BOINC projects news headlines

LHC Test4Theory@Home: Power cuts affecting the project

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:57:15 GMT

2012-02-09: Dear all, There are some power cuts at CERN, and some of the servers are affected. We will inform you when everything is back to normal operation. Thanks for your understanding. The team. Update Dear all, The system is up and running again! Thanks for your understanding. The team!

DistrRTgen: Validation errors?

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:11:35 GMT

2012-02-09: To those of you whom are running the 7.x development client, you will get validation errors. To fix this problem, please downgrade your BOINC client to 6.12.34 which is the recommended version

GPUGRID: AMD GPUs are now usable at Donate@Home, a different project from GPUGrid.

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:00:05 GMT

2012-02-09: For running AMD gpus please check this thread: http://www.gpugrid.org/forum_thread.php?id=2839

GPUGRID: AMD GPUs now available at different project

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:00:05 GMT

2012-02-09: For running AMD gpus please check this thread: http://www.gpugrid.org/forum_thread.php?id=2839

GPUGRID: AMD GPUs now available

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:00:05 GMT

2012-02-09: For running AMD gpus please check this thread: http://www.gpugrid.org/forum_thread.php?id=2839

MilkyWay@home: Separation updated to 1.00

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:36:48 GMT

2012-02-08: I've updated all of the separation applications to 1.00. For changes people might care about,- The old CAL version is gone; it's replaced with the OpenCL application. On AMD/ATI GPUs (older than 79xx) it is using some hackery to use the same IL kernel as before so it should be as fast. However this also means the Radeon 38xx cards aren't supported with new stuff. - Radeon 79xx stuff should work - The occasional validate errors from empty / truncated stderr should stop - AVX will be used if available on Linux and Windows (64 bit only for Windows) - I've increased the default GPU target frequency so GPU stuff should make things less laggy on average. You can now also configure this with the web preferences now so you don't need to use app_info stuff if you want to play with that. - Partial workaround with high CPU usage with recent Nvidia drivers.* As usual post problems you run into here. * It should cut down on the CPU usage a bit while not sacrificing too much. I would recommend not using it unless you are very unhappy with the CPU usage on Nvidia. There are options to change the polling mode if you want to lower the CPU usage further while not slowing it down. (--gpu-wait-factor (default = 0.75) and --gpu-polling-mode (default = - 2) work similarly to how they did with the old CAL one, but slightly different). With the default of -2 it will use mode -1 unless it is an Nvidia driver newer than the one that introduced the high CPU issue, where it will use mode 0. Mode -1 uses the correct waiting method, mode 0 use the correct waiting method with an initial sleep based on time estimates, and modes > 0 are a polling period in milliseconds. The wait factor is a sort of correction of the time estimate used for the initial wait. The default is 0.75, to wait for 75% of the estimated time before trying to poll.

DistrRTgen: BOINC is up and running again

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:19:33 GMT

2012-02-08: I'm happy to announce that we are finally up and running again at full speed! To those of you whom might not now, we had issues with our brand new server. We were suffering from performance degradation and frequent spontaneous reboots. Now we have migrated to a temporary loaner server while our original server is being tested to find the cause of the issues. Previously it were running NetBSD 6.0 with LVM to manage the space, but we think it's what's causing the problems and so the server will be reinstalled with NetBSD 5.1 without LVM after the testing phase has completed, to keep things simple. Until then, we hope you will help us test our temporary loaner server. Let's see how much it can take before going down Let the crunching begin!

RALPH@Home: Project News Feb 8, 2012

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:00:00 GMT

2012-02-08: The minirosetta_beta application has been updated to version 3.21.

BOINC combined: Welcome SAT@home

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:40:20 GMT

2012-02-07: The SAT@home project, from the Institute for Systems Analysis of Russian Academy of Sciences, solves hard and practically important problems (discrete functions inversion problems, discrete optimization, bioinformatics, etc) that can be effectively reduced to the Boolean satisfiability problem.

PrimeGrid: Prime Fermat Divisor Found

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:02:45 GMT

2012-02-07: Congratulations to Rob Derrera (TEAM BIGDOG) of the United States, the discoverer of PrimeGrid's 10th Prime Fermat Divisor in the Proth Prime Search project: 131*2^1494099+1 Divides F(1494096). This is the 294th known divisor and the 2nd found in 2012. Rob is a member of the US Navy team. For more details, please see the official announcement.

GPUGRID: New WUs: GIANNI_FR1

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:24:11 GMT

2012-02-07: This is a set of 600 WU in the acemdlong queue related to method development. gdf

GPUGRID: New wus on the long queue

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:35:35 GMT

2012-02-07: We have put some not-so-long WUs in the (currently empty) long queue. They give normal credit (possibly with bonuses). This is part of an experiment to verify whether we can get low-latency results. They are named "TAKExx".

WEP-M+2 Project: P2203:15000000 wu's (of 10000 trials each equiv.) processed!

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:37:21 GMT

2012-02-07: Thanks to all the users. Please keep crunching!

Cosmology@Home: Assimilator not working - update 1.

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

2012-02-07: As some of you have pointed out, we are currently experiencing problems with the file system which are affecting the module that assimilates the results of your computations. We are working to resolve these problems and will endeavor to keep you updated as we progress. Please bear with us as we try to resolve this problem.

SETI@Home: Huffington Post SETI@home Blog.

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:07:12 GMT

2012-02-06: SETI@home Project Scientist Eric Korpela has published a blog entry in the Huffington Post's new science section. Other Berkeley SETI bloggers may follow. Depending upon the response we may only blog there, may restrict blog entries here to things directly related to SETI@home, or we may duplicate the posts here. Let us know what you think.

Surveill@Home: Surveill@Home Server Scheduled Maintenance

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:29:23 GMT

2012-02-06: Hi, Please be aware that the Surveill@Home server will undergo scheduled maintenance this Tuesday 7th February at 0900 GMT. We estimate that the maintenance will finish at 1400 GMT. Thanks, Carlos Vaz

GPUGRID: New batch of WUs: KKAL4

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:50:16 GMT

2012-02-06: I've created around 1000 new WUs on the "normal" queue. They give 9100 base credits each. The type of WU uses a standard setup and we already had them around in the past.

Mersenne@home: New application Xtdt.

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:50:03 GMT

2012-02-05: A new application eXtreme trial division test was released. It does a final third phase of trial division like testing. This test like the previous steps do not require large transfers or memory, but the calculations may take from several hours up to over a day (depending on the computer speed).

MilkyWay@home: Remainder of the Double Credits: A Valentine's Day Present

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 03:25:39 GMT

2012-02-05: A few weeks ago, we ran double credits in order to make up for a database error that occurred earlier in 2011. Unfortunately, the server crashed with just 12 hours left until the make-up credits were finished. Now that the new server is up and running (and stable! very stable!), and everyone here is back from travels and winter break, we are ready to finish running those last 12 hours of double make-up credits. If there are no significant objections, we'll run the double credits on St. Valentine's Day (February 14), from 10:00 am until 10:00 pm, US Eastern time (EST). This corresponds to 3pm (Feb14)-3am (Feb15) UTC. Happy crunching!

YAFU: New style for Boinc server

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 19:56:58 GMT

2012-02-04: Over the past weeks Christian developed a prototype of a smarty template engine integration for BOINC. This will enable projects to change the appearance of their website without changing the php source code. Every template file can be overridden by projects, creating an individual look of their website. It's even possible to integrate another template engine easily. This integration uses the BOINC translation system and has it's own fast caching mechanism. Currently a CSS grid system with default colors is used but this can be changed if needed. Please have a look at this new appearance and give some feedback on how you like it. The prototype can be found at the yafu project: http://yafu.dyndns.org/yafu/new_index.php http://yafu.dyndns.org/yafu/new_apps.php http://yafu.dyndns.org/yafu/new_info.php http://yafu.dyndns.org/yafu/new_project_description.php

PrimeGrid: Generalized Fermat Prime Search

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:38:49 GMT

2012-02-04: The Generalized Fermat Prime Search is now out of beta and open to all users. An Nvidia GPU with double precision floating point hardware is required for this project. Also, MacIntel CPU's are supported at the current N=262144 (b^2^18). A wealth of discussion has been gathered during the beta phase. For any issues or questions, please see the Generalized Fermat Prime Search forum. This search will eventually reach N=4194304 (b^2^22) which, if successful, has the potential of discovering the world's largest known prime number. Current testing times at N=262144 are ~1 hr for fast GPU's and ~7 hrs for fast MacIntel CPU's. Best of Luck to everyone!

RADIOACTIVE@HOME: Detectors releasing - how we doing it?

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 02:29:02 GMT

2012-02-04: Because I get loads of PM's and emails with same question than I feel that I should explain some details. 1. We ship detectors in batches. We (as people involved in project) can't afford costs of hundreds detectors and for this reason we collect orders on this way. 2. We cannot make "few" detectors - parts prices are really depend on quantity ordered. One detector cost is about 27 Euro in batch order, single one maybe cost 50-70 Euro - I don't really know, because big part in single detector order will be... parcel prices (we have 6 suppliers for parts) and preparing PCB. 3. We not make any profit on detectors or project itself and we can't supply more money on project then server cost and developing new prototypes, etc. 4. Every batch order is announced firstly on our web site, usually few weeks before we start collecting money. 5. We can't give you real price for detector on next release for two reasons: a) Euro cost are various - change to often to say what happened in next two months period b) we would like to put different power module on next batch (not dependent on our, custom transformer) - this can or maybe not impact on price, we don't know yet. I hope most yours questions about ordering are answered in this few points. If you have more questions, please feel free to ask on our forum.

PrimeGrid: Call for arms: full doublecheck of TRP

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:22:23 GMT

2012-02-03: We have recently started a limited doublecheck effort for The Riesel Problem and this has very quickly yielded a prime, which means that the results that we obtained from Riesel Sieve project cannot be trusted 100%. Therefore we have decided to run a full doublecheck effort. We would like to quickly go through the doublecheck ranges and resume our original search, so we would like to ask you to consider redirecting any resources you may have available to The Riesel Problem (TRP) subproject. You can do that by visiting project preferences page. Applications are available for Windows, Linux and Mac. 32bit applications will be sent to 64bit hosts.

RNA World: Thanks to the charity race participants

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:08:40 GMT

2012-02-03: Now that the 2012 charity race is over we would like to thank all the participants for crunching away an amazing pile of work units! You guys are just terrific! ;-)Michael.

PrimeGrid: Prime found for the Riesel Problem

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 05:02:47 GMT

2012-02-03: On 2 Feb 2012, 21:30:55 UTC, PrimeGrid?s The Riesel Problem project eliminated k=162941 by finding the prime: 162941*2^993718-1 The prime is 299,145 digits long and will enter Chris Caldwell's The Largest Known Primes Database ranked 1536th overall. This prime was found while exploring a suspected gap in a previously searched range. This is PrimeGrid's 8th elimination. 56 k's now remain. The discovery was made by Dmitry Domanov (unconnected) of Russia using an Intel Xeon @ 3.60GHz with 2 GB RAM running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x86. This computer took just over 1 hour 5 minutes to complete the primality test using LLR. Dmitry is a member of Team Russia. For more details, please see the official announcement.

Albert@Home: New OpenCL application released: v1.20

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:19:20 GMT

2012-02-02: Discussion of the new app version takes place over in this thread. Best, Oliver

LHC Test4Theory@Home: New Virtual Machine released

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:33:19 GMT

2012-02-02: Dear all, We are very happy to announce that we have released today a new virtual machine (cernvm_2.5.1-3-1). This new version has several improvements at the low level that will help to improve the number of returned successful jobs. You will get the new virtual machine when all the jobs with the previous VM version have been processed. Best regards, The team.

NumberFields@home: The 5th subfield is now finished.

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 07:26:21 GMT

2012-02-02: Once again, thank you to all our volunteers. We couldn't do this without you guys. I should also mention that the 2nd application has reached a new milestone, and has progressed to the next level of that search. For those who are interested, a list of the newest fields can be found via the link on the main page (the new fields are under the heading "decics with a quadratic subfield", near the bottom).

SIMAP: Maximum number of results per host changed

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:18:33 GMT

2012-02-01: With the new server software release installed in the end of January we experienced that many more workunits are sent to the hosts as usual. We are currently investigating this, seems that the project contiguration settings are differently interpreted by the new software. To avoid total overload of hosts by SIMAP results, we have reduced the daily maximum number of results per host to 300. We will check and adapt this limit during the next days continuously. Best regards Thomas

SIMAP: Maximal number of results per host changed

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:18:33 GMT

2012-02-01: With the new server software release installed in the end of January we experienced that many more workunits are sent to the hosts as usual. We are currently investigating this, seems that the project contiguration settings are differently interpreted by the new software. To avoid total overload of hosts by SIMAP results, we have reduced the daily maximal number of results per host to 300. We will check and adapt this limit during the next days continuously. Best regards Thomas

Einstein@Home: Einstein@Home volunteers discover three new radio pulsars in Arecibo data

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:56:50 GMT

2012-02-01: Einstein@Home volunteers have discovered three new radio pulsars in Arecibo PALFA data -- the eighth, ninth and tenth new radio pulsars found by Einstein@Home volunteers in this data set! Congratulations to: Peter van der Spoel, Utrecht, the Netherlands Edvin Grabar, Pula, Croatia Shadowfax, Baltimore, Maryland, USA Cauche Nathanael John-Luke Peck, TerraPower & Intellectual Ventures, Seattle, Washington, USA Mark Henderson, Morristown, Tennessee, USA Further details about these newly-discovered pulsars can be found on this web page, and will be published in due course. Bruce Allen Director, Einstein@Home

PrimeGrid: The Tour de Primes Begins!

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:29:32 GMT

2012-02-01: Come join us in laid-back competition in tribute to the number 2...the first prime and the only even prime. The prizes are simple colored jerseys . Yellow for the most primes, Green for the highest prime score, and Polk-a-dot for the most primes on 19 Feb. No pressure or stress other than what you put on yourself. :) For more information, please see Tour de Primes 2012.

NFS@Home: 2,2382M factored

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:00:16 GMT

2012-01-31: 2,2382M is now factored into 100-digit and 119-digit prime numbers. The sieving of 2,1990L is going well.

Spinhenge@home: Project News January 31, 2012

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 23:00:00 GMT

2012-01-30: First, please excuse the long phase where we have reported nothing new. Thomas has become the successor of Mr. Hartmann and manages now the labs "Compuattional Science Lab" and "Technical Computer Science". This was and is a lot of work and therefore Spinhenge@home came a little bit too short. Second, the forum is now back online. It can be reached here. Third, we are currently reorganizing our software architecture for the client application which unfortunately takes much more time than planned. One thing is that we want to merge all input information in just one compact file, so that we can save space and time on your computers. Also, we are implementing several new functions. Most important for us now is a new method that allows us to simulate a magnetic nano system which is subject to a time dependent magnetic field. With this we are able to calculate the so-called AC susceptibility for a system which gives us information about its internal energy barriers. This property is vital for identifying so-called single molecular magnets (SMM). These SMM are candidates for future memory devices since they allow to store information in a much smaller space than conventional magnetic recording materials. The implementation of this method is not that easy and requires the numerical solution of stochastic differential equations which simulate the dynamics of the individual magnetic moments in a nano system. The first big chunk of this task is done and successfully tested (many thanks to Andrértmeier!). We hope to be able to do first test calculations using the new client application soon! Fourth, we are currently planning the reorganization of our server infrastructure. The three project server should run in the future in a virtual environment. Please keep fingers crossed! And thanks a lot for your patience! Kind regards, Christian Schrö der, Thomas Hilbig

LHC Test4Theory@Home: Web application not working

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:27:08 GMT

2012-01-30: Dear all, During this week you are going to experience some minor problems with the web application, as we are deploying it in your VMs. While the deployment is done, you will get the warning message from the web application, saying that your browser does not support HTML5 and Javascript, but giving you access to the figures and logs via two links. This warning message will be removed, once we have finally done the deployment. Sorry for the inconveniences. Best regards, The team. UPDATE: The new web application has been deployed in our servers. In one hour you should be able to reboot the VM if you want to see the new application or wait until your WU finishes. The next WU will have the updated code.

PrimeGrid: World Record Generalized Cullen Prime

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 02:12:11 GMT

2012-01-30: On 29 Jan 2012, 08:10:03 UTC, PrimeGrid?s PRPNet found the largest known generalized Cullen prime: 427194*113^427194+1 The prime is 877,069 digits long and enters Chris Caldwell's The Largest Known Primes Database ranked 1st for generalized Cullen primes and 57th overall. The discovery was made by Ricky L. Hubbard of the United States using an AMD Phenom II X6 1090t @ 3.2GHz with 8GB RAM, running Windows 7. This computer took 7 hours and 15 minutes to complete the probable prime test using pfgw64 and 7 hours 20 minutes to complete the primality test again using pfgw64. Ricky is a member of the AMD Users Team. For more details, please see the official announcement.

Rosetta@Home: Project News Jan 29, 2012

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 08:00:00 GMT

2012-01-29: Journal post from David BakerLast year we described in Science magazine the design of a new enzyme which catalyzes a chemical reaction called the Diels Alder reaction involving the formation of two carbon-carbon bonds. This reaction is interesting because no natural enzymes are known to catalyze the reaction. However, it wasn't a very good enzyme, and we asked FoldIt players to try to improve it. As described in Nature Biotechnology this month, remarkably FoldIt players were able to make the designed enzyme 20 times faster by inserting a completely new loop which helps the enzyme bind the chemicals it links together. The combination of Rosetta@Home and FoldIt is turning out to be powerful indeed for solving challenging problems in biomedicine!

Mersenne@home: New versions of Tdt and Etdt applications.

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 18:28:04 GMT

2012-01-28: New versions have some memory allocation tweaks, and should give a few percent increase in performance :)

yoyo@home: Muon: Best Design

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:00:00 GMT

2012-01-27: Check the unOfficial Muon Blog where you can see the best design of the Linac900Removable6c2 lattice. This result was returned by yoyo@home.

Moo! Wrapper: Planned database mainenance completed

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:10:07 GMT

2012-01-27: Finished a planned database maintenance few hours ago, where our primary DB was moved to a separate host. Service levels should be returning to normal.. or actually they should be getting better now that this change is done. So no more transitioner backlog or strange scheduler failures. :) Downtime was a bit longer than expected (started around 1:00EET/23:00UTC/14:00PST) because moving over 30G of data actually takes a while and then there was complications while making our Python based backend and PHP based web use SSL when connecting to the new MySQL server.