Welcome to PrimeGrid's Birthday Challenge

PrimeGrid’s Challenge series continues with the Birthday Challenge. Please come join us in celebrating PrimeGrid’s 3rd Birthday. A 24 hour Challenge is being offered on PrimeGrid’s oldest active application, the Twin Prime Search. Hopefully we’ll be able to give PrimeGrid a good present by finding the twin during the Challenge. :)

To participate, please select only the TPS LLR project in your PrimeGrid preferences section. The challenge will begin 12 June 2008 00:00 UTC and end 13 June 2008 00:00 UTC. Application builds are available for Linux 32 bit and Windows 32 bit. These applications will be sent to 64 bit clients. As with all LLR application projects, there is no advantage of 64 bit over 32 bit.

Scoring Information
Scores will be kept for individuals and teams. Only work units issued AFTER 12 June 2008 00:00 UTC and received BEFORE 13 June 2008 00:00 UTC will be considered for credit. Since this is a fixed n as well as a fixed credit project, we’ll be using cobblestones for scoring.

About Twin Prime Search
Twin Prime Search (TPS) was started on 13 April 2006, by a post from Michael Kwok in the mersenneforum.org forum . He wanted to search for the largest known twin primes; more specifically, twin primes of the form k*2^n - 1 and k*2^n + 1. Examples of twin primes are (5, 7), (11, 13), (17, 19),(29,31), etc.

The project was run manually through the mersenneforum.org forum and the Twin Internet Prime Search web site. n=195,000 was chosen for their initial search. Therefore, the twin would be in the form of k*2^195000 - 1 and k*2^195000 + 1.

On November 26, 2006, PrimeGrid joined the effort and brought TPS to the BOINC community. This greatly increased the visibility of TPS. By automating the testing process, PG made it easier for a greater number of users to participate.

On January 15, 2007, Eric Vautier of France found the largest known twin primes: 2003663613*2^195000-1 and 2003663613*2^195000+1. It was found through the manual search effort. The current n is 333333.

For more information about twin primes, please see these resources:

• Twin prime from Wikipedia
  
• Twin primes from The Prime Pages
  
• Twin Primes from Wolfram MathWorld
  

Best of Luck in finding the twin primes. :)

P.S. Please take a look at the next post and learn about PrimeGrid’s evolution.
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This is a “fluid” description based on bits and pieces I gathered in the forum. For those who have excellent memories or deft detective skills, please PM me with your suggestions, improvements, corrections, etc.

Introduction

PrimeGrid is a volunteer computing project searching for world record prime numbers. It is built on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) platform. It utilizes the spare CPU cycles of your computer that would otherwise go unused. Combine your CPU power with that of thousands of other computers around the world, and you have a very powerful prime finding “computer”. Anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can participate.

PrimeGrid's primary goal is to bring the excitement of prime finding to the “everyday” computer user. By simply downloading/installing BOINC and attaching to the PrimeGrid project, users can choose from a variety of prime forms to search. With a little patience, you may find a large prime or even a record prime and enter into Chris Caldwell's The Largest Known Primes Database as a Titan! :)

History

On 12 June 2005, at approximately 14:00 UTC, Message@Home (now PrimeGrid) opened account creation to 50 users. It was being run on Rytis’ home laptop. :)

Message@Home was developed as a test project for PerlBOINC, an attempt to implement the BOINC server system in the Perl programming language in order to bring BOINC server software to Windows. With the primary focus on PerlBOINC, a project was needed that provided a short WU with a standard consistent result.

The first project was Message7, and it attempted by “brute-force” to recover a message encoded with the md5 algorithm. The message was split into parts of 7 symbols of length, and each part was encoded with md5.

In August 2005, the RSA 640 Factoring Challenge application was added. Similar to Message7, this was an attempt by “brute-force” to factor the 640 digit RSA number. The Message7 application was discontinued.

On 1 September 2005, after a short contest to select a new project name, the PrimeGrid name was chosen from a variation of PrimeGrid@Home submitted by Heffed. He was awarded 999 cobblestones for his submission. :)

By November 2005, another effort factored the RSA 640 Challenge so PrimeGrid moved on to the RSA 768 Factoring Challenge. While the chances of solving the challenge remained infinitesimally small, it allowed for further development of PerlBOINC.

In March 2006, RSA 768 Factoring was abandoned for a new application, primegen. It was an attempt to build a sequential prime number database bring PrimeGrid for the first time to the “prime finding” arena. The secondary goal was to also use this to help with the RSA Factoring Challenges. However, it was soon revealed that this effort too had an infinitesimally small chance of succeeding. Nevertheless, it “provided a short WU with a standard consistent result” which “allowed for further development of PerlBOINC”. However, the search for a “computing-time worthy” application was started.

In June 2006, dialog started with Riesel Sieve to bring their project to the BOINC community. Rytis provided PerlBOINC support and RS was successful in implementing their sieve as well as a prime finding (LLR) application. With collaboration from RS, PrimeGrid was able to implement the LLR application in partnership with another prime finding project, Twin Prime Search. In November 2006, the TPS LLR application was officially released at PrimeGrid. Less than two months later, January 2007, the record twin was found by the original manual project. PrimeGrid and TPS then advanced their search for even larger twin primes.

The summer of 2007 was very active as the Cullen and Woodall prime searches were launched. In the Fall, more prime searches were add through partnerships with the Prime Sierpinski Problem and 321 projects. Additionally, two sieves were added: the Prime Sierpinski Problem combined sieve which includes supporting the Seventeen or Bust sieve; and the combined Cullen/Woodall sieve.

Also in the Fall, PrimeGrid migrated some of its systems from PerlBOINC to standard BOINC software. However, many of the services are still remain based on PerlBOINC.

To date, PrimeGrid has directly found two Mega Primes. Additionally, it has advanced the PSP and SoB combined sieve by several years. PrimeGrid has also added a Challenge Series which is proving to be quite fun and exciting to watch.

The immediate future direction of PrimeGrid involves adding more variety to its prime searches as can be seen in the Project Staging Area: Sophie Germain Search (on a quad sieve), 32+1, Proth Prime Search, and generalized Cullen/Woodall searches. Additionally, an Arithmetic Progression (AP26) of length 26 is being investigated. As for the long term future, that remains to be seen. :)

Timeline of Events and Milestones
(We would like to create an extensive timeline. Again, please PM me with your suggestions, improvements, corrections, etc.)

* 12 June 2005 – Message@Home goes live with the Message7 application by opening account creation to 50 users
* 30 Jul 2005 – Rytis buys his first car, a 1997 Renault Megane
* August 2005 - the RSA 640 Factoring Challenge application is added and the Message7 application is discontinued
* 01 September 2005 - Message@Home changes name to PrimeGrid
* November 2005 - the RSA 768 Factoring Challenge application is added and the RSA 640 Factoring Challenge application is discontinued
* March 2006 - the primegen application is added and the RSA 768 Factoring Challenge application is discontinued
* 26 November 2006 – TPS LLR application is added
* 15 January 2007 - Eric Vautier of France finds a record twin prime through the manual TPS effort (2003663613*2^195000-1 and 2003663613*2^195000+1)
* July 2007 - Woodall LLR application is added
* August 2007 - Cullen LLR application is added
* 04 Aug 2007 - Lasse Mejling Andersen of Denmark finds a record Woodall Prime (2013992*2^2013992-1)
* 13 Aug 2007 - Stephen Kohlman of Canada finds a record Woodall Prime (2367906*2^2367906-1)
* 29 September 2007 – Combined Cullen/Woodall sieve application is added
* 13 October 2007 – PSP sieve application is added
* 18 November 2007 – 321 LLR application is added
* 11 December 2007 – PSP LLR application is added
* 21 Dec 2007 - Matthew J. Thompson of the United States finds a record Woodall Mega Prime (3752948*2^3752948-1)
* 29 January 2008 – Rytis buys his second car, 2002 Peugeot 307 2.0HDi, 79kw engine
* 29 February 2008 - Collaboration established with Proth Search
* 15 March 2008 - Challenge Series established
* 23 Mar 2008 – Dylan Bennett of Canada finds a 321 Mega Prime (3*2^4235414-1)
* 13 April 2008 – Project Staging Area added to help facilitate new prime searches into BOINC production
* 10 May 2008 - the primegen application is archived

Milestones

• Users with credit
  
  June 2005 - 50 users
  July 2005 - 100 users
  October 2005 - 500 users
  December 2005 - 1000 users
  July 2006 - 2000 users
  May 2007 - 5000 users
  December 2007 - 10,000 users

  
  

• BOINC Credit
  
  July 2005 - 100,000 cobblestones
  August 2005 - 200,000 cobblestones
  September 2005 - 500,000 cobblestones
  October 2005 - 1,000,000 cobblestones
  November 2005 - 2,000,000 cobblestones
  December 2005 - 5,000,000 cobblestones
  May 2006 - 10,000,000 cobblestones
  November 2006 - 20,000,000 cobblestones
  July 2007 - 50,000,000 cobblestones
  December 2007 - 100,000,000 cobblestones
  May 2008 - 200,000,000 cobblestones

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• 30 Jul 2005 – Rytis buys his first car, a 1997 Renault Megane
  
• 29 January 2008 – Rytis buys his second car, 2002 Peugeot 307 2.0HDi, 79kw engine
  

Lol I think he did that as a joke. You could add the different PrimeGrid Community Challenges if you know when they started and such, I think that would be cool to have on the milestone list. For Instance

The "Drive For Five" Challenge begin 15 May 2008 00:00 UTC and end 1 June 2008 00:00 UTC
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John M. Johnson "Novex"

Now... while the cars are very important to me, this is about PrimeGrid and not about me, so I'd like to publicly ask John, why are those on the list? :)

I guess I'm too used to being a Lithuanian :) It's the mentality here, if somebody got something new and good, he must have stolen it or somehow abused something. Your neighbor is your worst enemy :D

P.S. I don't drive my Peugeot these days, I ride a bicycle :)
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Under 'Computing Preferences' in your account page, set both of these to zero and save. Make sure you haven't overridden these values in the client (Check the 'Advanced -> Preferences' menu item under the 'network usage' tab), and then click the Update button under the Projects tab.

Computer is connected to the Internet about every (Leave blank or 0 if always connected. BOINC will try to maintain at least this much work.)
0 days

Maintain enough work for an additional Enforced by version 5.10+
0 days

This will make your client maintain no cache - it will fetch new WUs and upload completed ones as soon as possible - which I think is what you are after.

The challenge hasn't even started yet and I am getting 'No work from project' on the twin prime search.

Happy Birthday PrimeGrid!!!

Good Luck everyone. :)

p.s. PrimeGrid's actual time of birth was around 14:00 UTC 12 June 2005. :)
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Happy Birthday PrimeGrid!

The first challenge WUs are running. ;)
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Happy Birthday from Minnesota~!!
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John M. Johnson "Novex"

How often are the stats updated?

There appears to be an issue with the Challenge stats. We are aware of it but must wait for Rytis to awake (local time UTC +3 hours).

Rest assured that nothing is being lost. Thank you for your patience.
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Will rankings also be shown on the BOINCstats challenge page?

http://boincstats.com/stats/challenge_stats.php?pr=pg&challenge=2

And fixed! (even before breakfast)
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Thanks, But still what are you having for breakfast? ;)

Go TEAM Go!!!

Well be the 1st!
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wbr, Me. Dead J. Dona

Seems the server is under heavy stress about these short WUs.
The site is very slow and doesn't react sometimes.
And I didn't get a single credit granted since I started to crunch this morning, my pendings are growing.
But validator seems to be working, others get their credits...

how about result flowing in per minutes?
that take part in the calculation. ;D

I boosted validation somewhat, the queue is dropping and now is 61000.
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Thanks Rytis, that should help a ton. By the way, how did the Exam go?
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John M. Johnson "Novex"

Thanks Rytis, that should help a ton. By the way, how did the Exam go?

Thanks Rytis, that should help a ton. By the way, how did the Exam go?

No idea, will know next week. I guess I passed :)

If you'd like to see the initial impact the Challenge has had on TPS, take a look at these charts:

TPS Daily WU
TPS Daily Credit
TPS Daily Primes
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Whoa, 38,000 all the way up to 138,000!! And 11 avg primes up to 50!! Now that shows these awesome Community Challenges are well worth it :)
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John M. Johnson "Novex"

All done - apart from a little server load, and lack of WUs right at the beginning (I guess from lots of folks filling there caches), I think that went really well.

No points for me in 45th place, but at least my team got 20th.

Well done all!

Thank's to all. Nice challenge.

Hope to meet you next time.

/Lennart
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The Birthday Party is over and all the candles have been blown out. While an amazing amount of work was completed, unfortunately, no Twin Primes were found (at least none validated yet). As mentioned in an earlier post by Jon Pinyan, over 200,000 WU's were completed today. That's almost 10 times TPS's normal rate. :D

84 teams and 374 individuals participated

The Challenge Points stats will remain unofficial for a few days as we wait for pending credit to clear. Congratulations to L'Alliance Francophone as the top team and Banshee as the top individual. Remember, the top 30 earn points for this Challenge.

Everyone deserves a well needed rest. The next Challenge is over a month away so enjoy. The only details available at this time is that the project will be PSP sieve.

Thank you again to everyone. We appreciate your participation and hope you had fun!

Stats: Participants | Teams

To see the impact the Birthday Challenge had on TPS, take a look at these charts:

TPS Daily WU
TPS Daily Credit
TPS Daily Primes

P.S. For those returning to 321, we have 799 WU's left until n=5M. At the current rate, that date is the 16th.
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Oh no... I fell asleep half an hour before the end of the challenge and didn't wake up before 23:59 UTC, so I couldn't hit the update button on time and reported over 200 WUs ten seconds too late. :(

A typical start for Friday the 13th... ;)

At least I'll have points on the scoreboard again and it was big fun. Looking forward to the next challenge. :)
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With TPS there has to be k*2^n+1 and k*2^n-1 equations that both find primes that differ by two for it to be a twin prime and mine is a -1. There would have to be a prime +1 equation with the same n value for it to be a twin prime right? In other words one prime Twin Prime Search WU by itself doesn't necessarily mean it's a twin prime, correct? I don't recall seeing any +1. If so, when are +1 available?

and no twin found?

Whats the future now of tps?

The Birthday Challenge results are official and the Challenge Series rankings have been updated:

Birthday Challenge Rankings
Participants | Teams

Overall Challenge Series Rankings
Participants | Teams
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Rytis, could you please add a link to the challenges page in the menu?