BOINC based volunteer computing project
QMC@Home was a volunteer computing project for the BOINC client aimed at further developing and testing Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) for use in quantum chemistry.[1] It is hosted by the University of Münster with participation by the Cavendish Laboratory. QMC@Home allows volunteers from around the world to donate idle computer cycles to help calculate molecular geometry using Diffusion Monte Carlo.
The project is developing a new application using density functional theory.
The project began its Beta testing on 23 May 2006. As of February 2010[update], QMC@Home has about 7,500 active participants from 102 countries, contributing about 5 teraFLOPS of computation power.[2]
Workunits
In order to get results from home computers the work is split into "workunits". The time it takes to complete a workunit depends on the size of the calculated system and the speed of the user's computer. The target time is between 4 and 48 hours on a 2.4 GHz system.
This is a list of molecules recently[when?] tested:
1a Ammonia; 1 Ammonia dimer; 2a Water; 2 Water dimer; 3a Formic acid; 3 Formic acid dimer; 4a Formamide; 4 Formamide dimer; 5a Uracil; 5 Uracil dimer; 6a 2-pyridoxine; 6b 2-aminopyridine; 6 2-pyridoxine/2-aminopyridine; 7a Adenine; 7b Thymine; 7 Adenine/thymine WC; 8a Methane; 8 Methane dimer; 9a Ethene; 9 Ethene dimer; 10 Benzene/methane; 11a Benzene; 11 Benzene dimer; 12a Pyrazine; 12 Pyrazine dimer; 13 Uracil dimer; 14a Indole; 14 Indole/benzene; 15 Adenine/thymine stack; 16b Ethyne; 16 Ethene/ethyne; 17 Benzene/water; 18 Benzene/ammonia; 19b Hydrogen cyanide; 19 Benzene/hydrogen cyanide; 20 Benzene dimer; 21 Indole/benzene; 22a Phenol; 22 Phenol dimer
