BOINC is a volunteer computing and grid computing open-source software platform, that allows projects access to a virtual supercomputer that is much cheaper to run than a dedicated supercomputer. BOINC stands for Berkly Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.

Volunteer computing is an arrangement in which people (volunteers) provide computing resources to projects, which use the resources to do distributed computing and/or storage.

Grid computing is a form of distributed computing in which an organization (such as a business) uses its existing computers to handle its own long-running computational tasks.

BOINC runs in the back ground and uses the portion of your CPU(s) that you are not using. It runs at low priority so it only uses what you aren’t, if you start another program that needs more of your CPU BOINC will drop back it’s usage.

There are many different projects you can volunteer for:

• SETI@home
• Rosetta@home
• Climateprediction@home

among many others, complete list is on the BOINC Synergy group. I am the team leader for the Rosetta@home Gay USA team. As of this posting we are team 103 of 6,806.

There is a nice site set up by the BOINC Synergy team that lets you view many different stats for teams, individuals or the project as a whole. Here is the page for Gay USA. It helps to create a little fun competition. It also will create a nice little image of you to post on your websites to show everyone what you are contributing.

So come check it out and you are more than free to join the GAY USA teams that are on most of the projects.