Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/681
Where there is a challenge, there is fun to be had! Here in this forum we share the fun. Challenge yourself to maximize your distributed potential! Become part of our Team's challenge to dominate all of the distributed projects!
Winning prize money, however unlikely, is not the carrot that keeps members in for the long haul: Stats, team rivalries, and fun, are.
-ZapZilla, Team AnandTech member and RC5 cracking fiend
To most of us, it's a thrill to play with the hottest new processors and other hardware. With each new generation of hardware, we also see new software emerge that takes advantage of it. For some of us it's 3D gaming, for others it's graphic design, for still others it's database work or 3D modeling. But throw that smokin' new computer up against the big tasks, and it's clear that the hot new hardware is still just a small incremental step forward, not a quantum leap. Imagine rendering one of the recent full-length computer-generated films on just one computer, for instance!
The rendering of a feature-length computer-generated movie is a task that's obviously too large for one computer to do in a timely fashion. The rendering is instead carried out simultaneously on many computers, which collaborate to accomplish what no single computer is (presently) able to do. This technique of breaking a very large task into smaller pieces, and using many computers to work on them, is distributed computing. Analyzing radio-telescope data, computing the effects of shielding in the storage of radioactive waste, and the computation of Optimal Golumb Rulers and large prime numbers are other tasks in which distributed computing is sometimes used. Grouping many small machines into one large, discrete computer is one method of executing distributed computing. A good example of this is ASCI.
The following is a link to info about the latest ASCI computer, called ASCI White: http://www.llnl.gov/asci/news/white-news.html.
There is another approach to distributed computing, one which has resulted in speed and power that dwarfs even ASCI White. The exciting thing is that this power is not locked away in huge supercomputers or "render farms!" Hundreds of thousands of private computer users throughout the world are participating in the growing field of public distributed computing. These public distributed-computing projects use the idle CPU time of ordinary computers to crunch data, using simple "client" programs that run as a screensaver or an icon on the Taskbar. AnandTech is proud to have a distributed-computing Team that has grown to be a powerful contender in several of the world's most popular distributed-computing efforts, including the hotly-contested RC5-64 Challenge, the Optimal Golumb Ruler project, Gamma Flux, and the famous SETI@Home. Here is a quick overview of these popular projects:
TeamAnandTech members will be quite familiar with one or more of these icons in their systrays
RC5-64
Founded by Anand almost two years ago, the Distributed.net RC5-64 project is Team AnandTech's first and biggest Distributed Computing project. In RC5-64, the idea is simple: use a brute-force method of checking every possible RC5-64 key on an encrypted message from RSA Labs. The task is daunting because of the staggering number of possible keys... 2^64 possibilities!
In the end, the RC5-64 Challenge will prove two things.
· First, it'll prove that RC5-64 is very secure. Because it has already defied the efforts of thousands of computers for over three years, it's obviously unlikely that any single person , or group of people, will be able to crack RC5-64 encryption using brute force, meaning that data encrypted with RC6-64 is well-protected from that type of attack.
· Second, and more important, is that it shows that public distributed computing works. With Distributed.net's RC5 being the first truly major Distributed Computing task for the Internet, its current and future success is a model for future, more-complex distributed-computing projects.
Because of RC5-64's size, it's far from done, and Team Anandtech needs your help. You help in the RC5-64 Challenge by simply having the Distributed.net client program running as a screensaver or a Taskbar icon. Using these clients, computers are assigned a certain set of keys to check. The computer compares the results of each key to the known beginning words of the message, which are, "The unknown message is:", and informs Distributed.net if you do indeed find a key that gives the known words. Then, assuming it wasn't just a partial solution, you get glory, and $1000US, and Team Anandtech will have earned $1000US to be given to a charitable organization, such as the Anand Cancer Society Group, Inc.
Currently, Team Anandtech's RC5-64 group is in a battle for first place with their arch-rivals, the Dutch Power Cows. Team Anandtech has taken first place overall in the RC5-64 Challenge, but the Dutch Power Cows are quickly overtaking Team Anandtech, and are threatening to steal the hard-won first-place position! If you would like to see Anandtech stay #1 in the RC5-64 Challenge, now is the time to get involved!
Click Here to find out how to Join Team AnandTech's RC5-64 Team
OGR
· Secure wireless communication
· Precision 3-D mapping with X-Rays
·Large arrays of optical or radio telescopes
What do they all have in common? They all use OGRs to be efficient and accurate.
OGR stands for "Optimal Golomb Ruler," but that still bears a little more explaination for most of us. Let’s start with "Golomb." It's the name of mathematician Dr. Solomon Golomb. The word "optimal" means "best," and "rulers" are used to measure things. From this one can conclude that Dr. Golomb wanted the "best rulers" for his math project.
OGRs come in all lengths. Currently, the longest proven OGR is 23 marks in length. It took a lot of computing power to prove OGR-23. Distributed Net is close to proving a 24-mark ruler, and is hard at work on a 25-mark ruler. Here is the OGR-24 and OGR-25 completion chart.
Distributed.net has a very good set of pages explaining the "how and what" part of Optimal Golomb Rulers, so for an in-depth explaination of OGRs, take a look at http://www.distributed.net/ogr/. In practical terms, however, how does OGR impact the three examples above?
Modern wireless communication uses spread-spectrum communication. Rather than use just one wide-band radio frequency, they use multiple narrow-band frequencies and spread the data across each one. If you allocate 10 frequencies, but only need 5, then one can use a military trick called frequency-hopping to make one's communication secure, because the signal jumps around among the 10 frequencies in a pattern that unwanted listeners can’t follow. The more frequencies used, the more secure the transmission is. The problem is, not all frequencies work well together. Unless close attention is paid to the gaps between them, they will interfere with each other and reduce the distance and clarity of the signal. But, if frequencies are chosen using Optimal Golomb Rulers, interference can be eliminated. Longer Optimal Golomb Rulers mean better communication.
3-D X-ray mapping, otherwise known as X-Ray crystallography, also needs OGRs for accuracy and increased detail. If one crystallizes a sample of organic material, then places it in a chamber and targets it with X-Rays, one can detect the pattern those X-Rays make as they are diffracted by the crystal structure. The result is a 3D picture of the inside and outside of the object being scanned. The secret here is the placement of the X-Ray sensors around the chamber. If one places them properly (in an OGR-based pattern), they will not introduce their own interference patterns into the final 3D composite.
In the case of telescopes, both radio and optical, it's possible to build them bigger and bigger , but it becomes very expensive. The trend now is to build arrays of smaller telescopes and combine the results to get the equivalent of a huge telescope. A linear array of telescopes, perhaps measuring hundreds or thousands of kilometers in total distance, would be great. If one picks the distances between them carefully (in an OGR-based pattern), one gets the best output in the minimum distance. Because no two distances between telescopes are repeated when using an OGR-based pattern, it is easier to computer-enhance the output to get very accurate images from either optical or radio telescopes.
Sound interesting? Then, please help Team AnandTech as we work with Distributed.net in finding longer and better Optimal Golomb Rulers.
Click Here to find out how to Join Team AnandTech's OGR Team
Gamma Flux
The Gamma Flux project is a key resource to the scientific research work of Peter Jansson, currently a Ph.D. student in nuclear physics at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. The focus of this research is to optimize the effectiveness of nuclear waste containment vessels. In December of 1999, Distributed Science, Inc. (formerly Dcypher.Net) began collaboration on the project by leveraging the immense resources provided by idle cpu cycles of computers worldwide.
DSI’s client software runs
a simulation that casts hundreds of thousands of gamma rays from random points
within a radioactive source and traces them through the radioactive matter,
water enclosure and wall material to calculate the gamma flux field around the
storage vessel. Soon, DSI is slated to release their version 2 software which
will extend the simulation, incorporating more variables. All of the data collected
will be used to calculate better methods of nuclear waste storage.
Team AnandTech is a dominant presence in the Gamma Flux effort, currently ranked 1st overall having processed nearly 3 million work units! However, as the popularity of the project increases as well as the number of participants, Team AnandTech’s lead is quickly diminishing. We need your help to stay on top! The client software is easy to install, easy to configure, and can be set to run passively on the Taskbar. If that isn’t enough to spark your interest, DSI conducts weekly cash giveaways ($100) to random active participants. You might just win enough to get that Duron you’ve had your eyes on! In the process, you’ll help solve one of the world’s largest growing environmental concerns.
Click
Here to find out how to Join Team AnandTech's Gamma Flux Team
SETI@Home
SETI is the Search for ExtraTerrestrial
Intelligence, it is the extension of man's question echoing from our primordial
existence... "Is there anybody out there?" The modern SETI era extends back
to about 1960 and today "visionaries" from Sun, Intel, Microsoft and Disney's
Imagineering pop up all over SETI's documents. All told, geeks and not government
are keeping the search for aliens alive.
SETI@Home is a project involving massively-parallel computation on desktop computers
scattered around the world. Individuals download a continually-improving screensaver
or text-based program that performs sophisticated analysis of SETI data. SETI@Home
piggybacks its receiver under one of the 305-meter diameter Arecibo radio telescope's
multiple focal points. The group extracts a limited frequency band of the signal,
samples it, and writes it to a digital tape. The data on these tapes are broken
up into smaller chunks which are in turn sent out to over two million participants.
Since the beginning of the project, volunteers have donated almost half a million
years of computing time. SETI@Home has uniquely involved the public in
a real scientific project in an era when the public's support of science is
wavering.
Team AnandTech has been with SETI@Home since its beginning in May 1999, and
is currently in 15th place among all SETI club teams throughout the world, having
donated nearly 400 years worth of CPU time. AnandTech embodies a technological
world that was once considered science fiction (global information networks!
Virtual worlds and avatars! Computers that can beat human grand masters at chess!),
the natural next step is to ponder an even further-flung future -- alien technology,
intergalactic transmissions, matching pairs of socks coming out of the
dryer... and the small-but-captivating possibility that your computer will detect
the faint murmur of a civilization beyond Earth once you join Team AnandTech
in the SETI@Home challenge.
So, put your Thunderbird, Pentium 3, or even your lowly Cyrix to work, because every little bit helps! You will be helping Team Anandtech, yourself, and quite possibly mankind in general. With your help, the Team will not only prove that Anandtech is the site for forward-thinking people like yourself, but that by using the power of technology, that its readers can help the world and have some fun while doing it. =)
Click Here to find out how to Join Team AnandTech's SETI@Home Team
If you're up to the challenge, please stop on by http://www.teamanandtech.com/faqs/ and see how to help out Team Anandtech. Every little bit counts!
Brought to you by the TA Crew:
ViRGE
Slahr Dzhe
JonB
HellBurner
osmo
mechbgon