Processor Philanthropy

Do you BOINC?

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Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing is one of the better methods of multitasking in the electronic age. This National Science Foundation supported cause allows people to contribute computer cycles to curing diseases, finding aliens, unlocking genes, and perfecting mathematical theorems. 

While a computer or network's friendly human overseer is enjoying the 'natural world' (trees, other people, flu viruses, etc) processors sit lonely, unused, eating valuable energy and providing nothing to the world. Unless you count heat and boring screen savers. Volunteers who have downloaded an application to 'donate' their computer's spare cycles can help save the world, among other things.

What is distributed computing?

There are questions about the world so complex that they generate huge data or require complex simulations. For some scientists a super-computer is unavailable or even insufficient to work through this information. Instead, projects like BOINC allow the large data to be broken into smaller workable units and sent off to many individual computers to be crunched. The results of the data analysis or simulations are then aggregated at the source. This process of computing big workloads is known as distributed computing.

How one can participate:

All that's needed is a computer, Internet connection, the BOINC program manager (available here), and the will. One does not need to do anything after installing the program. BOINC will automatically download small projects or data, run the work, and report the results back to the project. No data is permanently housed on the user's computer.   

There are three easy to configure time-donation settings:

1. Run at a set time every day (ex. 00:00-8:00)
2. Run at any idle moment (ex. whenever the mouse hasn't been jiggled in 20 minutes, etc)
3. Run continuously in the background making use of any unengaged memory

Users are in complete control of when the program runs on their computers and can dictate how much disk space or processor is engaged during use. BOINC is compatible with Windows, Macs, and most flavors of the Linux operating systems (though individual project compatibility should be verified). The program then asks users to decide which one or more of the following projects he or she wants to crunch. 

Available projects:

Notable projects include

• SETI@home- Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence brings radio signals from space to your computers to search for patterns that indicate intelligent communication. You know, the green guys with almond eyes who may or may not be broadcasting prime numbers at us. It is the original project for which BOINC was created. Still very cool.
• LHC@home- As the Large Hadron Collider gears up at CERN, volunteers run simulations of the particle detectors. Output from this project will hopefully allow scientists to refine their use of the LHC and future colliders.  
• Rosetta@home- Protein chains naturally fold up into bizarre configurations, with this program scientists are hoping to predict a protein's "lowest energy" folding. Hopefully this can give insights into combating cancer and diseases like malaria. 
• Climateprediction.net- This simulation attempts to predict weather in the 21st century given different scenarios. Climate prediction helps to warn against extreme conditions and changes in habitability for people everywhere.  

A more complete list of available projects is available here.

A more detailed list of popular projects is available here. 

Perks?

Apart from helping humanity? 

Projects usually come with a cool screen saver that shows off the work being done.  

  

Also, every time a work unit is completed on a user's account a few points are awarded to the account name. These point credits exist -only- for bragging rights and status, but are fun to accrue.

The homepages for different projects allow people to create profiles and exchange messages with other users. There are teams to join too. The total credits collected by all team members is a basis for friendly competition. Universities, countries, UFO skeptics, and even Monty Python loyalists have teams. Members frequently take great pride in knowing their alma mater is trouncing, say, the Colorado U team. 

There are often forums on these sites as well, allowing users to discuss improvements to the programs, results from the data, and boast about their computers. Sites that track BOINC credit like boincstats.com provide a statistical breakdown of individual user's credit by project and are a further forum for socializing and debating who has the coolest computer hardware. 

In Conclusion

As of today, over 1.5 million accounts are donating computing power. SETI remains the most popular BOINC application. And there is still plenty of good crunching left to do. 

BOINC is like an electronic blood bank. Have you donated yet?

Anyone who leaves their computer on for long periods of time (Linux users, we're looking in your direction) can make a great contribution with very little effort. And remember, family photos are nice, and flying toasters certainly had their day, but this really deserves to be your screen saver.