
The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC, pronounced – rhymes with "oink") is an
open-source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
middleware system for
volunteer computing (a type of
distributed computing). Developed originally to support
SETI@home, it became the platform for many other applications in areas as diverse as
medicine,
molecular biology,
mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
,
linguistics,
climatology,
environmental science
Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physics, biology, and geography (including ecology, chemistry, plant science, zoology, mineralogy, oceanography, limnology, soil science, geology and physical geograp ...
, and
astrophysics
Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline said, Astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the nature of the h ...
, among others. The purpose of BOINC is to enable researchers to utilize
processing resources of
personal computers and other devices around the world.
BOINC development began with a group based at the
Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL) at the
University of California, Berkeley, and led by
David P. Anderson, who also led SETI@home. As a high-performance volunteer computing platform, BOINC brings together 34,236 active participants employing 136,341 active computers (hosts) worldwide, processing daily on average 20.164
PetaFLOPS (it would be the 21st largest processing capability in the world compared with an individual
supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...
). The
National Science Foundation (NSF) funds BOINC through awards SCI/0221529, SCI/0438443 and SCI/0721124. ''
Guinness World Records'' ranks BOINC as the largest
computing grid
Grid computing is the use of widely distributed computer resources to reach a common goal. A computing grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve many files. Grid computing is distinguished from co ...
in the world.
BOINC
code
In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communication ...
runs on various
operating systems, including
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
,
macOS,
Android
Android may refer to:
Science and technology
* Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human
* Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system
** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...
,
Linux, and
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...
. BOINC is
free software released under the terms of the
GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
History
BOINC was originally developed to manage the
SETI@home project.
The original SETI client was a non-BOINC software exclusively for SETI@home. It was one of the first
volunteer computing projects, and not designed with a high level of security. As a result, some participants in the project attempted to cheat the project to gain "credits", while others submitted entirely falsified work. BOINC was designed, in part, to combat these security breaches.
The BOINC project started in February 2002, and its first version was released on April 10, 2002. The first BOINC-based project was
Predictor@home
Predictor@home was a volunteer computing project that used BOINC software to predict protein structure from protein sequence in the context of the 6th biannual CASP, or Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction. A major g ...
, launched on June 9, 2004. In 2009,
AQUA@home
AQUA@home was a volunteer computing project operated by D-Wave Systems that ran on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) software platform. It ceased functioning in August 2011. Its goal was to predict the performanc ...
deployed multi-threaded CPU applications for the first time, followed by the first
OpenCL application in 2010.
As of 15 August 2022, there are 33 projects on the official list.
There are also, however, BOINC projects not included on the official list. Each year, an international BOINC Workshop is hosted to increase collaboration among project administrators. In 2021, the workshop was hosted virtually.
While not affiliated with BOINC officially, there have been several independent projects that reward BOINC users for their participation, including
Charity Engine (sweepstakes based on processing power with prizes funded by private entities who purchase computational time of CE users), Bitcoin Utopia (now defunct), and
Gridcoin (a blockchain which mints coins based on processing power).
Design and structure
BOINC is
software that can exploit the unused
CPU
A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and ...
and
GPU cycles on
computer hardware
Computer hardware includes the physical parts of a computer, such as the computer case, case, central processing unit (CPU), Random-access memory, random access memory (RAM), Computer monitor, monitor, Computer mouse, mouse, Computer keyboard, ...
to perform scientific computing. In 2008, BOINC's website announced that
Nvidia had developed a language called
CUDA that uses GPUs for scientific computing. With NVIDIA's assistance, several BOINC-based projects (e.g.,
MilkyWay@home.
SETI@home) developed applications that run on NVIDIA GPUs using CUDA. BOINC added support for the
ATI/
AMD family of GPUs in October 2009. The GPU applications run from 2 to 10 times faster than the former CPU-only versions. GPU support (via
OpenCL) was added for computers using
macOS with AMD Radeon graphic cards, with the current BOINC client supporting OpenCL on Windows, Linux, and macOS. GPU support is also provided for
Intel GPUs.
BOINC consists of a
server system and
client software that communicate to process and distribute work units and return results.
Mobile application
A BOINC app also exists for Android, allowing every person owning an Android device – smartphone, tablet and/or Kindle – to share their unused computing power. The user is allowed to select the research projects they want to support, if it is in the app's available project list.
By default, the application will allow computing only when the device is connected to a WiFi network, is being charged, and the battery has a charge of at least 90%. Some of these settings can be changed to users needs. Not all BOINC projects are available
and some of the projects are not compatible with all versions of Android operating system or availability of work is intermittent. Currently available projects
[ are Asteroids@home, Einstein@Home, LHC@home, Moo! Wrapper, Rosetta@home, Universe@Home, World Community Grid and yoyo@home. As of September 2021, the most recent version of the mobile application can only be downloaded from the BOINC website or the F-Droid repository as the official Google Play store does not allow downloading and running executables not signed by the app developer and each BOINC project has their own executable files.
]
User interfaces
BOINC can be controlled remotely by remote procedure calls (RPC), from the command line, and from a BOINC Manager.
BOINC Manager currently has two "views": the ''Advanced View'' and the ''Simplified GUI''. The ''Grid View'' was removed in the 6.6.x clients as it was redundant.
The appearance ( skin) of the Simplified GUI is user-customizable, in that users can create their own designs.
Account managers
A BOINC Account Manager is an application that manages multiple BOINC project accounts across multiple computers (CPUs) and operating systems. Account managers were designed for people who are new to BOINC or have several computers participating in several projects. The account manager concept was conceived and developed jointly by GridRepublic and BOINC. Current and past account managers include:
* BAM! (BOINC Account Manager) (The first publicly available Account Manager, released for public use on May 30, 2006)
* GridRepublic (Follows the ideas of simplicity and neatness in account management)
* Charity Engine (Non-profit account manager for hire, uses prize draws and continuous charity fundraising to motivate people to join the grid)
* Science United
The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC, pronounced – rhymes with "oink") is an open-source middleware system for volunteer computing (a type of distributed computing). Developed originally to support SETI@home, it beca ...
(An account manager designed to make BOINC easier to use which automatically selects vetted BOINC projects for users based on desired research areas such as "medicine" or "physics")
* Dazzler (Open-source Account Manager, to ease institutional management resources)
Credit system
* The BOINC Credit System is designed to avoid bad hardware and cheating by validating results before granting credit.
* The credit management system helps to ensure that users are returning results which are both statistically and scientifically accurate.
* Online volunteer computing is a complicated and variable mix of long-term users, retiring users and new users with different personal aspirations.
Projects
BOINC is used by many groups and individuals. Some BOINC projects are based at universities and research labs while others are independent areas of research or interest.
Active
Completed
See also
* List of volunteer computing projects
* List of free and open-source Android applications
* List of grid computing projects
This is a comprehensive list of Grid computing infrastructure projects.
Grid computing infrastructure projects
* BREIN uses the Semantic Web and multi-agent systems to build simple and reliable grid systems for business, with a focus on enginee ...
* List of citizen science projects
* List of crowdsourcing projects
* 3G Bridge {{no footnotes, date=June 2014
The Generic Grid-Grid (3G) Bridge is an open-source core job bridging component between different grid infrastructures. Its development started in 2008 within the CancerGrid and EDGeS projects. The aim was to create ...
* Africa@home
Africa@home is a website that allow users to use their home computers to contribute for humanitarian causes at Africa. This project first went public on 13 July 2006. It partners with Swiss Tropical Institute, the University of Geneva, CERN, and I ...
* Citizen Cyberscience Centre
* distributed.net
Distributed.net is a volunteer computing effort that is attempting to solve large scale problems using otherwise idle CPU or GPU time. It is governed by Distributed Computing Technologies, Incorporated (DCTI), a non-profit organization under U. ...
* Folding@home
* Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search
* grid.org
* BOSSA
Bossa nova () is a style of samba developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is mainly characterized by a "different beat" that altered the harmonies with the introduction of unconventional chords and an innovativ ...
External links
*
References
{{Authority control
Volunteer computing
2002 software
Free science software
Cross-platform free software
Free and open-source Android software
Science software for macOS
Science software for Linux
Science software for Windows
Software that uses wxWidgets