Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing
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The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is a middleware system for volunteer computing, originally developed to support SETI@home, but intended to be useful for other applications as well. The software is free/open source software, released under the GNU Lesser General Public License. Currently BOINC is being developed by a team based at the University of California, Berkeley led by David Anderson, who also leads SETI@home. As a "quasi-supercomputing" platform BOINC has over 435,000 active computers (hosts) worldwide processing on average 521 TFLOPS as of March 12, 2007.[1][2]
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[edit] SETI@home origins of the BOINC platform
SETI@home is one of the better known projects using BOINC. The original SETI client was a non-BOINC software exclusively for SETI@home.
The success of SETI@home—which after its launch in 1999 quickly became the most powerful computing network ever assembled — made it clear that volunteer computing could be used for many other computing-intensive scientific projects.
- The intent of BOINC is to make it possible for researchers in areas as diverse as molecular biology, climatology, and astrophysics to tap into the enormous but under-utilized calculating power of personal computers world-wide. In essence BOINC is software that can use the unused CPU cycles on a computer, to do scientific computing— what you don't use of your computer, it uses.
BOINC is funded by the National Science Foundation through awards SCI/0221529, SCI/0438443, and SCI/0506411.
[edit] Design and structure of BOINC
BOINC is designed to be a free structure for anyone wishing to start a volunteer computing project.
- Most BOINC projects are nonprofit and rely heavily, if not completely, on volunteers.
- This does not mean BOINC cannot be used for profit, as there are some private companies that are beginning to use the platform to assist in their own research.
BOINC consists of a server system and client software that communicate with each other to distribute, process, and return work units.
[edit] BOINC User Interfaces
BOINC can be controlled remotely by Remote Procedure Calls, from the command line, and from the BOINC Manager.
BOINC Manager currently has two 'views': the Advanced View and the Simplified GUI.
The appearance (skin) of the Simplified GUI is user-customizable, in that users can create their own designs.
[edit] BOINC Credit System
The BOINC Credit System is designed to avoid cheating by validating results before granting credit.
- A credit management system helps to ensure that users are returning results which are both scientifically and statistically accurate.
- Online distributed computing is almost entirely a volunteer endeavor. For this reason projects are dependent on a complicated and variable mix of new users, long-term users, and retiring users.
- There is no single generic reason why someone chooses to donate his or her computing resources to any given project.
[edit] Projects using BOINC
[edit] Current projects
[edit] Biology and Medicine
- Cell Computing — biomedical research. Website (Japanese)
- Malaria Control — for stochastic modelling of the clinical epidemiology and natural history of Plasmodium falciparum malaria. Website
- Predictor@home — to predict protein structure from protein sequence. Website
- proteins@home — deduces DNA sequence, given a protein Website
- Rosetta@home — to predict and design protein structures. Website
- SIMAP — is a database of protein similarities using distributed computing to detect sequence similarities. Website
- TANPAKU — to predict protein structures from DNA sequence Website
- World Community Grid — advance our knowledge of human disease. Website
[edit] Climate modeling
- Climateprediction.net — tries to produce a forecast of the climate in the 21st century. Website
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- BBC Climate Change Experiment — Website (part of Climateprediction.net)
- Seasonal Attribution Project — Website (part of Climateprediction.net)
[edit] Physics and astronomy
- Einstein@Home — search for spinning neutron stars (also called pulsars) using data from the LIGO and GEO 600 gravitational wave detectors. Website
- LHC@home — help scientists at CERN to simulate particles travelling in the Large Hadron Collider. Website
- SETI@home — Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Website
[edit] Mathematics
- ABC@Home — attempt to solve the ABC conjecture problem. Website
- SZTAKI Desktop Grid — searches for generalized binary number systems. Website
[edit] Projects under development
These projects are considered to be in the Alpha or Beta development stages. Some might be totally safe for your computer whereas others might under select circumstances cause minor damage (such as overheating).
[edit] Mathematics and computing
- Chess960@Home — Chess960 is a young innovative chess variant. This project tries to combine Chess960 and the idea of distributed computing to inject some basics of theory to this chess variant. Website (Alpha)
- DepSpid — BOINC based web crawler. Website (Closed Alpha)
- HashClash@home — The purpose is to extend both theoretical and experimental results on collision generation for the MD5 and SHA1 hash functions. Website (Closed-Beta)
- PrimeGrid — a project for factoring the number in the RSA Factoring Challenge, and also to test "PerlBOINC". Website (Alpha)
- Project Neuron — to record, observe and understand BOINC activity and data with a view to developing metrics website
- RieselSieve — attempting to solve the Riesel problem. Website (Beta)
- The Lattice Project — to integrate and deploy computing resources for scientific analysis. Website (Alpha)
- XtremLab — measures the free resources available on desktop PC's involved in large-scale distributed computing. Results will be used to improve the design of systems, such as BOINC. Website
[edit] Render farms
- BURP — to develop a publicly distributed system for rendering 3D animations. Website (Alpha)
- RenderFarm@Home — a publicly distributed system for rendering Website (Alpha)
[edit] Biology and Medicine
- Docking@Home — Modelling protein-ligand docking. Website (Closed alpha)
- Folding@home, BOINC version — to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases. Website
- RALPH@home — Rosetta@home official alpha test project. Website
[edit] Physics and astronomy
- Leiden Classical — General Classical Dynamics Grid for any scientist or science student Leiden University Website.
- LHC@home Alpha — LHC@Home official alpha test project. Website (Closed alpha)
- Nano-Hive@Home — simulating large-scale nanotech systems. Website
- Orbit@home — monitoring the impact hazard posed by near-Earth objects. Website
- Pirates@home — currently being used to test BOINC's forum software for possible use by another project: Interactions in Understanding the Universe. Website
- QMC@Home — study the structure and reactivity of molecules using Quantum Monte Carlo. Website
- SETI@home beta — is currently the test environment for SETI@home programs destined for public use. There is an ancillary SETI@home alpha — test environment for SETI@home beta code, workunits and science. SETI Alpha clients are used to test SETI@home Beta code. Currently Astropulse is in SETI Alpha testing. SETI@home beta web page
- Spinhenge@Home — calculates and simulates spin dynamics in nano scaled molecular magnets. This makes it possibile to create very small switches for medicine and technicques. Website (Beta)
- μFluids@Home — computer simulation of two-phase fluid behavior in microgravity, and microfluidics problems. Website
[edit] Future projects
- Astropulse — searching for primordial black holes, pulsars, and ETI. Originally slated for a 2003 release, some Astropulse work units are only now being distributed for Linux clients. Not all the released workunits are being successfully crunched to completion, but then again, that's the purpose of a beta project: To test, find problems, and correct them. This project is clearly not vaporware. Website
- PlanetQuest — search for and discover new planets. Website
[edit] Retired projects
- ALife@Home — an effort to conduct scientific experiments regarding neural networks and evolution on the computers of volunteers.
[edit] Account Managers
A BOINC Account Manager is a web site that simplifies participating in multiple BOINC projects across multiple computers (CPUs) and operating systems. Account managers were designed for people who are new to BOINC or had several computers participating in several projects. Current account managers include:
- http://bam.boincstats.com/ (The first publicly available Account Manager)
- http://gridrepublic.org/ (GridRepublic)
[edit] References
- Vance, Ashlee. "Sun and UC Berkeley are about to BOINC", The Register, December 17, 2003. Retrieved on 2006-11-13.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Willy de Zutter (Updated automatically). BOINC combined - Credit overview. BOINCstats.com. Retrieved on 2007-01-30.
- ^ Willy de Zutter (Updated automatically). BOINC combined - Hosts overview. BOINCstats.com. Retrieved on 2007-01-30.
[edit] See also
- List of distributed computing projects
- BOINC Credit System
- distributed.net
- United Devices Cancer Research Project
- Xgrid A similar technology built into Mac OS X
[edit] External links
- Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC)
- BOINC stats from The Knights who Say Ni!
- BOINC users and teams statistics (daily updated)
- Another BOINC stats website (updated daily)
- Interview with David Anderson
- Rom Walton's Blog (BOINC Developer)
- Unofficial BOINC "Wiki"
- BOINC miniFAQ
- BOINC Ecuador
- How-To: Join Distributed Computing projects that benefit humanity
- Another How to install and join BOINC courtesy (and aimed at new members) of *BOINC@Hull
- BOINC Packages for Debian
- BOINC Packages for Fedora Core
- BOINCpe Live-CD for BOINC
