| Active Distributed Computing Projects - Puzzles/Games |
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These links take you to other project categories on this site:
Mathematics Language Art Puzzles/Games Miscellaneous Distributed Human Projects Collaborative Knowledge Bases Charity See the bottom of this page for a description of the icons on the page. |
| Project Information | Project % Complete | Major Supported Platforms | ||||||||
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ChessBrain
"seeks to create a massive chess playing computer by
utilizing the idle processing power of networked machines." This project
is an experiment "to allow internet-connected computers to work together to
play a game of chess." On December 17, 2002, the project completed its first
distributed game of chess without human intervention. The project's current record of total active machines,
set on January 30, 2004, is 2,070.
Stage one of the project completed on August 9, 2002. 63,261,631 jobs were completed by 265 Peernode operators for this stage. Stage two of the project began on March 1, 2003. "On January 30th 2004, ChessBrain became the first distributed network to play a game against a single human opponent and earned an official Guinness World Record for 'the largest networked chess computer' in history!" 2,070 machines from over 50 countries competed against one chess Grand Master. The game ended in a draw. As of September 1, 2004, this record is an official 2005 Guiness World Record for "The World's Largest Networked Chess Computer." The project software is available as a GUI client for Windows and as a command-line client for Windows, Linux, Mac OSX and FreeBSD. Version 3.0126.02 of the Windows graphical client is available as of January 26, 2004. Version 3.0129.01 of the Linux command-line client is available as of January 29, 2004. Version 3.0124.01 of the Mac OSX command-line client is available as of January 24, 2004. The Linux client can be run on FreeBSD (if you have Linux binary compatibility loaded under FreeBSD). |
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Help
Chess960@home use distributed
computing to play
Chess 960, a
variant of traditional chess in which "the initial configuration of the
chess pieces is determined randomly: that means that the king, the queen,
the rook, the bishop and the knight are not necessarily placed on the same
home squares." This variant has 960 possible starting positions. The
project is in the alpha phase of testing as of June 28, 2006.
The project added its 3000th game to its database on September 24, 2006. The project uses the BOINC computing platform. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. |
ongoing |
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Help
Eternity2.fr solve
the Eternity II puzzle and
win a prize of US$1,000,000. Note that to participate in this project
you must purchase an Eternity II puzzle and create some piece
definition files
to prove you own the puzzle. US$2,000,000 will be awarded to the
person who solves the puzzle. If this project solves the puzzle, the
project owners will split the prize 50/50 with the project participant
who finds the solution.
On January 15, 2009, the project announced that, although the puzzle remains unsolved, Tomy has awarded a US$10,000 runner-up prize to Anna Karlsson from Lund in Sweden for the highest-scoring nearly-solved puzzle submitted so far. Anna placed all 256 pieces so that the colours and patterns matched in 467 out of 480 possible places on the Eternity II board. The US$2,000,000 prize is still available as of March 30, 2009. To participate in the project, follow the instructions on the download page. Version 2.2 of the application is available for Windows and Linux as of March 25, 2008. Join a discussion forum about the project. |
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Help
Sudoku find the
minimum sudoku puzzle (i.e. find the minimum amount of number clues that
need to be given for a sudoku puzzle in order to generate a puzzle with a
unique solution).
Note: this project has been inactive (and the website has been unreachable) since October 19, 2009. The project may have ended. The project uses the BOINC computing platform. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. The project runs the Sudoku application within the BOINC client. Version 5.37 of the application is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX as of October 12, 2007. Join a discussion forum about the project. |
1,900,700 total credits |
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Help
NQueens Project solve the
n queens puzzle. The
puzzle involves placing n queens on an n×n
chessboard(n >= 4) such that no queen is able to capture any other
queen using the standard chess queen's moves. The project is searching for
solutions to the puzzle for board sizes n = 19 and larger. See
more information about
the project.
See the project's current results. The project uses the BOINC computing platform. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. The project runs the "NQueen@Home Project" application within the BOINC client. Version 5.10 of the application is available for Windows and Linux as of October 22, 2007. Join a discussion forum about the project. |
899,399 total credits |
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Help
Reversi find "ultra-weak" solutions
for the game Reversi
(also known as Othello). No winning strategy for the game is known except
for the simplest cases.
The project uses the BOINC computing platform. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. Version 3.01 of the project's "Reversi game solver" application is available for Windows as of May 16, 2008. Version 3.02 is available for Linux as of May 18, 2008. Join a discussion forum about the project. |
1,884,229 total credits |
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Help the
Optimal Solution Finder
find optimal solutions for various puzzle games:
To participate in the project, download a distributed.zip file from the project web page, then unzip the Project folder and run distributed.exe. You can specify a username and a team name if you wish to track your stats on the project website. You can run multiple copies of distributed.exe if your computer has more than 1 processor. The program will only use idle CPU time. When the program finishes testing a set of combinations, it will send the results to this server and request a new set. Version 1.3 and later of the program will automatically update itself for future version updates. Version 2 and later of the program will not automatically exit if it can't communicate with the project server. Version 1.3 and later also automatically runs on all available CPUs on your system. Version 2.0 of the client software is available as of July 16, 2009. |
The CCL Game and The CCL Winter Game: 278 optimal solutions found for 32 of 34 levels; Puzz Pinball and Sony Pinball: 847 optimal solutions have been found for 28 of 36 levels |
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Help the
Online Life-Like CA Soup Search
find "interesting patterns in Life-like
cellular automata by watching the evolution of random initial configurations
(known as soups). In particular, random soups are evolved until they stabilize,
and all the resulting stable patterns are uploaded to the server and
catalogued. If the initial soup lived for an exceptionally long time then it is
also uploaded to the server."
To participate in the project, follow the instructions on the download page. In particular, you need to download and install the Golly Conway's Game of Life simulator, download and install a specific version of Python, and download and install the project's soup_search.zip Python script to run in Golly. The script prompts you for a username to display on the project website and your email address (which is not displayed). The project is conducting several different census projects:
Join a discussion forum about the project. |
ongoing |
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 Help
sudoku@vtaiwan find more
efficient techniques for solving Sudoku
puzzles. Currently the project is attempting to find a solution to a 16-clue
puzzle (for which no known solution exists). Gary McGuire, a professor at
the National University of Ireland, has proposed an algorithm
for solving a 16-clue puzzle and a program called Checker to test the
algorithm on a puzzle. His algorithm is estimated to solve a 16-clue puzzle
in about 300,000 years on a single CPU (using estimates based on computing
power when the project began). The coordinators of sudoku@vtaiwan have created
a new algorithm which may solve a 16-clue puzzle up to 128 times faster than
Dr. McGuire's algorithm, in about 2,417 years on a single CPU. The algorithm
can be tested much more quickly in a distributed computing project. This
project is part of the V-Taiwan (or Volunteer Taiwan) project, funded by the
National Science Council (NSC) of
Taiwan. The project uses volunteer, distributed computing to research computer
game applications.
The project uses the BOINC computing platform. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client. See the project's Applications page for the latest applications and versions. Join a discussion forum about the project. |
8.03% of 5,472,730,538 potential puzzles as of July 18, 2011 |
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Help
Stockfish Testing validate
new patches for Stockfish, the best
chess engine in the world (as of June 26, 2014). The project improved
Stockfish to be the best chess engine
in only a few months. See the project's blog.
To participate in the project, register for an account on the project website, read the project's Help wiki, and ask questions in the project's forum if you still need help. Join a discussion forum about the project. |
ongoing |
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