| 23 | | |
| 24 | | == Which applications are suitable for BOINC? == #suitable-apps |
| 25 | | BOINC is designed to support applications that have large computation requirements, storage requirements, or both. The main requirement of the application is that it be divisible into a large number (thousands or millions) of jobs that can be done independently. |
| 26 | | |
| 27 | | If the project is going to use volunteered resources, there are additional requirements: |
| 28 | | |
| 29 | | '''Public appeal''':: An application must be viewed as interesting and worthwhile by the public in order to gain large numbers of participants. A project must have the resources and commitment to maintain this interest, typically by creating a compelling web site and by generating interesting graphics in the application. |
| 30 | | |
| 31 | | '''Low data/compute ratio''':: Input and output data are sent through commercial Internet connections, which may be expensive and/or slow. As a rule of thumb, if your application produces or consumes more than a gigabyte of data per day of CPU time, then it may be cheaper to use in-house cluster computing rather than volunteer computing. |
| 32 | | |
| 33 | | == What resources are needed to create a BOINC project? == #resources |
| 34 | | If you have an existing application, figure on about three man-months to create the project: one month of an experienced sys admin, one month of a programmer, and one month of a web developer (these are very rough estimates). Once the project is running, budget a 50% FTE (mostly system admin) to maintain it. In terms of hardware, you'll need a mid-range server computer (e.g. Dell Poweredge) plenty of memory and disk. Budget about $5,000 for this. You'll also need a fast connection to the commercial Internet (T1 or faster). |
| 35 | | |
| 36 | | It may be difficult for some scientists to provide these resources. In this case, it may be possible to create a BOINC project at a higher organizational level, to serve the needs of multiple scientists. For example, such a project might be created at the [wiki:VirtualCampusSupercomputerCenter university campus] level. Several U.S. funding agencies (NSF, NIH) have programs that could support this. |
