List of distributed computing projects
This is a list of distributed computing and grid computing projects. For each project, donors volunteer computing time from personal computers to a specific cause. The donated computing power comes typically from CPUs and GPUs, but can also come from home video game systems. Each project seeks to solve a problem which is difficult or infeasible to tackle using other methods.
Distributed computing projects
Active projects
| Project | Launched | Home | Category | Research focus | BOINC based | Active processing units | Performance in TeraFLOPS | - |
| Albert@home | 2011-12-23 | University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Max Planck Institute | Astrophysics | Testing project for Einstein@home | - | |||
| Asteroids@home | 2012-06-20 | Charles University in Prague, Czech | Astrophysics | To significantly enlarge our knowledge of the physical properties of asteroids | - | |||
| BURP | 2004-06-17 | Art | Rendering of 3D animations | - | ||||
| CAS@home | 2010-07-19 | Chinese Academy of Sciences | Physics, biochemistry, and others | Encourage Chinese scientists to use volunteer computing for their research | - | |||
| Cleanmobility.now | 2013-08 | Chemistry | Find safer and greener materials for e-vehicle batteries | - | ||||
| Climate Prediction | 2003-12-09 | Oxford University | Climate study | Analyse ways to improve climate prediction models | - | |||
| Collatz Conjecture | 2009-01-06 | Private | Mathematics | Study the Collatz conjecture, an unsolved conjecture in mathematics | - | |||
| Cosmology@Home | 2007-06-26 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | Astronomy | Find the most accurate models that best describe the universe | - | |||
| Distributed.net | 1997-01-28 | Private | Cryptography, Mathematics | Crack the RC5-72 cipher, find optimal Golomb rulers of length 28 | - | |||
| DreamLab | 2015-09-11 | Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Australia | Cancer research | Breast, ovarian, prostate and pancreatic cancer. | - | |||
| Einstein@Home | 2005-02-19 | University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Max Planck Institute | Astrophysics | Search for pulsars using radio signals and gravitational wave data | - | |||
| Electric Sheep | 1999-09-30 | Art | - | |||||
| Enigma@Home | 2007-09-09 | Private | Cryptography | Decode three unbroken Enigma messages from World War II | - | |||
| Fishtest | 2013-02-13 | Private | Software testing, game-playing | Validates patches to the Stockfish chess engine by playing thousands of chess games at fast time controls between different versions of the engine | 194 | - | ||
| Folding@home | 2000-10-01 | Washington University in St. Louis | Molecular biology | Understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases, with a minor emphasis in protein structure prediction. Computing power also harnessed the power of PlayStation 3s. | GPUs: AMD 79,498; Nvidia: 356,065 CPUs: 593,983 | - | ||
| Galaxy Zoo | 2007-07-11 | Astrophysics | Classifies galaxy types from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. | - | ||||
| Gerasim@Home | 2007-02-10 | Russia | Mathematics | Researched in discrete mathematics and logic control systems | - | |||
| Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search | 1996-01-early | Private | Mathematics | Searches for Mersenne primes of world record size | - | |||
| iThena | 2019-09-25 | Private | Computer science | Generally computer networks | - | |||
| Leela Chess Zero | 2018-03-04 | Software testing, game-playing | Trains chess neural-networks with deep reinforcement learning. Experiments with training parameters and net architectures. | 44 | - | |||
| LHC@home | 2004-01-09 | CERN | Physics | Helping physicists compare theory with experiment, in the search for new fundamental particles and answers to questions about the Universe. | - | |||
| Milkyway@Home | 2007-07-07 | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute | Astronomy | Create a highly accurate three-dimensional model of the Milky Way galaxy using data collected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey | - | |||
| MindModeling@Home | 2007-03-17 | University of Dayton Research Institute and Wright State University | Cognitive science | Builds cognitive models of the human mind | - | |||
| Moo! Wrapper | 2011-02-05 | Private | Cryptography | Combines BOINC with distributed.net to try to break the RC5 cipher | - | |||
| NFS@Home | 2009-09-05 | California State University Fullerton | Integer factorization | Performs parts of the Number Field Sieve in the factorization of large integers | - | |||
| NumberFields@Home | 2011-08-12 | Arizona State University's School of Mathematics | Number theory | Search for number fields with special properties to assist with the formulation of mathematical conjectures | - | |||
| Primaboinca | 2010-07-30 | RheinMain University of Applied Sciences | Mathematics | Search for counterexamples to Agrawal's conjecture and Popovych's conjecture, which relate to the identification of prime numbers | - | |||
| Radioactive@home | 2011-10-21 | Poland | Physics | Real-time radioactivity monitoring, detected by gamma sensors connected to volunteer computers | - | |||
| RALPH@home | 2006-02-15 | University of Washington | Software testing | Test project for Rosetta@home | - | |||
| RNA World | 2009-05-21 | Private research group in Marburg, Germany | Molecular biology | Uses bioinformatics software to study RNA structure | - | |||
| Rosetta@home | 2005-10-06 | University of Washington | Molecular biology | Protein structure prediction for disease research | - | |||
| SETI@home Beta | 2006-01-12 | University of California, Berkeley | Software testing | Test project of SETI@home | - | |||
| Stardust@home | 2006-08-01 | University of California, Berkeley, NASA, The Planetary Society | Astronomy | Scans/analyzes the collection grid from the NASA Stardust mission to capture particles from the coma of comet Wild 2 | - | |||
| Twin Prime Search | 2006-04-13 | Mathematics | Searches for large twin primes | - | ||||
| Universe@Home | 2015-02-19 | Copernicus Astronomical Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences | Astronomy | Universe@Home aims to create the first database of the simulated stellar content of the Universe, from the earliest stars to the most exotic black hole binaries. | ||||
| WEP-M+2 Project | 2006-05-12 | London, England, United Kingdom | Mathematics | Investigates the factorization of Mersenneplustwo prime numbers | - | |||
| WUProp@Home | 2010-03-27 | Private | Statistics | Collect various statistics about other BOINC projects | - | |||
| YAFU | 2011-09-01 | Software testing, Mathematics | Test BOINC server software, integer factorization | - | ||||
| yoyo@home | 2007-07-19 | Private | Mathematics, physics, and evolution | Data structure analysis to help prove a conjecture, elliptic curve factorization, pion creation in a particle accelerator, evolution research, find the shortest optimal Golomb ruler of length 28 | - |
Inactive projects
.| Project | Launched | Terminated | Home | Category | Research focus | BOINC based |
| ABC@home | 2006-11-21 | 2014-06-01 | Mathematical Institute of Leiden University, Kennislink | Mathematics | Find triples related to the ABC conjecture, one of the greatest open problems in mathematics. | |
| AlmereGrid Grid | 2006-09-27 | Almere, the Netherlands | A number of applications from local researchers. | |||
| AlmereGrid TestGrid | 2008-02-24 | Test of the AlmereGrid project. | ||||
| AndrOINC | Private | Cryptography | Broke Motorola's 1024-bit RSA key used to sign the boot and recovery partition partitions on the Motorola Milestone smartphone. | |||
| AQUA@home | 2008-12-10 | 2011-08-23 | D-Wave Systems, Canada | Quantum computing | Used Quantum Monte Carlo to predict the performance of superconducting adiabatic quantum computers on a variety of problems. | |
| ATLAS@Home | 2014-06-19 | 2017-04-07 | CERN | Physics | ATLAS@Home is a research project that uses volunteer computing to run simulations of the ATLAS experiment at CERN. | |
| Background Pi | Computes decimal digits of pi using digit extraction method. | |||||
| Biochemical Library | Vanderbilt University | Molecular biology | Performed research using the Biochemical Algorithms Library into proteins and their interactions with small molecules for disease research. | |||
| Chess960@home | 2006-03-20 | Private | Games and Puzzles | Analysis of chess 960. | ||
| Comcute | 2010 | 2016 | Gdańsk University of Technology, Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics | Mathematics, Artificial intelligence, Physics | ||
| Compute for Humanity | 2015-08 | 2017 | Private | Cryptocurrencies, Charitable Organizations | ||
| Constellation | Students at the University of Stuttgart, Germany | Aerospace, Engineering | Various aerospace-related science and engineering problems. | |||
| Correlizer | EpiGenSys Consortium and EraSysBio+, part of the Seventh Framework Program of the European Union | Genetics | The sequential organization of genomes, and its connection to their 3D architectural organization. | |||
| DENIS@Home | 2015-04-08 | 2018-05 | San Jorge University | Medicine and Biology | ||
| DistributedDataMining | 2010-03-04 | 2018-04-20 | Data analysis, machine learning | Research in the various fields of data analysis and machine learning, such as stock market prediction and analysis of medical data | ||
| DistrRTgen | 2008-01-12 | 2014-06 | Private | Cryptography | Analysis of hash strength for password security by developing rainbow tables. | |
| DNA@home | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute | Discovered what regulates the genes in DNA using statistical algorithms. | ||||
| DrugDiscovery@home | Private | Drug design | Supported in silico drug design of chemical compounds for medicines in the fields of cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. | |||
| eOn | 2014-05-08 | University of Texas at Austin | Chemistry | Calculated the evolution of an atomic-scale system over time, such as a chemical reaction or diffusion. | ||
| Evolution@Home | 2001-04-03 | Uses evolutionary algorithms to optimize the parameters of different kinds of machine learning algorithms | ||||
| FreeHAL | 2006 | 2012 | Private | Artificial intelligence | Compute essential information for software which seeks to imitate human conversation. | |
| Genome@home | 2001-02-01 | 2004-03-08 | Stanford University | Molecular biology | Designed new genes that can form working proteins in the cell that have not been found in nature. | |
| Goldbach's Conjecture | 2009-11-09 | 2011-06 | Tests Goldbach's weak conjecture. | |||
| Golem@home | 2000 | 2001-09-03 | Brandeis University | Robotics | Used evolutionary computation to design robotic locomotion systems. | |
| 2008-11-22 | 2010-02-21 | Private | Mathematics | Used a computational approach to the graceful tree conjecture, proving that every tree with at most 35 vertices is graceful | ||
| Hydrogen@Home | 2007-10-22 | 2011-02 | Searches for the most efficient method of hydrogen production | |||
| IBERCIVIS | 2008-06-22 | 2016-07 | Spanish universities and research centers | Various Spanish projects | ||
| Ideologias@home | 2011-05-19 | Complutense University of Madrid, Spain | Society | Used social networking mathematical models to study the ideological evolution of a group of people over time. | ||
| Leiden Classical | 2005-05-12 | 2018-06-05 | Leiden University, the Netherlands | Chemistry | General classical mechanics for students or scientists | |
| LHC@home Virtual LHC@home | 2011-08-01 | 2017-03 | CERN | Physics | Run virtual simulations of high-energy particle collisions in a computational search for new fundamental particles for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN | |
| 2006-01-09 | 2009-11-15 | History | Decrypts Enigma messages from World War II | |||
| Magnetism@home | 2008-06-09 | Donetsk Institute for Physics and Technology, Ukraine | Magnetism, nanotechnology | Explored magnetization patterns. | ||
| Malaria Control | 2006-12-19 | 2016-01-28 | Swiss Tropical Institute | Epidemiology | Simulate the transmission dynamics and health effects of malaria. | |
| Mersenne@home | 2012 | Private | Mathematics | Searched for Mersenne primes. Discontinued because the creator lacked time to administer it | ||
| MoneyBee | 2000-09 | 2010 | Finance | |||
| Muon1 Distributed Particle Accelerator Design | 2017 | Physics | Simulate and design parts of the Neutrino Factory particle accelerator | |||
| Najmanovich Research Group | Université de Sherbrooke | Molecular biology | Research in molecular recognition | |||
| Neurona@home | 2011-06-14 | Complutense University of Madrid, Spain | Neural network | Simulating the behavior of a large and complex network of cellular automata neurons. | ||
| NFSNET | 2010 | Integer factorization | Used the general number field sieve to factor increasingly large integers. Discontinued and replaced by NFS@Home. | |||
| NNGenerator | 2014-10-20 | 2016 | Private | Mathematics, finance, and artificial neural networks | Distributed system based on neural networks for analysis and forecasting time series | |
| Optima@home | Institute for Systems Analysis of Russian Academy of Sciences | Optimization | Solve various large-scale optimization problems. Currently finding molecular conformations which have minimal potential energy. | |||
| Orbit@home | 2008-04-03 | 2013-02-16 | Planetary Science Institute | Astronomy | Monitored and studied the hazards posed by near-earth asteroids. | |
| Pi Segment | 2006 | Independent project | Mathematics | Looked for specific digits of Pi and make volunteer computing more popular in China | ||
| Pirates@home | 2004-02-06 | Spy Hill Research | Software testing | Test of BOINC, no current scientific computation. | ||
| POEM@Home | 2007-13-11 | 2016-10-04 | University of Karlsruhe, Germany | Molecular biology | Protein structure prediction, cellular signaling, protein aggregation, and drug design | |
| QMC@Home | 2006-03-03 | 2013-01 | University of Münster, Germany | Chemistry | Study the structure and reactivity of molecules using quantum chemistry and Monte Carlo techniques | |
| Quake Catcher Network | 2008-02-03 | 2018-04 | Stanford University | Seismology | Uses accelerometers connected to personal computers to detect earthquakes and to educate about seismology | |
| Renderfarm.fi | 2009-summer | Private | Art | 2D and 3D rendering for animation artists. | ||
| RSA Lattice Siever | 2009 | 2012-08 | Integer factorization | Assisted other factoring projects to achieve their academic goals. Merged into NFS@Home because its server was outdated | ||
| SAT@home | 2011-09-29 | 2017-02 | Russian Academy of Sciences | Cryptanalysis, Mathematics | Various applications related to the boolean satisfiability problem, inversion of specific stream cipher functions | |
| Second Computing | 2008-04-10 | 2012-08 | Assesses biopolymer dynamics, and models the behavior of clonal colonies in a prairie ecosystem | |||
| SETI@home | 1999-05-17 | 2020-03-31 | University of California, Berkeley | Astrobiology | Search for extraterrestrial life by analyzing specific radio frequencies emanating from space | |
| SIMAP | 2006-04-26 | 2014-05-30 | University of Vienna | Molecular biology | Calculated similarities between proteins. | |
| SLinCA | G.V.Kurdyumov Institute for Metal Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine | Materials science | Studies scaling laws in cluster aggregation. | |||
| Spinhenge@home | 2006-05-19 | 2011-09-28 | Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences | Nanotechnology | Studied nano-magnetic molecules for research into localized tumor chemotherapy and micro-memory. | |
| Stop@home | 2017-02-28 | 2018-01 | Private | Mathematics | Looking for prime k-tuples | |
| Sudoku@vtaiwan | 2011-01-05 | 2013-09-05 | National Center for High-performance Computing, Hsinchu Science and Industrial Park, Hsinchu City, Taiwan. | Games and Puzzles | Confirmed solution to the "Minimum Sudoku Problem." After running for more than 2½ years, the project was completed - it was confirmed that no 16-clue Sudoku exists, and so the fewest clues possible is 17. | |
| Superlink@Technion | 2007-05-03 | Technion – Israel Institute of Technology | Genetic linkage analysis | Uses genetic linkage analysis to help find disease-provoking genes. | ||
| theSkyNet POGS | 2011-09-13 | 2018-05-02 | International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research | Astronomy | Analysis of radio astronomy data from telescopes such as the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder and The Square Kilometre Array | |
| µFluids@home | 2005-09-19 | 2010-11 | Purdue University | Physics, Aeronautics | Simulated microfluidics problems and two-phase flows in microgravity. | |
| USPEX@Home | 2017-04-04 | 2019-03 | Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Russian Academy of Science, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology | Chemistry, Physics, Materials science | Computational prediction of structure and properties of new chemical compounds for various applications | |
| Virtual Prairie | 2008 | University of Houston | Botanical ecosystems | Provided ecological guidelines on the design of prairies with the best potential for water purification. | ||
| VTU@home | Vilnius Gediminas Technical University and Kaunas University of Technology | Software testing | Supported various research projects at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University. | |||
| Wieferich@Home | 2007-12-29 | 2017 | Mathematics | Searches for new Wieferich primes |
Grid computing projects
While distributed computing functions by dividing a complex problem among diverse and independent computer systems and then combine the result, grid computing works by utilizing a network of large pools of high-powered computing resources. These are typically "umbrella" projects that have a number of sub-projects underneath them, with multiple research areas.| Project | Launched | Home | Category | Research focus | BOINC based | Active processing units | Performance in TeraFLOPS |
| EDGeS@Home | 2009-10 | MTA SZTAKI Laboratory of Parallel and Distributed Systems, Hungary | European research | Support the execution of selected scientific applications developed by the EGEE and EDGeS community | |||
| GPUGRID | 2007-12-05 | Barcelona Biomedical Research Park | Molecular biology | Perform full-atom molecular simulations of proteins on Nvidia GPUs for biomedical research | |||
| PrimeGrid | 2005-06-12 | Private | Mathematics | Search for world record sized prime numbers, search for particular types of primes, such as 321 primes, Cullen-Woodall primes, Proth prime, prime Sierpinski numbers, and Sophie Germain primes. Subprojects also include Seventeen or Bust, and the Riesel problem. | |||
| SZTAKI Desktop Grid | 2005-05-26 | MTA SZTAKI Laboratory of Parallel and Distributed Systems, Hungary | Mathematics | Find all the generalized binary number systems up to dimension 11, understand basic universality classes of nonequilibrium system | |||
| The Lattice Project | 2003-late | University of Maryland Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology | Life science | Various scientific analysis projects | |||
| World Community Grid | 2004-11-16 | IBM Corporate Community Relations | Humanitarian research on disease, natural disasters, and hunger | Disease research, various worldwide humanitarian problems. Subprojects include GO Fight Against Malaria, Drug Search for Leishmaniasis, Computing for Clean Water, Clean Energy Project, Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together, Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy, Help Fight Childhood Cancer, Help Conquer Cancer, Mapping Cancer Markers, Human Proteome Folding Project, FightAIDS@Home, Uncovering Genome Mysteries, Let's outsmart Ebola together, Help Stop TB, OpenZika, Smash Childhood Cancer. |
Grid computing infrastructure
- BREIN uses the Semantic Web and multi-agent systems to build simple and reliable grid systems for business, with a focus on engineering and logistics management.
- A-Ware is developing a stable, supported, commercially exploitable, high quality technology to give easy access to grid resources.
- AssessGrid addresses obstacles to wide adoption of grid technologies by bringing risk management and assessment to this field, enabling use of grid computing in business and society.
- Cohesion Platform – A Java-based modular peer-to-peer multi-application desktop grid computing platform for irregularly structured problems developed at the University of Tübingen
- The European Grid Infrastructure – A series of projects funded by the European Commission which links over 70 institutions in 27 European countries to form a multi-science computing grid infrastructure for the European Research Area, letting researchers share computer resources
- GridCOMP provides an advanced component platform for an effective invisible grid.
- GridECON takes a user-oriented perspective and creates solutions to grid challenges to promote widespread use of grids.
- neuGRID develops a new user-friendly grid-based research e-infrastructure enabling the European neuroscience community to perform research needed for the pressing study of degenerative brain diseases, for example, Alzheimer's disease.
- OMII-Europe – An EU-funded project established to source key software components that can interoperate across several heterogeneous grid middleware platforms
- OurGrid aims to deliver grid technology that can be used today by current users to solve present problems. To achieve this goal, it uses a different trade-off compared to most grid projects: it forfeits supporting arbitrary applications in favor of supporting only bag-of-tasks applications.
- ScottNet NCG – A distributed neural computing grid. A private commercial effort in continuous operation since 1995. This system performs a series of functions including data synchronization amongst databases, mainframe systems, and other data repositories. E-commerce transaction processing, automated research and data retrieval, content analysis, web site monitoring, scripted and dynamic user emulation, shipping and fulfillment API integration and management, RSS and NNTP monitoring and analysis, real time security enforcement, and backup/restore functions.
- BEinGRID Business Experiments in Grid
- Legion – A grid computing platform developed at the University of Virginia
Related projects
Physical infrastructure projects
These projects attempt to make large physical computation infrastructures available for researchers to use:- Berkeley NOW Project
- Debian Cluster Components
- DiaGrid grid computing network centered at Purdue University
- Open Science Grid
- SARA Computing and Networking Services in Netherlands
- The Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment, formerly Teragrid