ABSTRACT
From the early days in the early 1990s, the Voluntary Distributed Computing world has expanded from a handful of small projects to a situation where there are hundreds of Voluntary Distributed Computing projects across a vast array of topics. Just what kind of project is suitable for VDC? The answer is that computationally heavy projects in most fields of science are suitable, as is demonstrated by the sample of projects I discuss here. Most VDC projects can be classified in one of four broad categories. There are also a number of esoteric projects or projects that do not fall into the four categories below and I include them in a fifth ‘catch-all’ category. The BOINC platform is not a project, but was the catalyst for the enormous growth in the number and variety of projects out there and is ‘home’ for most of the VDC projects. Because of its significance, I also discuss its development and role in the VDC. The projects I discuss here fall into one of the following five categories:
1. Mathematical projects 2. Physics and astronomy projects 3. Biological sciences projects. 4. Earth science projects 5. Catch-all
1. Mathematical Projects
Mathematical projects do numbers related projects such as searching for prime numbers of specific types or trying to solve cryptography problems.
