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The BOINC finds work for idle Central Processing Units |
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Written by Debbie Smit
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Sunday, 09 July 2006 |
 We all know that our world has problems. Some, like poverty and crime, seem insurmountable. Others, like the incurable diseases that plague us and cause so much suffering or the fact that our planet seems destined to overheat and burn out, are just begging to be solved.
Now you can help – by volunteering your computer for a distributed computing project. It works like this.
Your computer spends a lot of time doing nothing – time that could be spent computing. Distributed computing systems access all that wasted time and pool it to accomplish a common objective or task. If you are connected to the internet you are in essence already part of a distributed computing system – the World Wide Web could not function otherwise. When you browse the web, your web browser (the software that allows you to see different web pages) communicates with different web servers (the computer that serves web pages to the browser when it requests them). If your browser uses a proxy server (used for faster, more secure access) it uses the distributed domain name system to communicate with all of these servers over the Internet.
We all know that our world has problems. Some, like poverty and crime, seem insurmountable. Others, like the incurable diseases that plague us and cause so much suffering or the fact that our planet seems destined to overheat and burn out, are just begging to be solved.
Now you can help – by volunteering your computer for a distributed computing project. It works like this.
Your computer spends a lot of time doing nothing – time that could be spent computing. Distributed computing systems access all that wasted time and pool it to accomplish a common objective or task. If you are connected to the internet you are in essence already part of a distributed computing system – the World Wide Web could not function otherwise. When you browse the web, your web browser (the software that allows you to see different web pages) communicates with different web servers (the computer that serves web pages to the browser when it requests them). If your browser uses a proxy server (used for faster, more secure access) it uses the distributed domain name system to communicate with all of these servers over the Internet.
Distributed computing extends this network by using your computer while it is not being used by you.
The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing or BOINC is the free and open source software developed to allow thousands of computers across the world to distribute, process and return data. An estimated 360,000 computers worldwide use BOINC to contribute to a variety of projects that require serious computing.
Your computer could become part of the PlanetQuest "collaboratory" with the odds somewhere between one in 3000 and one in 5000 that you will stumble across a new star. And if you do, you get to name it!
Climateprediction.net is attempting to investigate and reduce uncertainties in climate modelling to give decision makers the best possible scientific basis for addressing the problems presented by global climate changes. Each user downloads a unique climate model which they can observe unfolding as their computer predicts the future for that specific version of the world.
SETI@home will employ your computer in a search for possible evidence of radio transmissions from extraterrestrial intelligence although it is recommended that you get permission first if you intend to use a computer that is not your own. Charles Smith, an employee of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services was fired for using his state-owned computer to search for aliens. Smith's boss was less than complimentary about his unconventional use of government property: “I understand his desire to search for intelligent life in outer space, because obviously he doesn’t find it in the mirror in the morning."
The most obvious use for an idle computer would be to put it to work searching for a cure for HIV, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimers and the many other life-threatening diseases that elude reasearchers by refusing to give up their secrets. Rosetta@home believes it is getting closer to accurately predicting and designing protein structures to fight disease.
Essentially your computer would be number-crunching to save lives, predict the future or, less magnanimously, find the odd alien or make magnificent 3D animations with the Big Ugly Rendering Project (BURP).
There is a bit of risk involved: a crash on someone else's computer could slow yours down or you might pick up some unwelcome guests. As Bill Godfrey points out in his Primer on Distributed Computing: "The world is populated by both angels and demons. Unless you know them personally, it is hard to tell them apart".
But oh how tempting it is to help a project that could make one feel just a little less helpless!
© Debbie Smit 09/07/06
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 23 August 2006 )
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