Recently Completed Distributed Computing Projects |
Many of the links on this page may no longer work. They are kept here for historical purposes. |
Project Information | Category | Completion Date | Project Duration | Total Number of Participants / Computers |
---|---|---|---|---|
![]() The project provided a Windows and Mac OSX screensaver client which sent fake requests to spam sites targeted by the project. The site also had a button which a visitor could press to send a fake request to one of the spam sites. |
Internet | December 5, 2004 | 2 weeks | unknown/unknown |
![]() ![]() Join a discussion forum about World Community Grid's projects. Join a discussion forum about grid.org's projects. |
Life Sciences | November 4, 2004 | 1 year, 9 months | unknown/unknown |
![]() The project appears to have been abandoned sometime in 2004. |
Mathematics | 2004 | at least 1 year | unknown/unknown |
![]() Between May 30, 2002 and September 9, 2002, the project competed in the CASP5 structure prediction contest. Results of the competition were made available in late December, 2002. Between July 6, 2004 and August 31, 2004, the project competed in the CASP6 structure prediction contest. Results of the competition were not available as of October 5, 2004. After the project ended, the project team planned to analyze the results of the proteins it had folded with the current algorithm and to create a better folding algorithm for a possible future distributed computing project. View a Windows Media Player ASF-format file of a television interview by CityPulse24 of the project coordinators on November 27, 2002. The project software client ran as a screensaver on Win32 and as a text client on Win32, Linux, Sony PlayStation 2 Linux (it was the first distributed computing client to run on this platform), and many Unix platforms including Mac OS X. The project server and client software was also the first to use a ticketing system for submitting results: when the project server was too busy to receive all of the results clients attempted to submit to it, it would assign each client a numbered "ticket," the clients stored their results locally, and then each client could submit its results when the project server "called its ticket." See a discussion forum about this project. |
Life Sciences | October 5, 2004 | 2 years, 8 months | 32,976/unknown |
The Analytical Spectroscopy Research Group (ASRG) ran a SETI project with the same basic goal as SETI@Home, to detect artificial radio signals from space. The project used a more manual process: users downloaded work units from a web page, processed them with one of three tools, and emailed results back to the project coordinator. More information about the project is/was available on a volunteer page. The project did not report any statistics or results on its website. | Science | unknown | unknown | unknown/unknown |
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Charity | September, 2004 | 4 years | unknown/unknown |
![]() On August 23, 2004, the project made its database publicly available. "www.engsoc.org/~jlcooke holds GZipped images, rrd files, php and MySQL scripts for download. www.dp.cx/md5crk/explore.php contains a database browser and www.dp.cx/md5crk/database contains access to phpMyAdmin for custom queries. The Database contains all the reported work for over 170 days (trillions upon trillions of operations) of the project." MD5CRK was the first project to enable website owners to configure their web pages to link to a MD5CRK distributed Java applet. This feature allowed users to participate in the project just by viewing a web page. The applet had a button to allow a user to disable/enable the applet, so that the user could decide whether to allow it to run on his or her system. 174 websites participated in the project. The project also provided a standalone client. Join a discussion forum about this project. |
Cryptography | August 20, 2004 | 6 months | 1,803/unknown |
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Charity | June, 2004 | unknown | unknown/unknown |
The
Photon Soup 2 rendering
project produced a simulation of 382 billion photons in a room. This
simulation reproduced one which was done by the project coordinator, Richard
Keene, in 1994. The first simulation produced an
image for SIGGRAPH
94. That image took 100 SparcStation 1's a month to generate. The new
simulation was "much better, with a smaller aperature, in stereo, with 3
cameras, and with some errors fixed, and in Java." It also ran on machines
which were 3,000 times more powerful than those of 1994. The results of the
project were combined into one image, which will be published in an article
about the project. See Richard's April 13, 2004
Slashdot article about the project.
See the project's final images. |
Art | July 1, 2004 | 10 weeks | unknown/unknown |
Help Crack DES had the same goals that the DES project did. The project looked for the remaining 35 bits of a 56-bit key, and it had to find them before a May 16, 2004 deadline. The project ended after searching 84.75% of the keyspace without finding the key. | Cryptography | May 18, 2004 | 4 weeks | 164/unknown |
![]() ![]() The three projects listed on the main page were:
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Charity | May, 2004 | unknown | unknown/unknown |
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Charity | May 5, 2004 | unknown | unknown/unknown |
DES was a project by a group of students at Åbo Akademi University in Finland to support a Cryptograpy and Network Security course they were taking. They attempted a brute force search of the DES 56-bit keyspace within 1 month. This kind of encryption was cracked by distributed.net in a one-month contest in 1998. One week into the attempt, their professor gave them the first 8 bits of the key to help them narrow the keyspace so that they would have a chance of finishing the project by the deadline. The winning key, 8a2898441652308a, was found after 383 computers searched 63% of the narrowed keyspace in 3 weeks. | Cryptography | May 5, 2004 | 3 weeks | 262/383 |
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Miscellaneous | April, 2004 | 2 1/2 years | unknown/unknown |
![]() $k = \log_P Q$ is given by either of the following:
Join a discussion forum about this project. ecc2.com, which hosted the discussion forum, also hosted the project stats. |
Cryptography | April 14, 2004 | 17 months | 2,600/unknown |
![]() Collatz Phase 1 tested n from 1 to 99,999,999,999. It began on August 22, 2003, and ended on September 3, 2003. Collatz Phase 2 tested n from 100,000,000,000-350,010,009,999. It began on September 2, 2003 and ended on September 10, 2003. Collatz Phase 3 tested n from 350,010,009,999-850,060,009,999. It began on September 10, 2003. Collatz Phase 4 tested n from 850,060,009,999-1,850,160,009,999. Collatz Phase 5 tested n from 1,850,160,009,999-11,851,160,009,999. Collatz Phase 6 tested n from 11,851,160,009,999-21,852,160,009,999. Collatz Phase 7 tested n from 21,852,160,009,999-71,857,160,010,000. Collatz Phase 8 tested n from 71,857,160,010,000-121,862,160,010,001. The project ended before it completed Collatz Phase 9. |
Mathematics | January, 2004 | 5 months | unknown/unknown |
"Search of the next prime of the form n!+1" used the Windows primeform client to search for primes of the form n! + 1 and n! - 1. | Mathematics | 2004 | at least 4 years | unknown/unknown |
![]() Genome@home's first experiment concluded successfully in early March, 2001, with more than 1000 users creating more than 15,000 new genes for 217 proteins. On November 12, 2001, Genome@home began Phase 2 of its protein design experiments. This phase studied "all single-chain proteins in the RCSB Protein Data Bank" with a length up to 150 amino acids--over 3,015 different proteins. As of April, 2003, the project had "used almost 20,000 donated CPU-years to calculate over 6 million new protein sequences." The work done with the version 0.99 client, consisting of nine stages, resulted in 4 major scientific publications. On May 1, 2002, Genome@Home began a new series of RMSD (root-mean-square deviation) projects to study the structural diversity of "ensembles of protein backbones" used in the design of large proteins. The following paper was published from the results of this project:
See a FAQ about the end of the project and how the project results will be used. |
Life Sciences | March, 2004 | 4 years | unknown/unknown |
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Internet | unknown | unknown | unknown/unknown |
![]() ![]() Join a discussion forum (in French) about this project. |
Cryptography | December, 2003 | unknown | unknown/unknown |
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Charity | January 4, 2003 | 2 months | unknown/unknown |
Genetic TSP used a Java application that ran through a user's web browser and used genetic algorithms to solve a Traveling Salesman Problem (in a TSP, a salesman must find the shortest route in which he/she can visit each a set of cities once and return to his/her starting city). This project attempted to solve a problem of 15,122 cities of Germany. As of December, 2003, the current record-holders of this problem were Princeton University and Rice University. | Puzzles/Games | December, 2003 | 2 years | unknown/unknown |
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Mathematics | October, 2003 | at least 3 years | 604/unknown |
![]() Join a discussion forum about the project. |
Mathematics | August, 2003 | 2 months | 65/unknown |
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Life Sciences | August, 2003 | 9 months | 1,470/unknown |
![]() The project's first challenge was the RSA 576-bit factoring challenge. The project's first attemp to solve the challenge was through random guesses. For this attemp, volunteers generated 39,033,522 packets (.154885015296E+15 keys checked) for the project. The attempt ended on January 10, 2003. The project's second attempt, Phase 2, would have used a General Number Field Sieve (GNFS) algorithm. The second challenge was the MD5 project. The MD5 encryption algorithm is widely used in business, secure websites, Unix systems, and the Internet. The challenge would have demonstrated MD5's vulnerability, forcing people who use it to develop a better algorithm. This project began on January 30, 2003, and was stopped on May 20, 2003, due to a lack of interest from the MD5 developers (who were outside of the NEO project). The challenge tested at least 0.53% of the MD5 keyspace. The third challenge was the Tellurium project, a physics project in which space-time geometry, specifically Isaac Newton's Equivalence Principle (see a simpler explanation), would be tested with the handedness or chirality property of matter. The principle has never been tested this way: if the test had caused it to fail, then Albert Einstein's General Relativity theory would be shown to be subtly incorrect. This challenge began on May 9, 2003, but the alpha client for the challenge was never publicly released. The fourth challenge was World TSP, a study of the Traveling Salesman Problem. This challenge attempted to find the shortest route which visits all 1,904,711 populated cities and towns on Earth. "The current best lower bound on the length of a tour for the World TSP [was] 7,510,666,782 (Kilometers)." This bound was established on June 18, 2002. The challenge used an evolving artificial intelligence algorithm to attempt to beat that bound. With 97,820 total routes completed, the shortest route discovered was 13,802,932,609 Kilometers. |
Cryptography, Science | July 31, 2003 | 10 months | ~50,000/~50,000 |
![]() Source code for the project is available here and here for anyone who would like to continue the project. Listen to an April 26, 2003 CBC Radio interview (in RealAudio format) with some of the project coordinators. |
Cryptography | July 31, 2003 | 4 months | ~4,000/unknown |
The search for Wieferich prime numbers looked for numbers of the form ap-1 = 1 (mod p2) for a = 2 or 3. The only two known Wieferich primes are 1,093 and 3,511 and there are no other Wieferich primes less than 2 * 1014. The project extended the search limit to 1.25 * 1015, but did not find any new Wieferich primes. 131,429 total ranges (37,424,648,092,395 primes) were checked at an average speed of 621,457 primes per second. 131 near-misses were found. | Mathematics | June 19, 2003 | 14 months | 304/unknown |
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Puzzles/Games | April, 2003 | 10 months | 658/unknown |
![]() The sub-projects:
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Life Sciences | April 30, 2003 | 4 months | unknown/12,000 |
![]() 567,847 entries were submitted for the project. See the smallest known spans discovered by the project. Join a discussion group about the project. |
Mathematics | March 7, 2003 | 4 months | 44/unknown |
![]() | Human | January 17, 2003 | 1 year | 36,000/not applicable |
DClient
was a distributed, brute-force attempt to find the secret "backdoor"
password for Tivo's version 3.2
software. This password would allow a Tivo device owner to enable hidden
features in the software. The project ended before a key was found.
You can read the project
post-mortem, download the
server source
code or the last version of the
client application
or see the final
stats page. The project generated about 2.7 billion blocks of keys using
about 85 CPU years.
Version 1 of this project was known as Tivocrack. 320,679 packets were completed for Tivocrack. Tivocrack began from a discussion forum. Version 2 became active around November 8, 2002. |
Cryptography | January 20, 2003 | 3 months | unknown/unknown |
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