Over the years, MSFN members have been putting their hard working idle CPU cycles to use by crunching data for various distributed computing projects. Popular favorites have included SETI@Home and Rosetta@Home. Now, we're diversifying, and trying to get as many members as possible to join working on their favorite projects.

What is BOINC?
BOINC stands for Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. It is a distributed computing framework that allows research groups to distribute computational tasks related to their work to users who offer their computers to crunch the data. The work units are always run on lowest priority, essentially making them run when not in use.

What's the benefit?
For the researchers, BOINC provides the opportunity for computational tasks that would otherwise cost thousands, if not millions, in computer hardware. By distributing the work to users, they can also find bugs in their code much faster than if their project were conducted internally.

For you the user, you get to be part of a project that could have long standing effects. Some projects are dealing with protein folding, which can help solve mysteries such as genetic diseases or cancer. Other projects are trying to solve mathematical problems. Further yet, some are trying to find evidence of extra terrestrial life. The possibilities are seemingly endless. Furthermore, depending on where you live, you can make a tax-deductible donation to your favorite project!


Favorite Projects

• SETI@Home (Extraterrestrial)
• Rosetta@Home (Protein folding)
• Einstein@Home (Astronomy)
• ABC@Home (Mathematics)
• SHA-1 Collision Search Graz (Mathematics)

Ok, I'm interested. How do I sign up?
Download the BOINC software from the Berkeley homepage listed at the bottom of this post. Once installed, run the BOINC Manager. It will ask you to attach to a project, and provide a list of available projects. If you haven't created an account for the selected project, do so by providing your email address and a password of your choice. If you are connecting to multiple projects, it's best to use the same email address. Once you've connected to the project, join the MSFN.org team through your project account profile. If the project doesn't have an MSFN.org team, post here, and we'll create one for you!

Projects with MSFN.org teams

• Rosetta@Home
• SETI@Home
• Einstein@Home
• ABC@Home

BOINC Homepage

MSFN.org Rosetta@Home Team discussion thread

Just throwing this out there for all those members still running Rosetta... how many active members do we still have? I've moved all my computers over to crunching Einstein@Home applications, since they seem to be a bit better organized, and they've also got optimized applications for their simulations. I'm getting more credit/time running at stock speeds now than I did with Rosetta at a 25% OC.


On another note - the overall MSFN.org team is only about a month away from breaking the 2,000,000 credit mark! Let's keep up the good work everyone!

I've still got 3 computers running Rosetta.

Hooray!!! We've crossed the 2,000,000 credit mark!!! Go team!!!

BoincStats - MSFN.org team stats

Mostly because of you!

what about folding at home? specially if you get people using it on their ps3's (as i do, and a lot of ps3 owners already do) -- cause the ps3 crunches that data up like nobodys business.

I've tried Folding@Home on and off for quite a while. My main problem with it is the lack of support to run it as a service. BOINC is mindless to setup, and as long as the project software is stable, it's out of sight, out of mind. I have it running on all my systems in the background, and I've never had it noticably impact the performance of my system(each Einstein app uses about 60MB of RAM, priority is always set to Lowest).

F@H seems like a great idea, but like a lot of simulation software I've dealt with it's simply unrefined and not easy for the "common joe" to setup and use. If you'd like to start an MSFN team under F@H, please do. I'd be glad to get my PS3 running on that whenever it's not in use.

yea its not an issue on the PS3. But on the PC its lacking a bit is the software, still it can be done!

Could do it as a PS3 team though anyway, since the PS3 churns out far much more data than the pc will.