Are you curious about this BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) thing?
For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, it is an umbrella to house any number of distributed computing projects under one application. It not only has the ability to run on your CPU but can take advantage of unused cycles on ATI/AMD and nVidia GPUs as well! And those who are running multiple computers can administer all their BOINC instances with one manager!
With BOINC’s configurability, those who are running older equipment or those who do not wish to devote 100% of their idle cycles can easily do so. Some settings include: “Set it and forget it” settings to start when you boot up, Run only when idle or within time restrictions (i.e. run from 1AM to 5AM), CPU core and % usage, network restrictions so that those still on dial-up can connect and disconnect automatically, disk usage, the % allocation for each project you wish to donate, and also a “snooze” button!
The most well-known project hosted by BOINC probably is SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence as seen in the movie Contact. You can choose projects that tickle your fancy in the research fields of: Disease, Biology, Protein, Cryptography, Mathematics, Games, Climate study, A.I., Physics, Astronomy, and more! There are even Grid projects that host a number of their own projects!
The program can be installed on a number of 32 and 64 bit platforms such as: Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, and PS3s running Linux. It also features a graphical screensaver that can be activated in your system settings which displays output from the various projects you are running. (I really like the SETI one!)
Everyone’s welcome! To get started, go to the BOINC links below and download the client. Browse and choose projects, and visit those project’s webpages to get set up! Once there, be sure to “Find a team” and search for our “Team Elder Scrolls” and join up on each project’s website!
BOINC main page: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/
Download BOINC: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php
Choose projects: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php
Our team stats: http://www.allprojectstats.com/showteam.php?projekt=0&id=1568012
If you have any questions, or any projects missing our team? PM me!
