BOINC runs on my laptop. For those not familiar with it, BOINC stands for Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. It utilizes idle cycles on the machines to perform computation for various scientific projects like SETI and Climate Prediction. The tasks are fetched over the network and sent back through RPC.
The computations are great and most projects come with pretty graphics too - apart from the fact that BOINC makes my laptop really really hot,( the average cpu temprature when BOINC is running is about 85 degree celsius, which drops down to 42 degrees when it is not running, according to NHC . For a comparison, the CPU is set to shut down at 95 degree celsius). The hard disk is kept pretty busy too.
So how useful are the computations? It is true that the collective processing power of machines all around the world is much more than what most research projects can afford. And there are thousands of believers in BOINC. But while some projects are very upfront and self-explanatory about what exactly are they calculating: Climate Prediction, for instance, other projects can be very cryptic about what they are up to.
So give it a shot! try it and decide for yourself! Its fairly easy to set up and run...
