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.

2010-12-18

New clients released

Filed under: clients — snikkel @ 02:42 +00:00

Several new client versions were promoted to released status today, for a detailed list consult the list of client updates by release date. As always, updating to a more recent client release brings with it performance and usability improvements as well as bug fixes. Consult the most recent changelog for a list of the changes that have occurred. (Check the changelog included with each client for an exact list of changes included.)

For those who want to help with testing the latest and greatest, please peruse the list of prerelease clients available.

Thanks all for the contributions and happy holidays.

2010-05-13

OGR-27 Progress

Filed under: project status — snikkel @ 22:46 +00:00

If you’ve been following our OGR-27 stats you’ll have noticed we just passed through 12% completion. We’re steadily marching forward at rate of approximately one percent a month thanks to our contributors and welcome everyone to join in.

2009-01-27

snikkel [27-Jan-2009 @ 18:47]

Filed under: clients — snikkel @ 18:47 +00:00

:: 27-Jan-2009 18:47 GMT (Tuesday) ::

An updated tarball of our public source is now available at
http://www.distributed.net/source/

This includes the work to improve the CUDA platform, initial work on the AMD
STREAM platform, as well as many different bug fixes and feature improvements.
See the change log in the docs directory for additional details.

2009-01-11

snikkel [11-Jan-2009 @ 20:16]

Filed under: keyservers — snikkel @ 20:16 +00:00

:: 11-Jan-2009 20:16 GMT (Sunday) ::

We experienced a temporary misconfiguration on one of the full proxy servers
in the network yesterday. This had the undesirable affect of notifying clients
and personal proxies that the OGR-NG contest was closed. This is not the
case. Clients and proxy servers that connected to this server may need to be
restarted in order to continue working on the OGR-NG contest. We apologize for
any inconvenience this may cause.

2007-07-26

snikkel [26-Jul-2007 @ 17:24]

Filed under: clients,project status — snikkel @ 17:24 +00:00

:: 26-Jul-2007 17:24 GMT (Thursday) ::

Dear friends,

We would like to announce that we have recently completed OGRp2-25.2 (ie:
OGR-25 phase 2 sub-phase 2) and are very close to completing OGRp2-25.3. For a
full technical summary of the current progress and phases of OGR, please see
http://faq.distributed.net/?file=230

As we move forward, we have just begun distributing stubs from OGRp2-25.6.
These stubs are the first of the 5-diff stubs and as a result are quite a bit
bigger than stubs we have been working on in the recent past.

We are currently working on OGRp2-25 sub-phases 3, 4, 5 and 6 at this
time. Due to the arrangement of the stubs within the sub-phases,
there are fewer but larger stubs left for the later sub-phases. Our
current estimated percentage complete for all of the OGRp2-25 work is
~64.65%, as of July 26, 2007. You can see the current percentage at
http://stats.distributed.net/projects.php?project_id=25.

We have just released new clients (v2.9004.499) which feature a 1-3%
increase in the speed of the OGR MMX core. You can find the clients at
http://www.distributed.net/download/clients.php

Moo!

2006-03-07

snikkel [07-Mar-2006 @ 19:57]

Filed under: clients — snikkel @ 19:57 +00:00

:: 07-Mar-2006 19:57 GMT (Tuesday) ::

We are pleased to announce a pre-release client for Mac OS X x86 is now
available!

Eager users interested in helping provide test coverage for this client can
download it from: http://www.distributed.net/download/prerelease.php Please
report any issues by filing a bug at: http://bugs.distributed.net/

So here is the distributed.net take on the Apple switch over performance. A Mac
Mini with a 1.42Ghz G4 benchmarks 15,049,781 Mkeys/s for RC5-72 and 32,176,334
Mnodes/s for OGR-P2. A Mac Mini with a 1.66Ghz Intel Core Duo benchmarks
9,057,090 Mkey/s for RC5-72 and 44,886,648 Mnodes/s for OGR-P2.

PPC x86 x86/PPC performance
——————————————————
RC5-72 15,049,781 9,057,090 -39.8%
OGR-P2 32,176,334 44,886,648 +39.5%

(Comparing the fastest G4 processor shipped in a Mac Mini with both cores of
the fastest Intel Core processor in a Mac Mini)

The dual cores of the Intel Core Duo give it a substantial advantage over
the single G4 in OGR performance. However, the Intel chip is certainly no
match for the powerhouse G4 in RC5-72 performance. With some more
volunteer help we still might be able to further optimize the code for
Intel Core processors. As always we thank our volunteers for contributing
to the projects.

2006-01-04

snikkel [04-Jan-2006 @ 17:25]

Filed under: clients — snikkel @ 17:25 +00:00

:: 04-Jan-2006 17:25 GMT (Wednesday) ::

Several new v2.9012-497 release candidates for x86 have been added to the
pre-release page. Eager users interested in helping provide test coverage
and report any issues for these new sets of clients can download them from:
http://www.distributed.net/download/prerelease.php

Please report any issues by filing at bug at http://bugs.distributed.net/

Included with client version 2.9012-497 is an exciting speed improvement for
OGR. A brand new MMX OGR core has been added that is substantially faster on
most chips. P4 chips especially gain ~40% over the previous cores, and ~150%
gain over the GARSP 6.0 cores.

Since there are dramatic speed differences with these new clients,
we welcome users to report new benchmarks to our speed database at
http://www.distributed.net/speed/

2005-07-06

snikkel [06-Jul-2005 @ 16:06]

Filed under: clients — snikkel @ 16:06 +00:00

:: 06-Jul-2005 16:06 GMT (Wednesday) ::

A new version of the client source has been posted. It includes
all the core improvements introduced with the recent clients.
We’ve added the MA4 core which targets Pentium 4 chips, but is surpassed
in speed by other cores, the MMX core which targets original Pentium era
chips and the KBE-64 core which is optimized for 64-bit AMD K8 and Pentium
4 chips. In addition we applied speed improvements from contributors for
the DG3 and GO2 cores. We also corrected issues in DG3, SGP3 and SNJL
cores. In the OGR world, we’ve added a new assembly version of the x86
core which improves performance by around 30%.
Get the source at http://www.distributed.net/source/.