Type of site | Volunteer computing |
---|---|
Owner | Distributed Computing Technologies, Inc. |
URL | distributed.net |
Launched | February 1997 |
Current status | Active |
Distributed.net is a volunteer computing effort that is attempting to solve large scale problems using otherwise idle CPU or GPU time. It is governed by Distributed Computing Technologies, Incorporated (DCTI), a non-profit organization under U.S. tax code 501(c)(3).
Distributed.net is working on RC5-72 (breaking RC5 with a 72-bit key). [1] The RC5-72 project is on pace to exhaust the keyspace in just over 40 years as of February 2024, [2] although the project will end whenever the required key is found. RC5 has eight unsolved challenges from RSA Security, although in May 2007, RSA Security announced [3] that they would no longer be providing prize money for a correct key to any of their secret key challenges. distributed.net has decided to sponsor the original prize offer for finding the key as a result. [4]
In 2001, distributed.net was estimated to have a throughput of over 30 TFLOPS. [5] As of August 2019 [update] , the throughput was estimated to be the same as a Cray XC40, as used in the Lonestar 5 supercomputer, [6] or around 1.25 petaFLOPs. [7]
A coordinated effort was started in February 1997 by Earle Ady and Christopher G. Stach II of Hotjobs.com and New Media Labs, as an effort to break the RC5-56 portion of the RSA Secret-Key Challenge, a 56-bit encryption algorithm that had a $10,000 USD prize available to anyone who could find the key. Unfortunately, this initial effort had to be suspended as the result of SYN flood attacks by participants upon the server. [8]
A new independent effort, named distributed.net, was coordinated by Jeffrey A. Lawson, Adam L. Beberg, and David C. McNett along with several others who would serve on the board and operate infrastructure. By late March 1997 new proxies were released to resume RC5-56 and work began on enhanced clients. A cow head was selected as the icon of the application and the project's mascot. [9]
The RC5-56 challenge was solved on October 19, 1997 after 250 days. The correct key was "0x532B744CC20999" and the plaintext message read "The unknown message is: It's time to move to a longer key length". [10]
The RC5-64 challenge was solved on July 14, 2002 after 1,757 days. The correct key was "0x63DE7DC154F4D039" and the plaintext message read "The unknown message is: Some things are better left unread". [11]
The search for Optimal Golomb Rulers (OGRs) of order 24, 25, 26, 27 and 28 were completed by distributed.net on 13 October 2004, 25 October 2008, 24 February 2009, 19 February 2014, and 23 November 2022 respectively. [12] [13] [14] [15] [16]
"DNETC" is the file name of the software application which users run to participate in any active distributed.net project. It is a command line program with an interface to configure it, available for a wide variety of platforms. [17] distributed.net refers to the software application simply as the "client". As of April 2019 [update] , volunteers running 32-bit Windows with AMD FireStream enabled GPUs have contributed the most processing power to the RC5-72 project [18] and volunteers running 64-bit Linux have contributed the most processing power to the OGR-28 project. [19]
Portions of the source code for the client are publicly available, although users are not permitted to distribute modified versions themselves. [20]
Distributed.net's RC5-72 project is available on the BOINC client through the Moo! Wrapper. [21]
In recent years, most of the work on the RC5-72 project has been submitted by clients that run on the GPU of modern graphics cards. Although the project had already been underway for almost 6 years when the first GPUs began submitting results, as of February 2024, GPUs represent 87% of all completed work units, [23] and complete more than 95% of all work units each day. [22]
Timeline of projects hosted by distributed.net, as of February 2024 [update] |
---|
In mathematics, a Golomb ruler is a set of marks at integer positions along a ruler such that no two pairs of marks are the same distance apart. The number of marks on the ruler is its order, and the largest distance between two of its marks is its length. Translation and reflection of a Golomb ruler are considered trivial, so the smallest mark is customarily put at 0 and the next mark at the smaller of its two possible values. Golomb rulers can be viewed as a one-dimensional special case of Costas arrays.
In cryptography, a brute-force attack consists of an attacker submitting many passwords or passphrases with the hope of eventually guessing correctly. The attacker systematically checks all possible passwords and passphrases until the correct one is found. Alternatively, the attacker can attempt to guess the key which is typically created from the password using a key derivation function. This is known as an exhaustive key search.
In cryptography, RC5 is a symmetric-key block cipher notable for its simplicity. Designed by Ronald Rivest in 1994, RC stands for "Rivest Cipher", or alternatively, "Ron's Code". The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) candidate RC6 was based on RC5.
A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit initially designed to accelerate computer graphics and image processing. After their initial design, GPUs were found to be useful for non-graphic calculations involving embarrassingly parallel problems due to their parallel structure. Other non-graphical uses include the training of neural networks and cryptocurrency mining.
In cryptography, the EFF DES cracker is a machine built by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in 1998, to perform a brute force search of the Data Encryption Standard (DES) cipher's key space – that is, to decrypt an encrypted message by trying every possible key. The aim in doing this was to prove that the key size of DES was not sufficient to be secure.
General-purpose computing on graphics processing units is the use of a graphics processing unit (GPU), which typically handles computation only for computer graphics, to perform computation in applications traditionally handled by the central processing unit (CPU). The use of multiple video cards in one computer, or large numbers of graphics chips, further parallelizes the already parallel nature of graphics processing.
A physics processing unit (PPU) is a dedicated microprocessor designed to handle the calculations of physics, especially in the physics engine of video games. It is an example of hardware acceleration.
The RSA Secret-Key Challenge was a series of cryptographic contests organised by RSA Laboratories with the intent of helping to demonstrate the relative security of different encryption algorithms. The challenge ran from 28 January 1997 until May 2007.
ATI Avivo is a set of hardware and low level software features present on the ATI Radeon R520 family of GPUs and all later ATI Radeon products. ATI Avivo was designed to offload video decoding, encoding, and post-processing from a computer's CPU to a compatible GPU. ATI Avivo compatible GPUs have lower CPU usage when a player and decoder software that support ATI Avivo is used. ATI Avivo has been long superseded by Unified Video Decoder (UVD) and Video Coding Engine (VCE).
AMD Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), formerly known as Fusion, is a series of 64-bit microprocessors from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), combining a general-purpose AMD64 central processing unit (CPU) and 3D integrated graphics processing unit (IGPU) on a single die.
In computing, Close To Metal is the name of a beta version of a low-level programming interface developed by ATI, now the AMD Graphics Product Group, aimed at enabling GPGPU computing. CTM was short-lived, and the first production version of AMD's GPGPU technology is now called AMD Stream SDK, or rather the current AMD APP SDK for Windows and Linux 32-bit and 64-bit. APP stands for "Accelerated Parallel Processing" and also targets Heterogeneous System Architecture.
AMD FireStream was AMD's brand name for their Radeon-based product line targeting stream processing and/or GPGPU in supercomputers. Originally developed by ATI Technologies around the Radeon X1900 XTX in 2006, the product line was previously branded as both ATI FireSTREAM and AMD Stream Processor. The AMD FireStream can also be used as a floating-point co-processor for offloading CPU calculations, which is part of the Torrenza initiative. The FireStream line has been discontinued since 2012, when GPGPU workloads were entirely folded into the AMD FirePro line.
OpenCL is a framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous platforms consisting of central processing units (CPUs), graphics processing units (GPUs), digital signal processors (DSPs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and other processors or hardware accelerators. OpenCL specifies programming languages for programming these devices and application programming interfaces (APIs) to control the platform and execute programs on the compute devices. OpenCL provides a standard interface for parallel computing using task- and data-based parallelism.
The Radeon HD 7000 series, codenamed "Southern Islands", is a family of GPUs developed by AMD, and manufactured on TSMC's 28 nm process. The primary competitor of Southern Islands, Nvidia's GeForce 600 Series, also shipped during Q1 2012, largely due to the immaturity of the 28 nm process.
The Radeon HD 8000 series is a family of computer GPUs developed by AMD. AMD was initially rumored to release the family in the second quarter of 2013, with the cards manufactured on a 28 nm process and making use of the improved Graphics Core Next architecture. However the 8000 series turned out to be an OEM rebadge of the 7000 series.
The GeForce 800M series is a family of graphics processing units by Nvidia for laptop PCs. It consists of rebrands of mobile versions of the GeForce 700 series and some newer chips that are lower end compared to the rebrands.
Vulkan is a low-level low-overhead, cross-platform API and open standard for 3D graphics and computing. It was intended to address the shortcomings of OpenGL, and allow developers more control over the GPU. It is designed to support a wide variety of GPUs, CPUs and operating systems, it is also designed to work with modern multi-core CPUs.
MulticoreWare Inc is a software development company, offering products and services related to HEVC video compression, machine learning, compilers for heterogeneous computing, and software performance optimization services. MulticoreWare's customers include AMD, Microsoft, Google, Qualcomm and Telestream. The company was founded in 2009 and has offices in the United States, China and India.
ROCm is an Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) software stack for graphics processing unit (GPU) programming. ROCm spans several domains: general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU), high performance computing (HPC), heterogeneous computing. It offers several programming models: HIP, OpenMP/Message Passing Interface (MPI), OpenCL.