BOINC is an acronym for
Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. BOINC is a free
cross platform software package for
distributed computing projects. BOINC gives distributed computing projects a common
client server interface to allow numerical data to be computed by clusters of computers connected via the
Internet. The system is designed to harness the unused computational power of the millions of privately owned personal computers to solve very complex and time consuming numerical problems.
BOINC supplies key components for:
- Data distribution
- Results retrieval
- Data storage
- Web interfaces
- Software client API
- Statistics gathering
A BOINC project’s data, core client application and algorithms must be supplied by the individual project coordinators. BOINC is only a software solution. The projects themselves must supply the server hardware infrastructure and Internet connectivity.
Current projects using BOINC are:
SETI@home - Analyze radio-telescope data, looking for evidence of extraterrestrial life.
ClimatePrediction.net - Improve the accuracy of long-range climate prediction.
LHC@home - Help to build the CERN LHC accelerator.
Predictor@home - Solve biomedical questions of protein-related diseases.
BOINC’s development is supported by the
National Science Foundation.