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Being middleware, BOINC isn't nearly as well known as some of the grid computing-based volunteer projects – like SETI@home and Rosetta@home -- that exploit it. But the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing is pretty amazing software.

BOINC is an open source software platform for volunteer and grid computing projects. The software runs in the background on any type of computer, exploiting otherwise idle computing resources. Scientists have used BOINC to create volunteer computing projects, universities use it to build virtual supercomputing centers and corporations use it for grid computing.

Source: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/083109-boinc.html