BOINC: Use your computer to help humanity
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 4:13PM Would you like to use your computer to help with cancer research? solve complex math problems? or look for life on other planets? You can.
The technology that allows this is called grid computing. Many research projects generate enormous amounts of raw data that they are simply unable to process themselves. Grid computing combines the computing power of personal computers across the world to make a virtual supercomputer. Since purchasing time on an actual supercomputer costs money, grid computing significantly lowers the cost of reasearch for projects that would otherwise be extremely expensive.
Here's how it works:
- You decide what project(s) you want to be attached to.
- That project sends a job to your computer over the internet.
- Your computer uses its idle resources to work on the job.
- Once completed, the job is sent back to the project and a new job is sent.
The great thing about the software is that it runs in the background without any interaction from you, the user. You probably won't even know it's running.
Warning: Running GridRepublic or any grid computing client can cause your computer to run hotter than normal. If your computer has cooling issues, please do not run this software.
Note: Your computer will consume slightly more power while running this software. For a detailed explanation heat and energy considerations please see this page.
Software: