System requirements

Please read this page before downloading BOINC and starting climateprediction.net.

Taking part in climateprediction.net takes commitment – each climate simulation will take from between a few days to several months to complete, dependent on the model type, your computer speed and how much you leave it on. Incomplete runs cannot be handed on to another participant to complete.

Running climateprediction.net is quite demanding on your PC. Laptops can overheat if they are working hard over a long period, and machines without enough RAM will struggle to run the software.

If your computer does not meet the minimum specification, don’t start the climateprediction.net project. If you have joined the project and decide your computer cannot cope, simply “Detach” from the project.

The table shows the minimum requirements to run climateprediction.net on your machine:

Operating system Hardware Disk space RAM
Microsoft Windows 1.6GHz 1GB 512MB
Mac OS (pre-Catalina)
 1.66GHz 600MB 192MB
Linux (with 32-bit libraries) 1.6GHz 1GB 512MB
By core
Dual-core – 4GB 1.5GB
Quad-core – 8GB 3GB
Hex-core (requires 64-bit OS) – 12GB 4.5GB
8-core (requires 64-bit OS) – 16GB 6GB
Internet connection
Any type of Internet connection (e.g. dial-up, broadband, ISDN, LAN) is suitable to:

  • download the model and
  • send us back the results at the end of the run.

If you deliberately overclock your CPU, you will be more prone to random crashes of the model.

The application graphics requires a graphics card that supports OpenGL, with up-to-date drivers.
Additional Notes
  • The model can only run when you have your computer switched on.
  • Note that the extra greenhouse gas emission generated by the use of your PC is very small. However, whenever you need to switch your computer off, the simulation will restart from the checkpoint before the last place it reached when you next switch the computer on.
  • You only need to connect to the internet at the beginning and at the end of the experiment to return data to us.
  • Some models will crash even if your computer meets the minimum specification.
  • As of late 2011, climate models require SSE2 to function. A computer without this will crash a model within a few seconds. Computers using 64 bit Linux need to have 32 bit libraries installed for the same reason.
  • CPDN does not use GPU cores and there is no realistic chance of GPU cores being used in future due to length and complexity of the code.
  • RAM: minimum memory requirement of 512MB per core. If you are running weather@Home then 768MB RAM per core are required and 2 GB free disk space per core is required.