Why run this when Free-DC has its own Prime Search Project?
Hi everyone,
Our last rally, which lasted for a week, was rather well-received by its participants; therefore, we've decided to make our next rally a week-long one as well.
The rally will begin Wednesday, October 27 at 7:00 PM GMT and finish 168 hours later on Wednesday, November 3 at 7:00 PM GMT. For those of you who can't convert GMT to local time , that's 3:00 PM EDT and 2:00 PM CDT.
As last time, this rally will be focusing on the 5th Drive, our priority for the rest of the year (or until we finish it to n=1M, which will hopefully come first). That means LLRnet port 3000 and PRPnet port 9000, both of which should be in the vicinity of n=920K-950K during the rally. A prime at that level will come in around 550-600th place in the top-5000 list--a very nice find indeed.
LLRnet config info.:
server = "www.noprimeleftbehind.net"
port = 3000
PRPnet config info.:
server = "www.noprimeleftbehind.net"
port = 9000
Or, in terms of a prpclient.ini config line:
server=G9000:100:1:noprimeleftbehind.net:9000
Be sure and change your userID to whatever ID you prefer. Most people use their ID at mersenneforum. It is also best to set the cache to something in the vicinity of 2 to 10 pairs.
Info. for downloading the newest LLRnet client can be found at LLRnet supports LLR V3.8! (LLRnet2010 V0.73L).
Info. for downloading the newest PRPnet client can be found at PRPnet.
As a point of interest for those who might be new to NPLB and for others who haven't done any testing with us for a while, we have some milestones that we would like to shoot for in the near future. Please refer to our primes graph and drive progress as well as to our "Countdown meter". NPLB's goal all along has been to fill in holes in the prime search ranges for Riesel base 2. We'd like to get the dots in that k=300-1001 range fully extended to n=1M by year end 2011 so that they are closer to where k<300 (worked by RPS) is at. In targeting k=400-600 for the 4th consecutive time in this rally, we have set a relatively aggressive goal to have it tested completely to n=1M by year end 2010.
Last time PrimeSearchTeam blew everyone else completely out of the water, coming in at more than 10,000 k/n pairs more than ROLP, the second-place team. AMD Users came in 3rd place, and Team-Goobee.org in 4th. Free-DC still didn't show up to reclaim their rally titles of old--perhaps the sleeping giant will wake up this time.
Additionally, we had a very interesting personal race between gd_barnes of ROLP and vaughan of AMD Users. Gary ended up taking the crown at 27477 pairs vs. 24056, but for a while there Vaughan had a rather higher output and probably could have won if he'd have brought all his cores earlier. Perhaps this time?
You guys ready to find some BIG primes?
Max
P.S.: As before, this is mostly a copy-and-paste from our original announcement in the NPLB thread at http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=14050. You can post any questions either place.
Last edited by Max Dettweiler; 10-11-2010 at 11:46 PM. Reason: whoops, little boo boo
Why run this when Free-DC has its own Prime Search Project?
Well, for the same reason one might choose to run (say) Rosetta@Home instead of Folding@Home. Both are protein folding projects trying to do pretty much the same things; but they go abot it in slightly different ways. As the saying goes, variety is the spice of life.
In the case of NPLB and Free-DC's Prime Search Project, even though they use the same software the two have slightly different goals. The Free-DC project is trying to find as many top-5000 primes as it can in various parts of the k=7000-8000 range (in the world of k*2^n-1 primes, projects usually declare their "turf" in terms of k). NPLB is trying to get a complete, continuous record of all primes (hence the name, "No Prime Left Behind") in the ranges in which we work (currently, k=300-3000), as we believe our results will be of most use to mathematicians this way. Still, in the process we end up finding quite a few top-5000 primes; this is the "fun" part for many, so we try to manage our ranges such that we always have a good portion of the project focused on finding top-5000 primes. So far it seems to have worked: currently we're #3 in the Top 5000 Prime List's project rankings by number of primes.
A second reason could be because NPLB currently has a lot more cross-team competitive action than Free-DC's Prime Search. Our last few rallies have had very competitive team and individual races with a variety of teams participating.
From last rallies you can state that the clients (participants) are always the same...so you project NPLB has if it was something special but it is not. Free-DC members stopped helping NPLB since 2009 so that must be something to think about and I find it weird!
Actually, we have had a decidedly different set of participants from rallly to rally...we had quite a few participants last time who were entirely new to NPLB.
NPLB was Free-DC's "Project of the Month" in early 2009 (January I think) and when that was done most of the Free-DC participants moved on to other projects. A few stayed on for a little while after that but eventually moved on to other projects as well. Such is the nature of distributed computing--quite often participation is transient. That happens all the time after rallies and the like both at NPLB and other projects.
(BTW: you wouldn't happen to be Carlos under another name? No offense intended if this isn't the case, but I also find it weird that a complete newbie--who's never even participated in Free-DC's Prime Search, at least under that name--would in his very first two posts have such a combative attitude towards our project. Carlos, if that's you, please let it go already...we never wanted to pick a fight with you and to this day I do not see what purpose it serves.)
Thank you for the explanation. So NPLB is secondary project for most people not worth to run as a primary one. With so many BOINC projects out there it starts to be difficult to filtrate which ones are serious or being useful for society.
No, I am not who you claim I am.
Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say it's not worth it for most people to run NPLB as a primary project...that's entirely a matter of preference and our regulars would surely disagree. I would argue that producing a true and accurate list of prime numbers is of greater importance to society than a long-shot search for extraterrestrial life--but of course this is just my opinion and others have different preferences in project choices. As distributed computing is largely a purely hobby pursuit, a choice between projects is often less about which is more useful for society and more about which is most personally fulfilling to those running it.
Ah, okay...no problem. Just had to be sure...No, I am not who you claim I am.
A few life science projects.
Free-DC do have representation in this rally.
Not so many in number but they are making a lot of noise
Barbedo
Enhance your calm