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[[File:{{#setmainimage:BOINC_central.png}}|alt=BOINC Central|center|frameless]]{{Infobox software}}
[[File:{{#setmainimage:BOINC_central.png}}|alt=BOINC Central|center|frameless]]
[https://boinc.berkeley.edu/central/ '''''BOINC Central'''''] is based on BOINC - a system for '''''volunteer computing''''', allowing people around the world to donate computing power to science research.
 
{{Infobox software
| name                  = BOINC Central
| logo                  = BOINC_central.png|frameless
| screenshot            =
| caption                =
| developer              = [[David P. Anderson]], [[University of California, Berkeley]] Space Sciences Laboratory
| released              = {{Start date|2021|11|26}}
| latest release version =
| latest release date    =
| operating system      = Cross-platform (via [[BOINC]] client)
| platform              = [[BOINC]], [[Docker (software)|Docker]] (via [[#BUDA|BUDA]])
| genre                  = [[Volunteer computing]], [[distributed computing]]
| license                = [[Open-source software|Open source]] ([[GNU Lesser General Public License|LGPL]])
| website                = {{URL|https://boinc.berkeley.edu/central/}}
}}
 
[https://boinc.berkeley.edu/central/ '''''BOINC Central'''''] is based on [[Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing|BOINC]] – a system for '''''volunteer computing''''', allowing people around the world to donate computing power to science research.
 
== Overview ==
BOINC Central gives scientists access to the power of volunteer computing without having to operate a BOINC server. It was publicly launched on '''26 November 2021'''<ref>{{cite web |url=https://boinc.berkeley.edu/central/ |title=Welcome to BOINC Central |publisher=University of California, Berkeley |date=26 November 2021 |access-date=2026-05-18}}</ref> and is operated by the [[University of California, Berkeley]] BOINC project, under the direction of research scientist [[David P. Anderson]].
[[File:BOINC Manager Screenshot.jpg|thumb|The BOINC platform, which BOINC Central runs on, was originally developed to support SETI@home.]]
The project is one of approximately 26 projects listed on BOINC's official roster as of early 2026.<ref name=boinc-wikipedia>{{cite web |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Open_Infrastructure_for_Network_Computing |title=Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing |publisher=Wikipedia |access-date=2026-05-18}}</ref> Unlike other BOINC projects that serve a single research team, BOINC Central acts as a '''shared scientific computing service''' – a central hub where multiple independent scientists can submit workloads without having to build or maintain their own volunteer-computing infrastructure.


== Why BOINC Central? ==
== Why BOINC Central? ==
BOINC Central gives scientists access to the power of volunteer computing without having to operate a BOINC server.
BOINC Central gives scientists access to the power of volunteer computing without having to operate a BOINC server.
Volunteer computing provides enormous computing power to science projects, but creating and operating such a project is expensive and requires resources that most scientists lack.<ref name=about>{{cite web |url=https://boinc.berkeley.edu/central/about.php |title=About BOINC Central |publisher=University of California, Berkeley |access-date=2026-05-18}}</ref> BOINC itself – as an open-source middleware platform – has been used by about 100 projects across medicine, molecular biology, mathematics, linguistics, climatology, environmental science, and astrophysics since its founding in 2002, collectively contributing to over 1,000 research papers.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://continuum-hypothesis.com/boinc_history.php |title=A brief history of BOINC |author=David P. Anderson |date=26 January 2022 |access-date=2026-05-18}}</ref>
BOINC Central was conceived to extend those benefits to researchers who lack the funding and technical staff to run their own BOINC project, including those whose need for high-throughput computing is sporadic rather than continuous.


== Goal ==
== Goal ==
The goal of BOINC Central is to make the power of volunteer computing available to all scientists, including those with little money and technical resources and those whose need for computing is sporadic.
The goal of BOINC Central is to make the power of volunteer computing available to all scientists, including those with little money and technical resources and those whose need for computing is sporadic.


== Methods ==
== How It Works ==
 
=== Infrastructure ===
* '''BOINC Central is a BOINC project.''' The BOINC team operates its own server and maintains the project's website, so scientists do not have to.<ref name=about/>
* '''Supported applications.''' Initially BOINC Central supported [[AutoDock Vina]] from the [[Scripps Research Institute]], a widely used open-source program for molecular docking and virtual drug screening.<ref name=about/> It now also accepts any science application packaged using [[Docker (software)|Docker]] through the BUDA framework (see below).
* '''Cross-platform executables.''' The team builds application versions for a range of computing platforms: different operating systems, CPU types, and GPU types, so that volunteers' machines can participate regardless of their hardware.
* '''Web-based job submission.''' Scientists from academic research institutions can submit batches of jobs using a web interface by contacting the BOINC Central team to register.<ref name=about/>
 
=== BUDA: BOINC Universal Docker App ===
BOINC Central's newer projects use '''BUDA''' (BOINC Universal Docker App), a framework developed by the BOINC project that allows scientists to run Docker-based applications across the volunteer network.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/wiki/BUDA-overview |title=BUDA overview |publisher=BOINC/GitHub |access-date=2026-05-18}}</ref> With BUDA, a scientist only needs to package their Linux-based application in a Docker container and submit jobs entirely through the web interface – no knowledge of BOINC internals is required.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/wiki/Computing-with-boinc |title=Computing with BOINC |publisher=BOINC/GitHub |access-date=2026-05-18}}</ref> Both completed BOINC Central sub-projects – Boolean Chains and Cislunar Orbit Stability Analyzer – used BUDA.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://boinc.berkeley.edu/central/ |title=BOINC Central news |publisher=University of California, Berkeley |date=24 March 2026 |access-date=2026-05-18}}</ref>
 
=== Supported Science Applications ===
* Any application packaged with [[Docker (software)|Docker]]
* [[AutoDock Vina|AutoDock]] from the Scripps Research Institute


* BOINC Central is a BOINC project. We operate a server and maintain this web site, so scientists don't have to.
== Sub-Projects ==
* BOINC Central supports widely-used science applications. Initially we are supporting Autodock Vina from the Scripps Research Institute. We build versions of these applications for a range of computing platforms: different operating systems, CPU types, and GPU types.
BOINC Central volunteers have provided computing power to the following projects:
* Scientists from academic research institutions can submit batches of jobs for these applications using a web interface. [https://boinc.berkeley.edu/central/about.php]


== Sub Projects ==
=== Boolean Chains (completed) ===
'''''Boolean chains'''''
'''''Boolean chains'''''


Line 21: Line 59:
I've been studying [https://www.informit.com/store/art-of-computer-programming-volumes-1-4b-boxed-set-9780137935109 The Art of Computer Programming] by Donald E. Knuth, working on some of the exercises and some of the open problems. In Volume 4A, chapter 7.1.2 the topic of boolean chains comes up. Basically, it's about a chain of boolean operations on some input values x_1, ..., x_n and intermediate results of those operations, such that a set of desired functions f_1, ..., f_m on those inputs can be evaluated. The goal is to make such a chain as small as possible, because that makes for small circuitry with fewer parts.
I've been studying [https://www.informit.com/store/art-of-computer-programming-volumes-1-4b-boxed-set-9780137935109 The Art of Computer Programming] by Donald E. Knuth, working on some of the exercises and some of the open problems. In Volume 4A, chapter 7.1.2 the topic of boolean chains comes up. Basically, it's about a chain of boolean operations on some input values x_1, ..., x_n and intermediate results of those operations, such that a set of desired functions f_1, ..., f_m on those inputs can be evaluated. The goal is to make such a chain as small as possible, because that makes for small circuitry with fewer parts.


One example Knuth chose is the segments of a digital display, as we know it from (somewhat dated) alarm clocks or quartz watches. The inputs are the four bits of a number 0 to 15 (we want hexadecimal digits) and the seven output functions are whether each of the segments of the display should be turned on or off for that digit.
One example Knuth chose is the segments of a digital display, as we know it from (somewhat dated) alarm clocks or quartz watches. The inputs are the four bits of a number 0 to 15 (we want hexadecimal digits) and the seven output functions are whether each of the segments of the display should be turned on or off for that digit.[[File:16-digits-segments-small.png|frameless|The seven-segment display problem: a classic combinatorics challenge that motivated the Boolean Chains project.|center]]
 
[[File:16-digits-segments-small.png|frameless]]


My goal is to find the minimal boolean chain for this problem, hoping to come up with some new algorithms or speed improvements to make this feasible; so that similar problems can be solved in the future. I've already found shorter boolean chains with an algorithm described on the website below, but to prove it is optimal I need to do an exhaustive search. I also suspect that there still are chains that are ONE step shorter than the one I found, based on the trajectory of smaller problems already solved, but for that I also need the exhaustive search.
My goal is to find the minimal boolean chain for this problem, hoping to come up with some new algorithms or speed improvements to make this feasible; so that similar problems can be solved in the future. I've already found shorter boolean chains with an algorithm described on the website below, but to prove it is optimal I need to do an exhaustive search. I also suspect that there still are chains that are ONE step shorter than the one I found, based on the trajectory of smaller problems already solved, but for that I also need the exhaustive search.


Details of the project: https://orunge.org/boolean-chains/
Details of the project: https://orunge.org/boolean-chains/
I've already covered a large search space with my own machine and AWS Batch, but that approach will be too costly.
I've already covered a large search space with my own machine and AWS Batch, but that approach will be too costly.


Line 33: Line 70:


Results can be tracked here: https://orunge.org/boolean-chains/#results-full
Results can be tracked here: https://orunge.org/boolean-chains/#results-full
==== Milestones and Results ====
The Boolean Chains project reached a significant milestone in May 2025: the search space for N=15, L=21 was exhausted. Over the course of the project, '''37,444,981,252,103,000 chains were generated''', consuming 2,139 days of computing time.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://boinc.berkeley.edu/central/ |title=Boolean Chains project reaches milestone |publisher=BOINC Central |date=31 May 2025 |access-date=2026-05-18}}</ref> The project was subsequently completed, with volunteers having supplied the equivalent of '''450 CPU-years''' of computing power.<ref name=central-news>{{cite web |url=https://boinc.berkeley.edu/central/ |title=BOINC Central project updates |publisher=University of California, Berkeley |date=24 March 2026 |access-date=2026-05-18}}</ref>
=== Cislunar Orbit Stability Analyzer (completed) ===
The '''Cislunar Orbit Stability Analyzer''' was the second project hosted by BOINC Central. It was conducted by researcher '''Lezhe Gao''' and computed the Jacobi constant for spacecraft orbits in the Earth–Moon system – a key metric for orbital stability analysis.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://boinc.berkeley.edu/central/projects.php |title=Computing projects – BOINC Central |publisher=University of California, Berkeley |access-date=2026-05-18}}</ref>
The application processed public simulation data from [[Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory]] (LLNL), aiming to map stable regions in cislunar space through a massive computational survey. Cislunar space – the volume between Earth's geosynchronous orbit and beyond the Moon, including the lunar Lagrange points – is of growing importance for space mission planning. Orbits there are influenced by the gravitational forces of the Sun, Earth, and Moon in ways that are typically difficult to predict.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.03892 |title=Predicting Cislunar Orbit Lifetimes from Initial Orbital Elements |publisher=arXiv |date=2025 |access-date=2026-05-18}}</ref>
The project was completed by early 2026 and led to a scientific paper currently under peer review. Like Boolean Chains, it made use of BOINC's BUDA framework.<ref name=central-news/>
==== Related paper ====
* Yeager, Travis ''et al.'' [https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202604.0498 ''Cislunar Orbit Stability Analyzer'']. Preprint, 2026.
* Higgins, Denvir ''et al.'' [https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.03892 ''Predicting Cislunar Orbit Lifetimes from Initial Orbital Elements'']. ''Advances in Space Research'', 2025.
* Yeager, Travis ''et al.'' [https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.11064 ''An Open Benchmark of One Million High-Fidelity Cislunar Trajectories'']. arXiv preprint, 2025.
== Technical Infrastructure ==
=== AutoDock Vina ===
[[File:Cd20.png|thumb|AutoDock Vina is used for molecular docking and virtual drug screening.]]
[[AutoDock Vina]] is an open-source program for molecular docking originally designed by Dr. Oleg Trott at the Molecular Graphics Lab (now the Center for Computational Structural Biology, CCSB) at [[The Scripps Research Institute]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://vina.scripps.edu/ |title=AutoDock Vina |publisher=The Scripps Research Institute |access-date=2026-05-18}}</ref> It is one of the most widely used tools in computational drug discovery, allowing researchers to predict how small molecules (potential drug candidates) bind to protein receptors. AutoDock Vina achieves roughly a two-orders-of-magnitude speed increase over earlier versions while improving the accuracy of binding mode predictions, and leverages multithreading across CPU cores.<ref>{{cite journal |url=https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3041641/ |title=AutoDock Vina: improving the speed and accuracy of docking with a new scoring function, efficient optimization and multithreading |journal=Journal of Computational Chemistry |year=2010 |volume=31 |pages=455–461 |doi=10.1002/jcc.21334}}</ref>
BOINC Central's distributed infrastructure allows researchers to run large virtual screening campaigns – docking thousands of compounds against a protein target – at no cost, using computing power donated by volunteers worldwide.
=== The BOINC Platform ===
[[File:BOINC logo.png|thumb|The BOINC logo. BOINC has been in development since 2002.]]
BOINC (pronounced {{IPAc-en|b|ɔɪ|ŋ|k}}, rhyming with "oink") is an open-source middleware system for volunteer computing developed at the [[UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory]]. As of 2021 it brought together 34,236 active participants employing 136,341 active computers worldwide, processing on average 20.164 [[FLOPS|PetaFLOPS]] daily.<ref name=boinc-wikipedia/> It supports applications across medicine, molecular biology, mathematics, linguistics, climatology, environmental science, and astrophysics. BOINC Central is listed among the projects available to the Android BOINC mobile client.<ref name=boinc-wikipedia/>


== Researchers ==
== Researchers ==
Name: Oliver Runge Research interests: Computer science Location: Germany
{| class="wikitable"
! Name !! Research interests !! Location !! Project
|-
| Oliver Runge || Computer science, combinatorics || Germany || Boolean Chains
|-
| Lezhe Gao || Astrodynamics, cislunar mechanics || (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) || Cislunar Orbit Stability Analyzer
|}
 
== Project Team / Sponsors ==


== Project team / Sponsors ==
[[wikipedia:David_P._Anderson|'''''David P. Anderson''''']]. Operated by [https://boinc.berkeley.edu/ '''''B'''erkeley '''O'''pen '''I'''nfrastructure for '''N'''etwork '''C'''omputing'']
[[wikipedia:David_P._Anderson|'''''David P. Anderson''''']]. Operated by [https://boinc.berkeley.edu/ '''''B'''erkeley '''O'''pen '''I'''nfrastructure for '''N'''etwork '''C'''omputing'']
[[David P. Anderson]] is an American research scientist at the [[UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory]] and an adjunct professor of computer science at the [[University of Houston]]. He received a BA in mathematics from [[Wesleyan University]] and MS and PhD degrees in mathematics and computer science from the [[University of Wisconsin–Madison]].<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_P._Anderson |title=David P. Anderson |encyclopedia=Wikipedia |access-date=2026-05-18}}</ref>
Anderson has been a pioneer of volunteer computing since the mid-1990s. He co-created [[SETI@home]] in 1995 and in 2002 founded the BOINC project, which became the world's leading platform for volunteer computing, funded by the [[National Science Foundation]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_P._Anderson |title=David P. Anderson – Wikipedia |access-date=2026-05-18}}</ref> BOINC Central is one of his most recent initiatives to make volunteer computing accessible without technical barriers.
The project is operated by and funded through the [[University of California, Berkeley]] BOINC project. BOINC itself is supported by the [[National Science Foundation]].
== How to Participate ==
Volunteers can contribute computing power by:
# Downloading and installing the [https://boinc.berkeley.edu/ BOINC client]
# Attaching to BOINC Central using its URL: <code>https://boinc.berkeley.edu/central/</code>
# The BOINC client will automatically receive, process, and return tasks
BOINC Central is listed as one of the projects compatible with the Android BOINC app. Computing preferences, credit statistics, and GPU/CPU models are managed through the BOINC Central web portal.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://boinc.berkeley.edu/central/welcome.php |title=Welcome to BOINC Central |publisher=University of California, Berkeley |access-date=2026-05-18}}</ref>
Scientists who wish to submit workloads should [https://boinc.berkeley.edu/anderson/ contact David P. Anderson] to register.
== See Also ==
* [[Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing]]
* [[Volunteer computing]]
* [[AutoDock Vina]]
* [[David P. Anderson]]
* [[SETI@home]]
* [[Einstein@Home]]
* [[Rosetta@home]]
* [[World Community Grid]]
== References ==
{{Reflist}}
== External Links ==
* [https://boinc.berkeley.edu/central/ BOINC Central official website]
* [https://boinc.berkeley.edu/ BOINC main website]
* [https://orunge.org/boolean-chains/ Boolean Chains project website]
* [https://boinc.berkeley.edu/central/projects.php BOINC Central computing projects]
* [https://boinc.berkeley.edu/pubs.php Publications by BOINC projects]
* [https://boinc.berkeley.edu/anderson/ David P. Anderson's homepage]
* [https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/wiki/BUDA-overview BUDA framework documentation]
[[Category:Volunteer computing]]
[[Category:Distributed computing projects]]
[[Category:University of California, Berkeley]]
[[Category:Science and technology in California]]
[[Category:2021 establishments in California]]

Revision as of 20:19, 18 May 2026

[[File:{{#setmainimage:BOINC_central.png}}|alt=BOINC Central|center|frameless]]












BOINC Central
Development
DeveloperDavid P. Anderson, University of California, Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory
Initial release2021-11-26
Software
Operating systemCross-platform (via BOINC client)
Metadata
Websitehttps://boinc.berkeley.edu/central/
LicenseOpen source (LGPL)

BOINC Central is based on BOINC – a system for volunteer computing, allowing people around the world to donate computing power to science research.

Overview

BOINC Central gives scientists access to the power of volunteer computing without having to operate a BOINC server. It was publicly launched on 26 November 2021[1] and is operated by the University of California, Berkeley BOINC project, under the direction of research scientist David P. Anderson.

The BOINC platform, which BOINC Central runs on, was originally developed to support SETI@home.

The project is one of approximately 26 projects listed on BOINC's official roster as of early 2026.[2] Unlike other BOINC projects that serve a single research team, BOINC Central acts as a shared scientific computing service – a central hub where multiple independent scientists can submit workloads without having to build or maintain their own volunteer-computing infrastructure.

Why BOINC Central?

BOINC Central gives scientists access to the power of volunteer computing without having to operate a BOINC server.

Volunteer computing provides enormous computing power to science projects, but creating and operating such a project is expensive and requires resources that most scientists lack.[3] BOINC itself – as an open-source middleware platform – has been used by about 100 projects across medicine, molecular biology, mathematics, linguistics, climatology, environmental science, and astrophysics since its founding in 2002, collectively contributing to over 1,000 research papers.[4]

BOINC Central was conceived to extend those benefits to researchers who lack the funding and technical staff to run their own BOINC project, including those whose need for high-throughput computing is sporadic rather than continuous.

Goal

The goal of BOINC Central is to make the power of volunteer computing available to all scientists, including those with little money and technical resources and those whose need for computing is sporadic.

How It Works

Infrastructure

  • BOINC Central is a BOINC project. The BOINC team operates its own server and maintains the project's website, so scientists do not have to.[3]
  • Supported applications. Initially BOINC Central supported AutoDock Vina from the Scripps Research Institute, a widely used open-source program for molecular docking and virtual drug screening.[3] It now also accepts any science application packaged using Docker through the BUDA framework (see below).
  • Cross-platform executables. The team builds application versions for a range of computing platforms: different operating systems, CPU types, and GPU types, so that volunteers' machines can participate regardless of their hardware.
  • Web-based job submission. Scientists from academic research institutions can submit batches of jobs using a web interface by contacting the BOINC Central team to register.[3]

BUDA: BOINC Universal Docker App

BOINC Central's newer projects use BUDA (BOINC Universal Docker App), a framework developed by the BOINC project that allows scientists to run Docker-based applications across the volunteer network.[5] With BUDA, a scientist only needs to package their Linux-based application in a Docker container and submit jobs entirely through the web interface – no knowledge of BOINC internals is required.[6] Both completed BOINC Central sub-projects – Boolean Chains and Cislunar Orbit Stability Analyzer – used BUDA.[7]

Supported Science Applications

  • Any application packaged with Docker
  • AutoDock from the Scripps Research Institute

Sub-Projects

BOINC Central volunteers have provided computing power to the following projects:

Boolean Chains (completed)

Boolean chains

My name is Oliver, I'm interested in maths, computer science, and combinatorial problems.

I've been studying The Art of Computer Programming by Donald E. Knuth, working on some of the exercises and some of the open problems. In Volume 4A, chapter 7.1.2 the topic of boolean chains comes up. Basically, it's about a chain of boolean operations on some input values x_1, ..., x_n and intermediate results of those operations, such that a set of desired functions f_1, ..., f_m on those inputs can be evaluated. The goal is to make such a chain as small as possible, because that makes for small circuitry with fewer parts.

One example Knuth chose is the segments of a digital display, as we know it from (somewhat dated) alarm clocks or quartz watches. The inputs are the four bits of a number 0 to 15 (we want hexadecimal digits) and the seven output functions are whether each of the segments of the display should be turned on or off for that digit.

The seven-segment display problem: a classic combinatorics challenge that motivated the Boolean Chains project.
The seven-segment display problem: a classic combinatorics challenge that motivated the Boolean Chains project.

My goal is to find the minimal boolean chain for this problem, hoping to come up with some new algorithms or speed improvements to make this feasible; so that similar problems can be solved in the future. I've already found shorter boolean chains with an algorithm described on the website below, but to prove it is optimal I need to do an exhaustive search. I also suspect that there still are chains that are ONE step shorter than the one I found, based on the trajectory of smaller problems already solved, but for that I also need the exhaustive search.

Details of the project: https://orunge.org/boolean-chains/

I've already covered a large search space with my own machine and AWS Batch, but that approach will be too costly.

That's where I hope BOINC Central can help!

Results can be tracked here: https://orunge.org/boolean-chains/#results-full

Milestones and Results

The Boolean Chains project reached a significant milestone in May 2025: the search space for N=15, L=21 was exhausted. Over the course of the project, 37,444,981,252,103,000 chains were generated, consuming 2,139 days of computing time.[8] The project was subsequently completed, with volunteers having supplied the equivalent of 450 CPU-years of computing power.[9]

Cislunar Orbit Stability Analyzer (completed)

The Cislunar Orbit Stability Analyzer was the second project hosted by BOINC Central. It was conducted by researcher Lezhe Gao and computed the Jacobi constant for spacecraft orbits in the Earth–Moon system – a key metric for orbital stability analysis.[10]

The application processed public simulation data from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), aiming to map stable regions in cislunar space through a massive computational survey. Cislunar space – the volume between Earth's geosynchronous orbit and beyond the Moon, including the lunar Lagrange points – is of growing importance for space mission planning. Orbits there are influenced by the gravitational forces of the Sun, Earth, and Moon in ways that are typically difficult to predict.[11]

The project was completed by early 2026 and led to a scientific paper currently under peer review. Like Boolean Chains, it made use of BOINC's BUDA framework.[9]

Related paper

Technical Infrastructure

AutoDock Vina

AutoDock Vina is used for molecular docking and virtual drug screening.

AutoDock Vina is an open-source program for molecular docking originally designed by Dr. Oleg Trott at the Molecular Graphics Lab (now the Center for Computational Structural Biology, CCSB) at The Scripps Research Institute.[12] It is one of the most widely used tools in computational drug discovery, allowing researchers to predict how small molecules (potential drug candidates) bind to protein receptors. AutoDock Vina achieves roughly a two-orders-of-magnitude speed increase over earlier versions while improving the accuracy of binding mode predictions, and leverages multithreading across CPU cores.[13]

BOINC Central's distributed infrastructure allows researchers to run large virtual screening campaigns – docking thousands of compounds against a protein target – at no cost, using computing power donated by volunteers worldwide.

The BOINC Platform

The BOINC logo. BOINC has been in development since 2002.

BOINC (pronounced /bɔɪŋk/, rhyming with "oink") is an open-source middleware system for volunteer computing developed at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory. As of 2021 it brought together 34,236 active participants employing 136,341 active computers worldwide, processing on average 20.164 PetaFLOPS daily.[2] It supports applications across medicine, molecular biology, mathematics, linguistics, climatology, environmental science, and astrophysics. BOINC Central is listed among the projects available to the Android BOINC mobile client.[2]

Researchers

Name Research interests Location Project
Oliver Runge Computer science, combinatorics Germany Boolean Chains
Lezhe Gao Astrodynamics, cislunar mechanics (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) Cislunar Orbit Stability Analyzer

Project Team / Sponsors

David P. Anderson. Operated by Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing

David P. Anderson is an American research scientist at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory and an adjunct professor of computer science at the University of Houston. He received a BA in mathematics from Wesleyan University and MS and PhD degrees in mathematics and computer science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.[14]

Anderson has been a pioneer of volunteer computing since the mid-1990s. He co-created SETI@home in 1995 and in 2002 founded the BOINC project, which became the world's leading platform for volunteer computing, funded by the National Science Foundation.[15] BOINC Central is one of his most recent initiatives to make volunteer computing accessible without technical barriers.

The project is operated by and funded through the University of California, Berkeley BOINC project. BOINC itself is supported by the National Science Foundation.

How to Participate

Volunteers can contribute computing power by:

  1. Downloading and installing the BOINC client
  2. Attaching to BOINC Central using its URL: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/central/
  3. The BOINC client will automatically receive, process, and return tasks

BOINC Central is listed as one of the projects compatible with the Android BOINC app. Computing preferences, credit statistics, and GPU/CPU models are managed through the BOINC Central web portal.[16]

Scientists who wish to submit workloads should contact David P. Anderson to register.

See Also

References

  1. ↑ (26 November 2021}).Welcome to BOINC Central. University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved 2026-05-18}.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. Wikipedia. Retrieved 2026-05-18}.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 About BOINC Central. University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved 2026-05-18}.
  4. ↑ David P. Anderson.(26 January 2022}).A brief history of BOINC. Retrieved 2026-05-18}.
  5. ↑ BUDA overview. BOINC/GitHub. Retrieved 2026-05-18}.
  6. ↑ Computing with BOINC. BOINC/GitHub. Retrieved 2026-05-18}.
  7. ↑ (24 March 2026}).BOINC Central news. University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved 2026-05-18}.
  8. ↑ (31 May 2025}).Boolean Chains project reaches milestone. BOINC Central. Retrieved 2026-05-18}.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 (24 March 2026}).BOINC Central project updates. University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved 2026-05-18}.
  10. ↑ Computing projects – BOINC Central. University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved 2026-05-18}.
  11. ↑ (2025}).Predicting Cislunar Orbit Lifetimes from Initial Orbital Elements. arXiv. Retrieved 2026-05-18}.
  12. ↑ AutoDock Vina. The Scripps Research Institute. Retrieved 2026-05-18}.
  13. ↑ (2010}).AutoDock Vina: improving the speed and accuracy of docking with a new scoring function, efficient optimization and multithreading. Journal of Computational Chemistry. pp. 455–461. DOI: 10.1002/jcc.21334.
  14. ↑ David P. Anderson. Wikipedia. Retrieved 2026-05-18}}.
  15. ↑ David P. Anderson – Wikipedia. Retrieved 2026-05-18}.
  16. ↑ Welcome to BOINC Central. University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved 2026-05-18}.

External Links

Retrieved from "https://boincsynergy.ca/wiki/index.php?title=BOINC_Central&oldid=1077"