Glossary and Guide to Abbreviations

Grid computing, like all things computer-related, uses a lot of acronyms and technical terms. This is a handy reference.

BOINC

Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. This is a complete open source grid system created by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley (originally for the SETI@Home project). BOINC is frequently used to refer just to the BOINC grid agent. This is the part of BOINC that users install on their computer to participate in grid projects.

CPU

Central Processing Unit. This is the chip inside your computer that performs the science calculations.

FAAH

FightAIDS@Home. (Also FA@H.) One of the projects running on World Community Grid.

GUI

Graphical User Interface. An easier way of using computers than having to type everything at a command prompt.

HDC

Help Defeat Cancer. One of the projects running on World Community Grid.

HPF

Human Proteome Folding. HPF1 and HPF2 refer to phases 1 and 2 respectively. HPF1 (sometimes just called HPF) is complete. HPF2 is on hiatus.

HT

Hyper Threading. An Intel technology that improves performance under certain conditions. WCG projects do not benefit much from hyper threading.

IP

Internet Protocol. Usually used to refer to an IP address. An IP address looks like 127.0.0.1 or 72.14.207.99

ISP

Internet Service Provider. A company that supplies users with an Internet service.

LAN

Local Area Network. A computer network.

OS

Operating System. The software on a computer that runs all the other programs and manages the hardware.

RPC

Remote Procedure Call. A method of interprocess communication.

SMP

Symmetric Multi-Processing.

Sneaker-net

A method of transfering data from one computer to another (not networked, or behind a restrictive firewall) by carrying the data on storage media.

UD

United Devices. Can be used to refer to the company, United Devices Ltd, but is more frequently used of the United Devices grid agent. The UD agent is one of the two agents supported by WCG on the Windows platform.

WCG

World Community Grid. World Community Grid is an IBM sponsored philanthropic initiative, started in November of 2004. Its purpose is to create the world's largest public computing grid for running research projects that benefit humanity.

WU

Work unit. Each project running on the grid must be split up into smaller chunks so that they can be handled by individual PCs. Each chunk is called a work unit.