- Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing
infobox software
name = BOINC
caption = Current (top) and former (bottom) BOINC logos
developer =University of California, Berkeley
latest_release_version = 6.2.19
latest_release_date = September 22, 2008
operating_system =Cross-platform
genre =Grid computing
license =GNU Lesser General Public License
website = http://boinc.berkeley.edu/The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is a non-commercial
middleware system for volunteer andgrid computing . It was originally developed to support theSETI@home project before it became useful as a platform for other distributed 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 enormousprocessing power ofpersonal computer s around the world.BOINC has been developed by a team based at the
Space Sciences Laboratory at theUniversity of California, Berkeley led by David Anderson, who also leads SETI@home. As a "quasi-supercomputing " platform, BOINC has over 565,000 active computers (hosts) worldwide processing on average 1.2PFLOPS as of July 27, 2008." [http://www.boincstats.com/stats/project_graph.php?pr=bo BOINCstats - BOINC combined credit overview] ." Retrieved on July 27, 2008.] BOINC is funded by theNational Science Foundation through awards SCI/0221529, [ [http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0221529 Research and Infrastructure Development for Public-Resource Scientific Computing] , The National Science Foundation] SCI/0438443 [ [http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0438443 SCI: NMI Development for Public-Resource Computing and Storage] , The National Science Foundation] and SCI/0721124. [ [http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0721124 SDCI NMI Improvement: Middleware for Volunteer Computing] , The National Science Foundation]The framework is supported by various operating systems, including
Microsoft Windows ,Mac OS X and variousUnix-like systems includingLinux andFreeBSD . BOINC isfree software which is released under theGNU Lesser General Public License .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, onvolunteer s.In essence BOINC is
software that can use the unused CPU cycles on acomputer 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 workunits.
BOINC User Interfaces
BOINC can be controlled remotely by
Remote Procedure Call s, from thecommand line , and from theBOINC Account Manager .BOINC Manager currently has three 'views': the "Advanced View", the "Grid 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:
* [http://bam.boincstats.com/ BOINC Account Manager] (The first publicly available Account Manager)
* [http://gridrepublic.org/ GridRepublic]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.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. [cite web
last = Anderson
first = Dr. David P.
title = Public Computing: Reconnecting People to Science
url=http://boinc.berkeley.edu/madrid.html
accessdate = 2007-06-13 ]Projects using BOINC Framework
See also
*
List of distributed computing projects
*distributed.net
*United Devices Cancer Research Project
*Xgrid A similar technology built into Mac OS XReferences
* cite news
first = Ashlee | last = Vance
title = Sun and UC Berkeley are about to BOINC
url = http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/61/34570.html
publisher = The Register | date= 2003-12-17 | accessdate = 2006-11-13External links
* [http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC)]
* [http://acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=printer_friendly&pid=313&page=1 Interview with David Anderson]
* [http://www.boinc-wiki.info/ Unofficial wiki]
* [http://www.romwnet.org/dasblogce/ Rom Walton's Blog (BOINC Developer)]
* [http://boincoid.sourceforge.net Boincoid - A Java/Android port of BOINC]
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