Welcome to PoppaGeek's 

A very large computer problem is divided into many small units and sent out to volunteer computers over the internet. These computers work on the work unit and send the results back to the project server to be combined with other finished work units.

How it Works!

For World Community Grid

The best tutorial I have seen on how to get the software and set it up.

by Hotwaxisbad Xtremesystems

 For Folding@Home

Folding@Home Stickies Database: Instructions, Guides etc 

by [XC]Riptide XtremeSystems

For GPUGrid

Everything You Need to Know About GPUGrid/BOINC

Joining GPUGrid the easy way

by Otis11 Xtremesystems

Guides, FAQs and info:

Folding@Home Stickies Database: Instructions, Guides etc - by [XC] Riptide @ XS

Everything You Need To Know About World Community Grid/BOINC- Sierra_bound @ XS

Ion's WCG Essentials Thread - by Ion @ TechPowerUp

Offical F@H FAQs and video

A 1 page executive summary on F@H

Answers questions and reasons for not participating in a distributed computing project.

WCG - World Community Grid

F@H - Folding at Home

DC - A distributed system consists of multiple autonomous computers that communicate through a computer network.

Grid - combination of computer resources applied to a common task

crunch - to process data

cruncher - person who participates in or PC that works on a DC project

crunching - an annoying way of processing nutrition usually considered rude

folding - a work unit that predicts how amino acids fold into proteins.

WU - Work Unit 

farm - a collection of PCs used in a DC project.

core - a processing unit of a CPU. Many PCs today have dual or quad core CPUs.

CPU - Central Processor Unit

GPU - Graphis Processor Unit or video card

More terms explained here.

WCG will run one WU for each core. 2 for a dual core, 4 for a quad core. So a quad core does the work of 4 PCs. I have a dual quad core that works on 8 work units at a time. An Intel CPU with Hyper Threading will do 2 per core.

Yes!

Linux  World Community Grid - F@H 1 - F@H 2 - GPUGrid

Mac OSX Dowload Boinc  - Download F@H client

Folding@Home has programs for the CPU and ATI or Nvida GPUs.

WCG projects use the CPU only. Boinc, which WCG uses is also used by GPUGrid which uses the Nvidia GPU only.You can run WCG and GPUGrid projects on the same machine under the Boinc Manager.

Overview of cards that run the GPUGRID application

Boinc is the client software that runs on your PC. It manages downloading, scheduling and uploading Work Units from the project server to your PC. WCG and GPUGrid both use Boinc as does some others. F@H does not use Boinc. You can use the version on the WCG web site or from the Boinc site.

Boinc Wikipedia

WCG used different software in the beginning to manage the WUs on the client side. WCG now uses Boinc. WCG points are x7 Boinc points. So 7 WCG points are equal to 1 Boinc point. When you go to your stats page on WCG you will see WCG point. When you go to one of the independant stat sites like Free-DC it will show Boinc points.

Points are  a way of showing your progress but also a way of measuring your progress compared to other team members and for teams to compare to each other.

 BOINC credit/points explained by Sierra_Bound @ XtremeSystems

There are links to several stats sites on the "Links" page

I have a dual Opteron 8356 with 8 total cores. It ran Ubuntu Linux64 for several months. The Boinc RAC average was 2450. It now has Windows Vista64 SP2 and in 2 weeks it's average is 2486. No significant difference.All hardware was identical.

WCG PPD Estimator - by Ion and PVTCaboose1337 @ TechPowerUp!

Free-DC stats sig guide. by [XC]melymel @ XtremeSystems

A Project Badge is an acknowledgement of the contribution that a member has made to one of the research projects running at World Community Grid. All available badges may be viewed here.

A badge appears as a image for a member on their My Grid page, the Member Information page and next to their name in the forums. A badge is awarded to a member based upon how much computer processing time they have contributed to the project.

There are 6 levels of badges for run time donated to each research project and each is denoted by a different color background:

• Bronze - 14 days
• Silver - 45 days
• Gold - 90 days
• Ruby - 180 days
• Emerald - 1 year
• Sapphire - 2 years

PS3Grid is now GPUGRID as Sony has locked the console down where the system no longer boots third party operating systems. GPUGrid at present runs only on Nvidia CUDA GPUs although work continues on ATI software.

Usually no. Sometimes projects will send out some larger than usual Work Units though and seeing 20 hours or more runtime does happen. But if no one else in the WCG forums for that project is asking about large WUs then you might try rebooting the machine and see if that makes any difference. Sometimes a WU can get "stuck".