The world’s largest cooperative computing project, SETI@home, used a simple software application to unite millions of personal computers around the world donating processor time to decoding radio telescope signals in a search for extraterrestrial life. The project’s success was not in finding extraterrestrials, which it failed to do, but in showing the benefits of cooperative computing in tackling gigantic workloads.
The SETI server was turned off two years ago. In its place is the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (Boinc). It has logged 10 million downloads, with 1.5 million people donating spare computing capacity for scientific and medical research.
Irelandboinc.com is an Irish portal for those interested in volunteering computing time. Registered with more than 50 World Science programmes, projects include Rosetta@home for cancer and HIV research and Predictor@home for protein related diseases.
Instructions for joining are on the site at www.irelandboinc.com
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