you must use the BOINC client. WCG support two different agents, and only one has the features you need.
The kind of science most of the projects are doing doesn't benefit much from multithreading, so to take advantage of SMP, BOINC runs a separate process on each CPU. This means you may need to keep an eye on memory use (the upcoming version of BOINC does this for you - you can limit physical memory and VM use).
It runs on 64 bit OSes, but the science application is 32 bit. THe techs did tests, and found that compiling for 64 bit only provided a tiny performance boost (since the limiting factor is FPU performance). At the moment, there aren't enough 64 bit computers on the grid to justify providing a separate build.
Minimum varies depending on the projects you select, and the projects available on the grid. The current requirements are:
# At least a 550MHz Intel Pentium processor or equivalent
# At least 250 MB RAM (with virtual memory enabled) |
