BOINC – Giving-Back by Donating CPU/GPU Time for Scientific Research

In 1999, both SETI@Home and Folding@Home debuted launching the concept of volunteer computing.  This allowed individuals interested in the research to donate computer time to help work through the large datasets each project had.  When hundreds, thousands, tens-of-thousands, or more computers are working collaboratively, it allows scientists and researchers access to computing power that can rival supercomputers.  

After the release of the original SETI@Home software, some overzealous volunteers found ways to cheat-the-system to be credited for work not completed or pushing false data back into the system.  The University of California at Berkeley managed the SETI@Home project and began work to close the security loopholes, as well as to create a software package that could be used for a wide variety of research, not just for SETI.  The result is BOINC, Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.

BOINC works on a range of systems; Windows, Mac, Linux, Raspberry Pi, Android, even Fire Tablets.  The software allows for users to have control over how CPU/GPU, RAM and storage are leveraged by BOINC, and – of course – the conditions under which the software can run.  Some BOINC crunchers have dedicated computers running, and others simply donate some of their compute time when and where they can.  You can configure BONIC to run only when you are not using a computer, or only during a particular time of day.  It’s completely up to the user.  And, better yet, it is a simple, powerful, and fantastic way to give-back and help advance important research.

BOINC configuration options

And there is a variety of BOINC projects to assist with; including: astronomy, astrophysics, climate science, environmental research, mathematics, cryptography, biology, medicine, etc.

Over the last few years I’ve had a Raspberry Pi in my home running various functions, and in the background it’s been silently working on BOINC projects as well.  I’ve recently added a MacMini M4 system, and it’s remarkably fast!  At least with the BOINC projects with work available for Apple Silicon Macs.  

For my own contributions, I like to focus mainly on medical and astronomy/astrophysics projects, and have been proud to support and crunch data for:

Rosetta@Home:  From the University of Washington, Rosetta@Home studies how proteins fold, to aid in the creation of more effective medicines and medical treatments.  

DENIS@Home:  From San Jose University in Zaragoza, Spain, DENIS@Home aims to model electrical activity in the human heart, to better understand the effects of medicines, etc.

Einstein@Home:  From the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, and the Max Plank Institute of Gravitational Physics in Hanover, Germany.  Einstein@Home works through data from a range of satellites and installations to look for evidence of gravitational waves that may indicate the existence of pulsars.

Asteroids@Home:  From Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic.  Asteroids@Home examines photometric data to determine the size, spin, shape, orbital-period, etc, of asteroids in the asteroid belt.