfaces the master NanoHive-1 instance with the BOINC server components to generate, and re-assimilate work units. PIC stands for Physical Interaction Calculator, which essentially represents a computer running NanoHive-1 (although it could also be a cluster of computers sharing the same memory).
  • BOINC_ClientControl plugin. This plugin interfaces the Main Program with the slave NanoHive-1 instance running on the participant.s computer. The Main Program orchestrates the process of un-zipping and executing the graphics/screensaver program and NanoHive-1 simulator, monitoring simulation progress, and finally communicating claimed credit via the BOINC Manager.
This diagram shows how all the components are coordinated:

Sourcecode

NanoHive@Home is open-source. Specifically, all the green hexagonal programs in the above illustration that make up NanoHive@Home are available via Sourceforge.net CVS (browse). Here are the cvs commands to check out the code: 
$ cvs \
    -d:pserver:anonymous@nano-hive.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/nano-hive \
    login
When prompted for a password, simply press the Enter key, then execute: 
$ cvs -z3 \
    -d:pserver:anonymous@nano-hive.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/nano-hive co \
    -P nano-hive