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<title>Overview of BOINC</title>
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<body bgcolor=ffffff>
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<h2>Overview of BOINC</h2>
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<p>
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BOINC is a software platform for distributed computing
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using volunteer computer resources.
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The BOINC's features fall into several areas:
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<h3>Resource sharing among independent projects</h3>
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<p>
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Many different projects can use BOINC.
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Projects are independent; each one operates its own servers and databases.
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However, projects can share resources in the following sense:
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Participants install a <b>core client</b> program
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which in turn downloads and executes project-specific application programs.
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Participants control which projects they participate in,
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and how their resources are divided among these projects.
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When a project is down or has no work,
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the resources of its participants are divided among
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the other projects in which the participants are registered.
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<p>
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<h3>Project features</h3>
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<p>
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BOINC provides features that simplify
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the creation and operation of distributed computing projects.
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<ul>
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<li>
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<b>Flexible application framework</b>
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<br>
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Existing applications in common languages (C, C++, Fortran)
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can run as BOINC applications with little or no modification.
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An application can consist of several files
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(e.g. multiple programs and a coordinating script).
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New versions of applications can be deployed with no participant involvement.
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<li>
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<b>Security</b>
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<br>
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BOINC protects against several types of attacks.
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For example, it uses digital signatures based on public-key encryption
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to protect against the distribution of viruses.
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<li>
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<b>Multiple servers and fault-tolerance</b>
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<br>
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Projects can have separate scheduling and data servers,
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with multiple servers of each type.
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Clients automatically try alternate servers;
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if all servers are down, clients do exponential backoff
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to avoid flooding the servers when they come back up.
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<li>
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<b>System monitoring tools</b>
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<br>
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BOINC includes a web-based system for displaying time-varying
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measurements (CPU load, network traffic, database table sizes).
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This simplifies the task of diagnosing performance problems.
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<li>
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<b>Source code availability</b>
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<br>
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BOINC is distributed under a
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<a href=license_1.0.txt>public license</a>
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that allows it to be used freely for public or private distributed
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computing projects,
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with the restriction that it cannot be used as the basis for
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commercial products.
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BOINC applications need not be open source.
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Each project must provide and maintain its own server systems;
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these systems can be set up easily using
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open-source components (MySQL, PHP, Apache).
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<li>
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<b>Support for large data</b>
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<br>
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BOINC supports applications that produce or consume large amounts of data,
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or that use large amounts of memory.
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Data distribution and collection can be spread across many servers,
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and participant hosts transfer large data unobtrusively.
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Users can specify limits on disk usage and network bandwidth.
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Work is dispatched only to hosts able to handle it.
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</ul>
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<h3>Participant features</h3>
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<p>
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BOINC provides the following features to participants:
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<ul>
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<li>
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<b>Multiple participant platforms</b>
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<br>
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The BOINC core client is available for most common platforms (Mac OS X,
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Windows, Linux and other Unix systems).
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The client can use multiple CPUs.
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<li>
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<b>Web-based participant interfaces</b>
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<br>
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BOINC provides web-based interfaces for
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account creation, preference editing, and participant status display.
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A participant's preferences are automatically propagated to all their hosts,
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making it easy to manage large numbers of hosts.
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<li>
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<b>Configurable host work caching</b>
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<br>
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The core client downloads enough work to keep its host
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busy for a user-specifiable amount of time.
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This can be used to decrease the frequency of connections or to
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allow the host to keep working during project downtime.
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</ul>
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