staff blogs

distributed.net staff keep (relatively) up-to-date logs of their activities in .plan files. These were traditionally available via finger, but we've put them on the web for easier consumption.

2009-07-04

mikereed [04-Jul-2009 @ 12:26]

Filed under: project status @ 12:26 +00:00

:: 04-Jul-2009 12:26 GMT (Saturday) ::

Dear friends,

Since work began on OGR-27 in late February, more than 2% of the total work
necessary to prove OGR-27 is not optimal has been completed.

The first three stubspaces are nearing completion, and should be closed in
a matter of days. During this time, we will be periodically recycling the
remaining stubs from those three stubspaces, so it is important to avoid
excessively fetching more work than you can complete in about a week.

We have just started distributing work from the fourth and final OGR-27
stubspace. It is also the largest stubspace representing the remaining 98%. The
stubs in the final stubspace are more likely to vary greatly in size, compared
to those in the earlier stubspaces; however we expect them to generally be
smaller on average. If our estimation turns out to be proved correct, we should
be able to complete the remaining stubs at a faster rate than for the previous
stubspaces. As we are expecting that we will discover a better ruler for OGR-27
than the one we currently know to be optimal, we may not need to exhaust the
entire stubspace before discovering it. However, after the probable discovery
of a better ruler, it is possible that there remains an even better ruler or
rulers yet to be uncovered.

In addition, thanks to some excellent work by Craig Johnston, client versions
2.9105-510 and above contain three new OGR cores. Depending on your CPU type,
the new cores may provide a significant speed improvement over the cores
used in previous client versions. These speed enhancements will shorten
the time required to search the final stubspace. You are welcome to try a
pre-release client containing these new cores, which you can download from
http://www.distributed.net/download/prerelease.php. As always, please report
bugs using our bug database available at http://bugs.distributed.net/.

So load up those CPUs with fresh OGR-27 work, while enjoying an improved
noderate, and together we’ll crunch through the final stubspace with fury!

Thanks again for your participation!

Moo ]:8)