Turning Your Computer into a BOINC Volunteer Computing Platform — Part 1: What is BOINC?

What Is BOINC?

BOINC is an open-source distributed computing platform formally known as Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. As the name suggests, it is developed and operated by the University of California, Berkeley. In short, it is a volunteer-based system that connects computers around the world to support large-scale scientific research.

The architecture is simple and consists of two parties: project organizers (servers) and volunteers (clients). On the server side, massive datasets to be analyzed are divided into small work units and distributed. Volunteers receive these tasks and perform the required computations using their own devices.

Supported devices include not only PCs running Windows, macOS, or Linux, but also smartphones. Even while we are casually browsing the internet, our devices usually have unused computational capacity (CPU). By making effective use of this idle power, anyone can easily contribute to the advancement of cutting-edge science. This accessibility is one of BOINC’s greatest strengths. Participation is entirely voluntary, which means that participants are responsible for costs such as electricity used for computation.

[embed]How BOINC works Open-source software for volunteer computing and grid computing. - How BOINC works · BOINC/boinc Wikigithub.com

[embed]Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing - Wikipedia The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing ( BOINC, pronounced -rhymes with "oink") is an open-source…en.wikipedia.org

Projects Available on BOINC

BOINC allows participants to contribute to a wide variety of research projects. Users can freely choose which projects to support based on their interests, research fields, or even the regions or countries conducting the research. Available projects span many disciplines, including mathematics, climate science, and astrophysics.

A full list of BOINC projects is available at the following page, which also shows the platforms supported by each project: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php

If you are unsure which project to choose, starting with Science United, a BOINC-affiliated service, is recommended. Science United is itself a BOINC project and acts as a project hub that aggregates multiple projects. It automatically assigns suitable tasks based on the detected client environment, so users do not need to decide which specific projects to join.

Client Applications

As mentioned above, BOINC clients are available for computers running various operating systems as well as for smartphones. In addition, Docker images are provided, allowing BOINC to run in a wide range of environments and configurations.

Client download: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php

Docker image: https://hub.docker.com/r/boinc/client

Scope of This Series

In this series, I explain how to set up BOINC in a Kubernetes environment using Docker images and how to actually contribute computational resources to BOINC projects.

This book is intended for readers who have a basic understanding of service operation and monitoring in Kubernetes environments.