DEPRECATED Use BoincOverview instead = Why use BOINC? = Use BOINC if you need lots of cheap computing power. BOINC lets you access two classes of computing resources: * The desktop PCs owned by your organization ([DesktopGrid Desktop Grid computing]); * PCs volunteered by the general public ([VolunteerComputing Volunteer computing]). == Cost comparison == Suppose you need a lot of computing power - say, 100 TeraFLOPS for 1 year. Here are some ways you can get it: '''Use Amazon's Elastic Computing Cloud: $175 Million''' :: Based on $0.10 per node/hour. '''Build a cluster: $12.4 Million''' :: This includes power and air-conditioning infrastructure, network hardware, computing hardware, storage, electricity, and sysadmin personnel. '''Use BOINC: $125,000''' :: Based on the average throughput and budget of the 6 largest volunteer computing projects. == What's the catch? == To get lots of computing power this way, you'll need to do some unusual things: * Publicize and promote your project, on the web and if possible in the media. * Devote some resources to managing and communicating with your volunteer community. * Get your applications to run on a wide range of computer types. == What applications can BOINC handle? == BOINC works best with "bag of task" computations - large sets of independent jobs - with modest memory and storage requirements. Typical applications include: * Simulations of physical systems * Compute-intensive analysis of large data sets * Exploration of large search spaces (including genetic algorithm). BOINC doesn't require you to rewrite your applications. You can even use existing executables without source code. == Organizational possibilities == If you're part of an organization such as a university, you should consider the various organizational levels at which BOINC can be used. There is an overhead in creating and maintaining a BOINC project, and it can be advantageous to amortize this overhead across multiple scientists. Some possibilities: Individual :: Some projects (Primegrid, chess960) are run by private individuals. Scientist :: Most current projects are run by individual scientists or research groups. Consortium :: Einstein@home is run by a multi-university research consortium (LIGO). Application-centered academic community :: Mindmodeling.org serves researchers from about 20 universities who all use the same application (the ACT-R cognitive modeling system). Research institute :: LHC@home servers multiple groups at CERN Umbrella organization :: IBM World Community Grid handles applications from ~8 different research groups. Campus-level project :: This would provide a [VirtualCampusSupercomputerCenter Virtual Campus Supercomputing Center].