Search Results for: minimum system requirements
I registered my agent successfully but it is not running any task.
One possibility is that your device does not meet the minimum resources required for any of our projects. You may check our system requirements here.
If your device does meet our minimum system requirements, please review the Network Connections and Settings FAQs. If this doesn’t apply, please post in our BOINC Support Forum, as a member may be able to quickly assist you with your problem.
What are the recommended minimum system specifications?
In order to participate in World Community Grid, you will need to have at least the following:
- The ability to display graphics (if you wish to see the graphics)
- An Internet connection
In addition, each research project has its own requirement for memory and disk space. These are as follows:
| Research Project | Memory Available | Disk Space | Operating Systems |
| Africa Rainfall Project | 1 GB | 1.5 GB | Windows1,2,6, Mac2,6, Linux1,2,6 |
| Help Stop TB | 200 MB | 200 MB | Windows1,2, Linux1,2 |
| Mapping Cancer Markers | 400 MB | 500 MB | Windows1,2, Mac2, Linux1,2, Android3,4 |
| OpenPandemics - COVID19 | 250 MB | 200 MB | Windows1,2,5, Mac2,5, Linux1,2,3,5,Android3,4 |
| Smash Childhood Cancer | 250 MB | 100 MB | Windows1,2, Mac2, Linux1,2, Android3,4 |
1. Version for x86 processors is available
2. Version for x86-64 processors is available
3. Version for ARM processors is available
4. Android Minimum requirement is Android version 4.4
5. Version for GPU is available (Open CL 1.2)
6. Users who choose to run this project are encouraged to set the 'Leave applications in memory while suspended' option in their device profile
To limit the number of tasks assigned to your device for a specific project, please see the FAQ here.
What are the system requirements for devices to participate in OpenPandemics – COVID-19?
Any laptop or desktop can be used. OpenPandemics – COVID-19 runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. Learn more about the system requirements at https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/help/viewTopic.do?shortName=minimumreq
What computers can run the "Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together" Project?
This project is distributed using the BOINC client, which is available for download on this site for computers with Windows, Macintosh, or Linux operating systems. For system requirements, click here.
What computers can run the "Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together" Project?
This project is distributed using the BOINC client, which is available for download on this site for computers with Windows, Macintosh, or Linux operating systems. For system requirements, click here.
Are there any specific system requirements for running World Community Grid on Android?
Overall, World Community Grid only requires that the phone be running Android 4.1 or higher, but each research project has its own requirements for storage and memory usage. More details are available here.
Why are my results marked 'too late' or 'server aborted'?
The BOINC software allows us to set limits for each work unit. Below are some examples, but please note that the numbers used below are just examples and not actual:
- Max number of results (example 9)
- Max number of error results ( example 5)
- Max number of success results (example 5)
Please note: number of max successes means that the results are not validating against each other. For example all 5 copies have different results.
Which World Community Grid research projects can run on GPUs?
For the latest on which World Community Grid research projects run on GPU, please refer to our system requirements.
How much hard drive space does the software take on my computer?
The software itself will take less than 50 MB of hard drive space or your computer. The different projects that run on the World Community Grid, however, have different system requirements for running on your computer. To find out if your computer meets those requirements, go here.
Why is solar energy important?
It is expected that by the year 2050 the world's energy requirements will double today’s demand. Energy is without doubt a prerequisite for economic stability in both the developed and developing world; despite its current importance, the actual energy system is far from being self-sustainable. Achieving a completely sustainable energy system will require technological breakthroughs that radically change our paradigms on how we produce and use energy. A possible solution to this problem is to use solar energy. Every hour, our sun produces enough solar energy to supply the whole world’s annual energy requirements. Finding the means to convert the incident solar energy into usable forms to maintain the current way of life represents a main objective of The Clean Energy Project team.
What operating systems are supported by World Community Grid on BOINC?
World Community Grid currently supports the operating systems listed in our System Requirements FAQ, which you can find here. Although they are not supported by World Community Grid, some of our members have had success using other platforms found here.
Why is solar energy important?
It is expected that by the year 2050 the world's energy requirements will be twice today’s demand. Energy is without doubt a prerequisite for economic stability in both the developed and developing world; however, despite its importance, the actual energy system is far from being self-sustainable. Achieving a completely sustainable energy system will require technological breakthroughs that radically change our paradigms on how we produce and use energy. A possible solution to this problem is solar energy. Every hour, enough solar energy reaches Earth to supply our energy need for an entire year. Finding the means to convert the incident solar energy into usable forms to maintain current ways of life represents a main objective of The Clean Energy Project.
What computers can run the "AfricanClimate@Home" Project?
AfricanClimate@Home can run on computers that use a high speed internet connection and that run the Windows and Linux operating systems. AfricanClimate@Home will be available using the BOINC agent. You can check to see if you are using the BOINC agent by following the information available here. For system requirements, click here.
Why can I only get one task at a time for the Africa Rainfall Project?
We have set the default for the Africa Rainfall Project to one task at a time due to the larger than normal system requirements. If any volunteers wish to increase this value, please see the “How do I limit the number of tasks assigned ... for a specific project?” FAQ.
What energy benefits are realized by performing these computations on World Community Grid?
By utilizing idle capacity on existing computing devices, you arguably avoid the energy associated with manufacturing the additional servers which would be deployed to perform the computations. This realizes energy and resource savings for the materials and processes required to manufacture the servers and components.
By utilizing the power of World Community Grid, simulations can be run which mitigate the need to use materials, equipment, and living systems to perform research activities. While laboratory research will still be required to derive environmental or health benefits in the society at large, the research activities can be more finely focused, minimizing the laboratory research required and thus the materials and energy required to do the work.
The net societal benefit of the use of World Community Grid far outweighs the minimal additional energy which may be drawn from the otherwise idle devices. The power of the grid enables researchers to complete computations in months instead of years and bring new, exciting innovations and solutions to health and environmental issues which affect our communities, our global neighbors and the environment.
Why does the software sometimes display with a piece of the screen missing?
The software requires an 800x600 screen to display properly. If the software's window is opened when the screen is resized (for instance if you begin playing a game that resizes the screen), windows may not properly "re-paint" the windows when the screen is re-sized back to its original setting. To fix this, minimize the software's window by clicking on the downward pointing triangle. Right click on the software's icon in the system tray (the section of the Start bar where the time is displayed) and choose exit. Open the software by clicking on [Start] [Programs] [World Community Grid] [World Community Grid Software].
Why does my firewall keep asking me if I want to contact World Community Grid. Isn't it safe?
Firewalls are not familiar with World Community Grid. Even though World Community Grid is safe, firewalls are designed to ask you to make the decision. Many firewalls will ask you to allow the World Community Grid software to communicate with the World Community Grid servers soon after the software is installed. Although firewalls differ, you should be able to click on your firewall icon in your system tray and set permissions to allow communications.
Also please note, sometimes when firewall software is updated by the manufacturer, you may be required to re-approve your permissions for the World Community Grid software to communicate with the World Community Grid servers. The same is true if you install a new version of the World Community Grid software.
Why is TB still a major global health problem?
One factor in the increase of TB infection is related to an increase in HIV infection. People with HIV/AIDS have a weakened immune system and are therefore more susceptible to TB. Once healthy people come into contact with the TB bacteria, the bacteria can usually be fought off effectively by their immune system without developing TB. However, a person with HIV is about 30 times more likely to develop TB disease, due to their weakened immune system. It is more difficult to detect and treat TB in an HIV-infected individual, and therefore those co-infected with TB and HIV often remain reservoirs of TB for extended times, with the potential of infecting more people.
Another factor in the increased TB infection is the TB bacteria becoming increasingly resistant to TB drugs. As drug resistance has increased, it has become more difficult to treat TB successfully, requiring much longer treatment times with combinations of drugs. Often, patients fail to continue treatments to the full term which can take up to two years. When treatment stops part-way, the bacteria evolve resistance to the drugs because it lets the bacteria that survived the initial portion of treatment live and infect others. This also results in people carrying TB for a longer time, potentially infecting more people with drug resistant strains of TB that are more difficult to treat. The World Health Organization recently ranked tuberculosis as nearly tied with HIV as the deadliest infectious disease in the world, mostly due to TB building its resistance to drugs.
Was an automatic slide feeder used?
No, scanning TMAs required manual monitoring.
How can I change the screensaver resource limits on my computer?
You will need to modify your Device Profile on the website. On your Settings page, select Device Manager, and then Device Profiles. Under Profile Name, select which Profile you would like to change (Default, School, Home, etc.). Then select the Custom Profile radio button. Under Advanced Options, scroll down to the Graphics section. The defaults are set to 7 frames per second and 5% cpu usage. If you would like the screensavers to refresh quicker, change the frames per second to 30. If the screensavers are taking up too much CPU power, decrease the percentage from 5% down to 2% to keep the screen saver usage to a minimum. Click Save at the bottom of the page to save your changes. The next time your computer communicates with our website, the preferences will be updated.
Why does my device show high CPU use?
The CPU in computers and other computing devices is actually highly utilized no matter what is going on, except when it is powered off, or stopped. There is a hidden "idle" task running in the background that runs at lower priority than everything else in the device, even lower than the World Community Grid software. The idle task counts up the percentage of the time it runs and calls this "idle time" and reduces the reported CPU utilization figure accordingly. Neither the World Community Software software nor the idle task will run if your device has other work to do. However, since our software runs at a slightly higher priority than the idle task, the idle task won't run at all and thus report that your computer will be 100% utilized*. Having our software run in the background along with other applications is usually not a problem unless you have a system with relatively little memory. For such systems you may want to change your preferences to meet your requirements.
An overview of the various performance settings may be found here.
* Note: If you set the throttle in the BOINC agent (called: Use no more than: % of processor time) to 60%, the agent will run at 100% for three seconds, and then at 0% for two seconds.
Does TB only attack the lungs?
Tuberculosis typically attacks the lungs (pulmonary TB) but it can also develop in areas outside the lungs (extrapulmonary TB), such as the bones and joints, the digestive system, the bladder and reproductive system, the nervous system and the lymph nodes. Extrapulmonary TB is more common in people with a weakened immune system, such as HIV patients
Why do we need to predict protein structure?
Prediction is the only viable alternative to experimental techniques which can be extremely labor intensive and require many months or years of effort.
Why does this application require zero redundancy, i.e. no comparison of results across devices?
Unlike many of our research projects, FightAIDS@Home – Phase 2 does not require redundancy, where the same research task is sent to two devices and the results are compared for consistency. Instead, this project will be using various processing metrics during the computation of a research task to validate that the task is progressing without errors.
Why are my work units failing with exit code 234 “Error: cl_khr_local_int32_base_atomics extension required by this program is not supported”?
The Help Conquer Cancer graphics card application requires the OpenCL extension cl_khr_local_int32_base_atomics and will not run on cards that do not support this extension. If you see the error above it is because your graphics card does not support the extension.
Why did this project download and upload so much data?
Climate simulations require three-dimensional information about temperature, pressure, wind, humidity and surface properties for the entire region being studied at a detailed grid level. In addition, information arriving at the boundary of the region over the time span being studied is needed. This requires a considerable amount of input data, and as the simulation runs, a large quantity of output data is produced.
Why do I lose my work and have to download a new work unit if Windows crashes?
This occurrence is not unique to the software, though it is visible because of the way that the software works. When the Operating System completely freezes and power to the computer must be cut (a forceful/hard boot is performed) open files are mishandled and often corrupted. This occurs in virtually all operating systems, and can lead to corruption of open program files, or even of the operating system itself. The software performs a check of its files when it is started and if they have been damaged, for example during a hard reboot, then it will discard them and download a new work unit.
How do I set the software to close the internet connection after downloading a work unit?
The software does not attempt to control your Internet connection. Establishing and closing the connection is done by the operating system.
Will World Community Grid ever run on a game box?
Running on game consoles requires specialized technical knowledge, plus the right kind of research project. The technical knowledge can be acquired but the research projects for game consoles must have a very small footprint.
Why is the Africa Rainfall Project opt-in only?
The Africa Rainfall Project requires significant computing power from each device: 1 GB of available memory and 1.5 GB of available disk space. Volunteers should make sure that their computers have these resources before opting in to the project.
How does World Community Grid get new projects?
First, a non-profit organization has to have a research project which benefits humanity for which they require some serious computer power in order to complete the research. Then someone from the research organization goes to the World Community Grid website and Submits a Proposal. At World Community Grid, we review the proposal to ensure it meets all requirements and is technically feasible to run on the grid. Then subject matter experts review the proposal to ensure that the research is technically correct. After that, it is placed on the schedule for launch.
What are microorganisms?
Microorganisms are microscopically small life forms, mostly single celled, and include bacteria, archaea, protozoa, yeasts and microscopic algae. Members of these diverse groups are present in almost all environments on earth: in the air, water, earth, rocks, and even where conditions are very harsh, such as the deep ocean and polar environments. They play a crucial role in maintaining all ecological systems and interact closely with one another and with other life forms. They are present in and around other living systems, such as plants, animals and humans.
What is a Regional Circulation Model (RCM)?
A RCM is a comprehensive physical high resolution (less than 50km) climate model that covers a limited area of the globe, usually including the atmosphere and land surface components of the climate system, and containing representations of the important processes within the climate system (e.g., cloud, radiation, rainfall, soil hydrology).
Do you have a startup script for the BOINC client on Linux?
There are two common ways to have BOINC automatically start on a Linux system. The first will start BOINC when you log in to your Linux system. This involves placing code into your shell resource file (such as .bashrc). The second will start BOINC when the system is started. You can read more about this at the following sites: http://www.spy-hill.net/~myers/help/boinc/unix.html#start and http://boinc.berkeley.edu/autostart_dennett.txt
How do I know that the BOINC software is running correctly?
One way to check is to double-click on the World Community Grid, or BOINC, icon in the system tray in the lower right of your display. An information panel will pop up that should reflect that the application is running and the panel will also display the “elapsed time” and “time remaining”.
Why is this project using intermediate uploads and trickle messages?
Unlike many of our research projects, FightAIDS@Home – Phase 2 requires that research tasks within each simulation, and small processing steps within each task, to be carried out in sequence. This means that it would take much longer to get the results to the researchers.
Trickle messaging and intermediate upload capabilities allow us instead to move the same research task from one volunteer to the next, without losing progress along the way. Overall, this assures progress, shortens and stabilizes the processing time required to complete research tasks and speeds up the rate at which valuable results can be returned to the researchers.
While a typical FightAIDS@Home – Phase 2 simulation might take up to a year to complete, using these capabilities means that it can be completed in as little as two months.
How much computing power does this project need, and why?
Based on the molecular dynamics simulations that the researchers have done up to now, using a cluster of 20 nodes (160 CPU cores) for a couple of months at a time, they estimate that to extend the simulations to water-flow velocities typical of practical nanotube filters, they will require another factor of 400 or more in compute time. And to simulate a representative range of membrane pore sizes would require a further factor of 10, for a total of order 106 thousand single-core-CPU-years. Add on to this a wide variety of contaminants they would like to add to the water in the simulations, and the sky is the limit!
Of course, the researchers will have to go one step at a time, and a lot of the computing effort will be to verify previous results at each stage and to make sure the results are reliable.
Why is Phase 2 of the Clean Energy Project an opt-in project?
These calculations require work units that may run longer, have higher memory, disk space and data transfer requirements. Therefore, we are providing the users the option to opt-in to the project.
In addition, The Clean Energy Project is the first World Community Grid project to use an external server. That is, your result data is directly uploaded to the Harvard research server. Security checks are in place to make certain that uploaded data is transferred correctly and validated by the Harvard research server that is receiving the data. World Community Grid controls which servers the data is sent to and the Harvard servers will not send data files to the member machines.
Therefore, if you're interested in advancing the science of solar cells, please help us out in this great effort!
Will you make GPU processing available for other research projects?
Not all algorithms are suited to general purpose computing on GPUs and may not receive performance improvements. Additionally, general purpose computing on a GPU is a complex process, requiring numerous modifications and optimizations to the underlying algorithms of an application to realize performance increases.
We will work with the research scientists to make projects available on GPU if feasible and applicable to advancing the science application. However, it is up to the research scientists to enable their application to utilize GPU technology.
What about connection costs?
The only costs associated with the connection depend on your service with your ISP. Uploads and downloads do not typically require lengthy connections, however busy periods or maintenance outages may impact your connection.
Additional information on connections may be found here.
What is a World Community Grid team?
Once you register with World Community Grid, you have the option to join an existing team, or create a new team. (Please note: to create a new team you are required to have a username.)
When you are on a team, you may compete with other teams for total run time, points, and results returned. Joining a team does not affect your individual member statistics.
What is the benefit of conducting this research on World Community Grid?
In the absence of the computational power of World Community Grid, researchers would have to undertake their investigation through individual docking simulations which would take approximately 8,000 years to complete. With World Community Grid, analysis can be carried out in parallel, and researchers estimate this will reduce the time required to about 2 years.
There are other volunteer computing projects related to COVID-19? Does the world really need more than one?
Yes! There other volunteer computing projects right now that are part of the fight against COVID-19, and they are all doing important work. Understanding the molecular structure of the virus that causes COVID-19, searching for treatments, and ultimately finding a vaccine, requires an "all hands on deck" approach from scientists, government agencies, businesses, and the general public.
Why does the screen saver only show a black or blank screen?
This is a known issue with later versions of BOINC. It is caused when you set your screen saver to require a password upon activation. Please upgrade to the latest World Community Grid BOINC agent available here as it will display an alternate screen saver that will show you the agent is working.
My computer seems to be running slow since I installed the World Community Grid agent?
If your computer seems to run slower when running the agent, then you may have relatively little memory in your system. Using 100% CPU alone will not slow things down because the agent runs at lowest priority so that it yields to any other work. Otherwise, it consumes the unused CPU which makes the total go to 100%. However, if your system has relatively little real memory (usually about 512 meg or less) and you are running other memory hungry applications, then there might be disk paging delays. To solve the problem, you could set your agent to run in screen saver mode only. Then, while you are actively using the machine, the agent will stay out of the way.
I'm having trouble downloading the software
Perhaps your Internet Explorer is configured to block installing downloads. Within Internet Explorer, click on Tools-> Internet Options -> Security -> Custom Level -> Downloads. Check to see that File downloads are enabled. There might be other settings which need to be enabled such as the ability to execute Javascript. Please also check to see if your network requires a proxy, click here for Proxy FAQs.
Does World Community Grid offer a 64 bit version of the BOINC software?
No. Our recommended BOINC agents are those of the 32 bit variety because even though the client is 32 bit, it will run 64 bit applications. The agent does not do anything that requires 64 bit execution at this time, thus recommending a version that works on both makes life easier. The science applications are available in both 32 bit and 64 bit. A 64 bit science application can run on 32 bit BOINC client. The opposite is also true, a 32 bit science application can run on a 64 bit BOINC client.
What software does the Africa Rainfall Project use?
The Africa Rainfall Project uses the Weather Research & Forecasting (WRF) model for the research application. It is used to simulate weather conditions in a geographical region over a defined time period. The work for this project will be broken into small geographical regions of sub-Saharan Africa, and in the end each region will be simulated for one calendar year.
WRF is a very large, mostly Fortran application, and the simulations being run require more resources than are typically used for a World Community Grid project. For this reason, volunteers will not be automatically opted into this project.
What is trickle messaging?
Trickle messaging is a capability that allows your device to communicate with us while working on a research task to report the progress being made by your device. This allows us to determine whether work should continue on that research task or whether insufficient progress is being made and therefore that task should be handed over to another volunteer for processing.
This capability is particularly useful to a project like FightAIDS@Home – Phase 2 because of the nature of its research tasks, which may require more processing time to complete and can therefore be started by one volunteer and completed by another, without losing the progress made by the first volunteer.
Why were there not as many work units for the Help Defeat Cancer project?
The data images used in the Tissue Microarrays took a lot of computer processing themselves to assemble into work units. The preprocessing alone required for the generation of the work units was quite sizable. The Cancer Institute of New Jersey had as many computers as they could spare working on creating work units for this project. Unfortunately, there was no way to put the work unit creation process on our grid, but we added the new work units to our grid as soon as they were generated.
How is World Community Grid helping with this effort?
While effective, protein folding simulations are resource-intensive and often require more computational power than scientists typically have access to. The Microbiome Immunity Project research team is therefore enlisting the help of World Community Grid volunteers, each of whom runs these simulations on their computers. Each of these simulations is a virtual experiment to predict the structure of a protein.
The massive amount of aggregated computation power World Community Grid brings to this project will greatly advance and accelerate this new area of health research.
What will the results of this project be?
The researchers will publish an open-access database of the protein sequence comparisons computed on World Community Grid.
We expect that this information will help scientists discover new enzymatic functions, find how organisms interact with each other and the environment, document the current baseline microbial diversity, and better understand and model complex microbial systems.
What will the results of this project be?
The researchers will publish an open-access database of the protein sequence comparisons computed on World Community Grid.
We expect that this information will help scientists discover new enzymatic functions, find how organisms interact with each other and the environment, document the current baseline microbial diversity, and better understand and model complex microbial systems.
What will World Community Grid's calculations produce?
On the lowest level, CrystalVision will compute thousands of image features for each crystallography image. This data objectively measures characteristics of the image, which will enable scientists to use a system to discern image classification. In turn, this will allow them to automatically and objectively characterize results from the high-throughput crystallization screens, and then apply data mining techniques to optimize future crystallization experiments.
What will happen with the data generated by all these calculations?
After careful analysis, evaluation and interpretation, all results will be published in the public domain. The scientists' first goal is to improve the CrystalVision system to enable automated, accurate and fast crystallography image classification. This algorithm will then be deployed at Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute to ensure that this public high-throughput crystallography screening facility will speed up crystallization of many disease-related proteins.
What is a General Circulation Model (GCM)?
A GCM is a global, three-dimensional computer model of the climate system, which can be used to simulate the earth's climate. GCMs are highly complex and represent the effects of such factors as reflective and absorptive properties of atmospheric water vapor, greenhouse gas concentrations, clouds, solar heating, sea temperatures and ice boundaries. The most advanced GCMs include global representations of the atmosphere, oceans, and land surface.
What are the goals of the Help Stop TB project?
The tuberculosis (TB) bacterium has an outer coat that protects it from treatments and a patient’s immune system. The Help Stop TB project is aimed at helping scientists to better understand that coat and its role in protecting the bacteria. This understanding can help us and other scientists to design better drugs against TB in the future.
Who does TB affect?
Most people who come into contact with TB do not become ill with the disease, but those who are malnourished or have weakened immune systems, such as HIV patients, are more susceptible to developing the disease once they have been exposed to the bacteria. In addition, poor living conditions and overcrowded places are the ideal conditions for TB to spread through coughing or sneezing of infected individuals.
What is the difference between a vaccine and an antiviral drug?
A vaccine is administered before a person becomes infected. Vaccination usually consists of one or several shots which stimulate the immune system to protect against subsequent exposure to the virus.
Antiviral drugs are used when a patient is currently infected with the virus. They generally work by blocking the activity of the proteins that the virus uses to replicate itself or to infect other cells. These drugs must be taken by an infected patient multiple times, until the virus is destroyed.
Why do I have two World Community Grid or BOINC software icons by my clock?
This area is called the Windows system tray (or systray). When the software updates itself, it will create a new icon here. The previous icon may not clear until you move your mouse over it. This is common among Windows applications that use the systray. If the second icon does not disappear, you may safely close one of them. To close, right click on the icon and select Exit.