Grid Computing is this activity where a huge computing effort necessary to achieve a scientific project is split into small work units (WU) which can be computed by normal personal computers in a few hours.

A Grid is an organization which offers servers and more or less people to manage the distribution of work units to clients (our PCs), collect the results of completed work units and return them to the project scientists.

Boinc is the most widely used software application for managing this effort, both on the server side and on the client side. Note that Boinc does not compute for the project itself, it is the work units which run specific science application programs which do the computational work.

When talking of "projects" the major confusion comes from the fact that Boinc was originally developed when a Grid was running a single scientific project, which is still the case for most Grids nowadays. For this reason the Boinc terminology has unfortunately started to use "project" where they should have used Grid or Grid site.

Practically, in this simplified picture of the Grid Computing activity you have many Grid sites like SETI@Home, Einstein@Home, ABC@Home, etc... which run each a single scientific project (SETI@Home, Einstein@Home, ABC@Home, respectively) and World Community Grid (WCG) whose purpose is to run several projects at the same time, currently FightAIDS@Home, Human Proteome Folding - Phase 2, Help Conquer Cancer, Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together and Nutritious Rice for the World.

I hope this helps. Jean.

PS: Sorry Didactylos, but for most not native English readers Endeavour is essentially a space shuttle and possibly several ships...

To add to the above, here is an explanation of some of the items on the "report card."

Points are an arbitrary measurement of the amount of work you have done. The calculation takes as input the speed of your computer and the amount of CPU time consumed. Badges are put on your account if you have completed a certain amount of CPU time towards a particular project. Results are the individual instances of work units that are on your computer, and the output thereof. Teams are used to motivate members to participate.

Run time per calendar day is a measure of how long your computer is kept turned on. I do not know whether "run time" is only CPU time or it is the total time that BOINC is running; maybe a community adviser can clarify. Run time per result is a measure of how "difficult" or "large" your computer finds the work units. Points per hour of run time is a benchmark of how fast your computer is. Points per calendar day is also a benchmark of how fast your computer is but also takes into account such things as how long your computer is turned on during the day, whether a science application is running or not, and so on and so forth. Points per result is a benchmark of the "difficulty" or "size" of the work units that, unlike run time per result, takes into account the speed of the computer so that a fast computer and slow computer may both have the same points per result but the slow computer has a lot more run time per result. Results per calendar day is a measure of how much work your computer does.

"Device installations" is supposed to reflect how many computers you own but it may also increment if you uninstall and reinstall BOINC.

If you want a closer look at actual output, go to

https://secure.worldcommunitygrid.org/ms/viewBoincResults.do.

There you will see the status of each work unit. Click on the name of the work unit, in the leftmost column of the table, to see the status of the job on your computer as it compares with the same or similar work (i.e., other instances of the same work unit – in some projects, however, the instances are not identical) running on other computers. In the pop-up, your computer will show in orange highlighting, so you can compare workunit status with that of your peers. Going back to the same window, if you see any links that say "valid" or "pending validation" (or even "error,") you can click on the status ("valid," "pending validation," etc.) to get a taste of the actual output of the jobs. For interpretation check with one of the community advisers by posting a note on the board of the project you're working on.