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The 'Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing' ('BOINC') is a non-commercial
middleware system for
volunteer computing, originally developed to support the
SETI@home project, but intended to be useful for other applications in areas as diverse as mathematics, medicine, molecular biology, climatology, and astrophysics. The intent of BOINC is to make it possible for researchers to tap into the enormous
processing power of
personal computers around the world.
BOINC has been developed by a team based at the
Space Sciences Laboratory at the
University of California, Berkeley led by
David Anderson, who also leads SETI@home. As a "quasi-supercomputing" platform, BOINC has over 430,000 active computers (hosts) worldwide processing on average 663
TFLOPS as of
September 8,
2007.
[1] BOINC is funded by the
National Science Foundation through awards SCI/0221529, SCI/0438443, and SCI/0506411.
The software is
free/
open source software, released under the
GNU Lesser General Public License. It is also used for commercial usages, as there are some private companies that are beginning to use the platform to assist in their own research. The framework is supported by various operating systems:
Windows (XP/2K/2003/NT/98/ME),
Unix (
Linux,
FreeBSD) and
Mac OS X.
Design and structure of BOINC
Main articles: BOINC client-server technology
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.
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 consists of a
server system and client software that communicate with each other to distribute, process, and return work units.
Origins of the BOINC platform
BOINC was originally developed to manage the
SETI@home project.
The original SETI client was a non-BOINC software exclusively for SETI@home. Being one of the first volunteer grid computing projects, it was not designed with a high level of security. Some participants in the project attempted to cheat the project to gain "credits"; while some others submitted entirely falsified work. BOINC was designed, in part, to combat these security breaches.
[2]
BOINC User Interfaces
BOINC can be controlled remotely by
Remote Procedure Calls, from the
command line, and from the
BOINC Account 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.
Account Managers
The account manager concept was conceived and developed jointly by
GridRepublic and BOINC. Current account managers include:
★
BOINC Account Manager (The first publicly available Account Manager)
★
GridRepublic
BOINC Credit System
Main articles: 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.
Projects using BOINC Framework
Current projects
★ 'Biology and Medicine'
★
★
Cell Computing — biomedical research.
[3]
★
★
Malaria Control — for
stochastic modelling of the clinical
epidemiology and natural history of ''Plasmodium falciparum
malaria''.
[4]
★
★
Predictor@home — to predict
protein structure from
protein sequence.
[5]
★
★
proteins@home — deduces DNA sequence, given a protein.
[6]
★
★
Rosetta@home — to predict and design
protein structures to fight diseases such as
Cancer,
Malaria,
HIV and
Alzheimer.
[7]
★
★
SIMAP — a
database of protein similarities using distributed computing to detect sequence similarities.
[8]
★
★
TANPAKU — to
predict protein structures from DNA sequence.
[9]
★
★
World Community Grid — advance our knowledge of human
disease.
[10]
★ 'Earth Sciences'
★
★
Climateprediction.net — tries to produce a forecast of the
climate in the
21st century.
[11]
★
★
★
BBC Climate Change Experiment[12] — (part of Climateprediction.net)
★
★
★
Seasonal Attribution Project[13] — (part of Climateprediction.net)
★ 'Physics and Astronomy'
★
★
Einstein@Home — search for spinning
neutron stars (also called
pulsars) using data from the
LIGO and
GEO 600 gravitational wave detectors.
[14]
★
★
LHC@home — help scientists at
CERN to simulate particles travelling in the
Large Hadron Collider.
[15]
★
★
SETI@home — Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (
SETI).
[16] The project will host:
★
★
★
Astropulse — searching for primordial
black holes,
pulsars, and
ETI. Originally slated for a 2003 release, some Astropulse work units are only now being distributed. On January 31st 2007 a new beta of the application was released.
[17][18]
★ 'Mathematics'
★
★
ABC@Home — attempt to solve the
ABC conjecture problem.
[19]
★
★
SZTAKI Desktop Grid — searches for generalized
binary number systems.
[20]
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).
★ 'Mathematics and Computing'
★
★
Chess960@Home —
Chess960 is a relatively 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.
[21] (Alpha)
★
★
DepSpid — builds up a database containing the dependencies between individual web sites and groups of web sites, and collects statistical data about the structure of the
World Wide Web.
[22] (Closed Alpha)
★
★
HashClash@home — The purpose is to extend both theoretical and experimental results on
collision generation for the
MD5 and
SHA1 hash functions.
[23] (Closed-Beta)
★
★
PrimeGrid — a project that runs a search for
titanic primes.
[24]
★
★
Project Neuron — To record, observe and understand BOINC activity and data with a view to developing
metrics.
[25]
★
★
Project Sudoku - searches for the smallest possible start configuration of
Sudoku.
[26]
★
★
Rectilinear Crossing Number — Solving problems related to
graph theory.
★
★
Riesel Sieve — Attempting to solve the
Riesel problem.
[27] (Beta)
★
★
SHA-1 Collision Search - searches for a
collision in the
SHA1 hash function.
[28]
★
★
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.
[29]
★
★
Zebra RSA Bruteforce — to study
RSA encryption.
[30]
★ 'Render Farms'
★
★
BURP — to develop a publicly distributed system for rendering
3D animations.
[31] (Alpha)
★
★
RenderFarm@Home — a publicly distributed system for rendering.
[32] (Alpha)
★ 'Biology and Medicine'
★
★
Docking@Home — Modelling protein-
ligand docking.
[33] (Closed alpha)
★
★
Folding@home, BOINC version — to understand
protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases.
[34]
★
★
The Lattice Project — To integrate and deploy computing resources for scientific analysis.
[35] (Alpha)
★
★
PS3GRID — Full-atom molecular dynamics simulations and other scientific applications specially optimized for the Cell processor in
PlayStation 3.
[36]
★
★
RALPH@home —
Rosetta@home official alpha test project.
[37]
★
★
SciLINC — to index a digitised library of plant species.
[38][39]
★
★
Superlink@Technion — genetic linkage analysis.
[40]
★
★
Bio4All ToolKits - genetic annotation tools for responsible research
[41]
★ 'Physics and Astronomy'
★
★
BRaTS@Home — to study
gravitational lensing.
[42]
★
★
Cosmology@Home — searches for the model that best describes our
Universe and finds the range of models that agree with the available astronomical and
particle physics data.
[43]
★
★
Leiden Classical — General
Classical Dynamics Grid for any scientist or science student
Leiden University.
[44]
★
★
LHC@home Alpha —
LHC@Home official alpha test project.
[45] (Closed)
★
★
Nano-Hive@Home — simulating large-scale
nanotech systems.
[46]
★
★
Orbit@home — monitoring the impact hazard posed by
near-Earth objects (not open yet).
[47]
★
★
Pirates@home — currently being used to test
BOINC's forum software for possible use by another project:
Interactions in Understanding the Universe.
[48]
★
★
QMC@Home — study the structure and reactivity of molecules using
Quantum Monte Carlo.
[49]
★
★
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.
[50]
★
★
Spinhenge@Home — models the
spin of
elementary particles using the principles of
quantum mechanics.
[51] (Beta)
★
★
μFluids@Home — simulates
two-phase flow in
microgravity and
microfluidics problems.
[52]
★ 'Earth Sciences'
★
★
APS@Home — examines the effects of
atmospheric dispersion as it relates to the accuracy of measurements used in climate prediction.
[53]
Test Projects
★
Belgian Beer@Home — a BOINC platform testing project which, as yet, has no application.
[54]
Future Projects
★
PlanetQuest — search for and discover new
planets.
[55]
Retired Projects
★
ALife@Home — an effort to conduct scientific experiments regarding
neural networks and
evolution on the computers of volunteers.
Notes
1. "BOINCstats | BOINC combined - Credit overview." Retrieved on Sep 08, 2007.
2. Public Computing: Reconnecting People to Science
3. "Cell Computing" website
4. "Malaria Control Project" website
5. "Predictor@home" website
6. "proteins@home" website
7. "Rosetta@home" website
8. "SIMAP" website
9. "TANPAKU" website
10. "World Community Grid" website
11. "Climateprediction.net" website
12. "BBC Climate Change Experiment" website
13. "Seasonal Attribution Project" website
14. "Einstein@Home" website
15. "LHC@home" website
16. "SETI@home" website
17. http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/beta/forum_thread.php?id=834
18. "Astropulse" website
19. "ABC@Home" website
20. "SZTAKI Desktop Grid" website
21. "Chess960@Home" website
22. "DepSpid" website
23. "HashClash@home" website
24. "PrimeGrid" website
25. "Project Neuron" website
26. [1]
27. "Riesel Sieve" website
28. [2]
29. "XtremLab" website
30. "Zebra RSA Bruteforce" website
31. "BURP" website
32. "RenderFarm@Home" website
33. "Docking@Home" website
34. "Folding@home" website
35. "The Lattice Project" website
36. "PS3GRID" website
37. "RALPH@home" website
38. "SciLINC" website
39. Botanicus.org description of SciLINC
40. "Superlink@Technion" website
41. "www.Bio4All.Tk" website
42. "BRaTS@Home" website
43. "Cosmology@Home" website
44. "Leiden Classical" website
45. website
46. "Nano-Hive@Home" website
47. "Orbit@home" website
48. "Pirates@home" website
49. "QMC@Home" website
50. "SETI@home beta" webpage
51. "Spinhenge@Home" website
52. "μFluids@Home" website
53. "APS@Home" website
54. "Belgian Beer@Home" website
55. "PlanetQuest" website
References
★
Sun and UC Berkeley are about to BOINC Ashlee Vance
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
External links
★
Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC)
★
Team Starfire World BOINC Stats 'N Stones by XaaK
★
BOINC stats from The Knights who Say Ni!
★
BOINC users and teams statistics (daily updated)
★
Another BOINC stats website (updated daily)
★
BOINC stats archive (daily updated)
★
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
★
Installation of BOINC Manager tutorial
★
BOINC Packages for
Debian
★
BOINC Packages for
Fedora Core
★
BOINCpe Live-CD for BOINC
★
BOINC flash tutorials (in English and Czech)
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