Basically these projects ask people around the world to sign up to have a small open source client application installed on home computers. This Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) application runs as a screen saver, using the computing power of millions of distributed machines when otherwise not in use. The client software crunches data in a very efficient way. A BOINC project with a single Linux server can provide computing power equivalent to a cluster with tens of thousands of CPUs. There is no limit to the applications of this type of distributed computing and because the project is open source anyone is encouraged to create software on the platform for specific applications.
Unfortunately the climate change project only runs on Linux or Windows XP so Mac users are out of luck if they wanted to take part in this one. But it has an excitingly quick turnaround with the results of the study to be broadcast on the BBC in May. UK viewers can see a television documentary describing the project on February 20, 2006 on BBC4.
Labels: internet
