How To Get Involved in Distributive Computing

Einstein@Home is a distributive computing program
that looks for gravitational waves.

Today in my digital civilization class we talked about distributive computing.  The basic idea behind this is that most computers are wasting a lot of computing power.  When your computer is running, it performs cycles.  A cycle is when a computer gets (or is given) a task to do and then does it.  This is also known as a fetch-execute cycle.  When you are not using your computer, your computer has lots of empty cycles, in other words, it is doing nothing.  Instead of wasting your computer's ability to compute, I will explain to you some simple ways you can donate your spare computing power.

One last concept before I go into the how-to's.  The beauty of donating your empty cycles is that if enough computers donate then you will have much more computing power than a super-computer.

• Decided how you want to donate your spare computing power.

• Look at this Wikipedia page and decide what is important to you
• Write the name of the project(s) down

• Download BOINC software from UC Berkeley here .

• Click "Run" when prompted

• Follow the installation prompt instructions 
• Eventually the BOINC manager will open on your desktop

• To add a project, click "Add Project" where you get a prompt that looks like this:

• Make sure "Attach to project" then click next.
• Use that list that you wrote down about which projects you wanted to help and select the project and select next.
• You will be asked for your email and a password to create an account.
• Join a team if you would like
• Add more projects if you want

• BOINC will begin working.

• You can change the settings when you want to donate computing power
• You can also set how much time each project gets in relation to the others
• This can all be done if you click on "Preferences".
• Set your screensaver BOINC

• Enjoy the satisfaction that comes from your altruistic service knowing that you are helping ______________ (fill in the blank).