BOINC

BOINC (engl. Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) is an open software platform (university) of Berkeley for GRID of calculations) — non-commercial cross-platform software for the organization of distributed computing. It is used for the organization of voluntary calculations.

Description

BOINC is a software package for the fast organization of distributed computing. Consists of server and client parts. It was originally developed for the largest project of voluntary calculations — SETI@home, but afterwards developers in Berkeley made the platform of the University of California available to third-party projects. BOINC is the universal platform for projects in the field of mathematics, molecular biology, medicine, astrophysics and climatology. BOINC gives to researchers the chance to involve huge computing powers of personal computers from around the world.

BOINC is developed by a command led by David Pope Anderson heading also SETI@home from Space Sciences Laboratory of the University of California in Berkeley. For April 16 2012 BOINC is a distributed network from more than 460,000 active computers (hosts) with an average output about 6,100 TeraFLOPS [1]. The national scientific fund of the USA in 2002 and 2005 noted merits of developers, awarding BOINC three times: SCI/0221529, SCI/0438443 and SCI/0721124.

The platform works on different operating systems, including Microsoft Windows] and options of yuniksopodobny GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris and Mac OS X. BOINC is distributed under the license GNU Lesser General Public License as the open source open source.

Server part

Server part generally represents a set of PHP scripts and is necessary for organizers of projects for general management by the project: registration of participants, distribution of tasks for processing, obtaining results, management of databases of the project.

BOINC client

For users the concept BOINC is more often used in the context of the concept BOINC client — the universal client for work with different (BOINC - compatible) projects of distributed computing. BOINC client allows to participate at the same time in several projects with the help of one general management program (boinc or boinc.exe).

For visualization of management process of BOINC client it is possible to use or the official program manager delivered by default (boincmgr or boincmgr.exe), or to use the "unofficial" program for monitoring and management of BOINC client. It should be noted that actually BOINC client in the academic understanding has no user interface as such, and represents the service started at start of a system and is controlled under the TCP/IP protocol. However, for the end user it does not matter as the distribution kit of the program is completed with the program manager which by default is established at once together with BOINC client as a unit and is absolutely transparent for the user. In this case as the address of BOINC client managed by the program the manager the address "localhost" is specified. Thus, on the one hand, nothing prevents the user to use the alternative program manager for management of BOINC client, and on the other hand gives the chance to manage several BOINC clients, being on different computers from one program manager. Also such organization of management BOINC client means an opportunity to use BOINC client in the "invisible" mode when service, without user interface in general is started only.

Settings

In earlier versions of the client there are no local settings of the program. The participant specifies almost all configuration (for example, operating time, connection time, the maximum loading, etc.) on the website of the specific project (for each project separately), and the cover (client) independently loads a configuration together with tasks as required. However in the latests version it can be configured via the interface of the client.

Project organization

Anyone can create the project on the BOINC platform — all BOINC platform was initially developed within LGPL therefore any can get acquainted with source texts. Generally the different universities and scientific centers for solving of tasks, the requiring big computing resources, but not having necessary appliances for purchase of supercomputers are engaged in it, or capacities of modern supercomputers are not enough for the solution of an assigned task.

10 most popular projects

• SETI@home is the analysis of radio signals from the Aresibo radio telescope for search of extraterrestrial civilizations.
• Rosetta@home is calculation of 3-dimensional structure of proteins from their amino-acid sequences.
• World Community Grid is the help in search of drugs for treatment of human diseases, such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, calculation of structure of proteins and other projects. The organizer — IBM.
• Einstein@Home is check of a hypothesis of Albert Einstein of gravitational waves and also search of radio and a gamma of pulsars.
• Climate Prediction is studying and prediction of climate of Earth.
• Calculations for improvement of a Large Hadron Collider are LHC@home.
• MilkyWay@home — creations of a high-precision three-dimensional dynamic model of star flows in our Galaktika — the Milky Way.
• SIMAP@home is creation of the database of proteins for computing biology.
• PrimeGrid is search of different large prime numbers.
• Spinhenge@home is the project in the field of nanotechnologies on a research of molecular magnetism.

2016: Cloud4Y transfers not used computer capacities in BOINC

The Cloud4Y company takes part in the BOINC project which in Russia represents Institute of problems of information transfer of RAS. The company gives support to the projects connected with development of new medicines.

The essence of the project consists in voluntary transfer of not used computer capacities to one or several scientific projects. As you know, the working computer is usually loaded only on some part of the total power, as a rule, from 5% to 10%, not to mention other time frames when its capacities are not used in general: for example, if the PC is switched on, but behind it nobody works, during lunch breaks, meetings and so on.

With participation in the program of voluntary calculations any resource which is not used at present (RAM, the central processor, etc.) is provided to scientists for accomplishment of researches, calculations and development of socially necessary programs necessary for science.

The Russian distributed computing on the BOINC platform — universal socially important platform for development and projects implementation in the field of medicine, mathematics, quantum computings, molecular biology.

According to specialists of Cloud4Y, it is strategically important to render any feasible help to scientists in the field of pharmaceutics and medicine.

Links

Official site of BOINC (Russian)