NFS@Home

[frmky]

I've started a new mathematics project, NFS@Home. We are using the number field sieve method to factor large integers. The project website is http://escatter11.fullerton.edu/nfs

[Rusty]

to the DC-Vault...

Thanks for popping in and posting about your.. Tell us some more about the project...

About NFS@Home
NFS@Home is a research project that uses Internet-connected computers to do the lattice sieving step in the Number Field Sieve factorization of large integers. You can participate by downloading and running a free program on your computer.

NFS@Home is hosted at California State University Fullerton.

[frmky]

My interest lies in the continued development of open source, publicly available tools for large integer factorization. Over the past couple of years, the capability of open source tools, in particular the lattice sieve of the GGNFS suite and the program msieve, have dramatically improved. My collaborators and I have factored quite a few large numbers using these tools.

Integer factorization is interesting both mathematical and practical perspectives. Mathematically, for instance, the calculation of multiplicative functions in number theory for a particular number require the factors of the number. Likewise, the integer factorization of particular numbers can aid in the proof that an associated number is prime. Practically, many public key algorithms, including the RSA algorithm, rely on the fact that the publicly available modulus cannot be factored. If it is factored, the private key can be easily calculated. Until quite recently, RSA-512, which uses a 512-bit modulus (155 digits), was used. As recently demonstrated by factoring the Texas Instruments calculator keys, these are no longer secure.

For most recent large factorizations, the work has been done primarily by large clusters at universities. There are two other public efforts, NFSNet and MersenneForum, in both of which I have participated, but the software used by NFSNet doesn't incorporate the latest developments and participation in the MersenneForum effort requires manual reservation and submission of work. I have been toying with the idea of trying a BOINC project for a while now to make it easy for the public to participate in state-of-the-art factorizations, and I found the time to do so. My interest in this project is to see how far we can push the envelope and perhaps become competitive with the larger university projects running on clusters, and perhaps even collaborating on a really large factorization.

The numbers are chosen from the Cunningham project. The project is named after Allan Joseph Champneys Cunningham, who published the first version of the factor tables together with Herbert J. Woodall in 1925. This project is one of the oldest continuously ongoing projects in computational number theory, and is currently maintained by Sam Wagstaff at Purdue University. The third edition of the book, published by the American Mathematical Society in 2002, is available as a free download. All results obtained since the publication of the third edition are available on the Cunningham project website.

[cswchan]

Just attached to the project today... seems to play nicely with the other projects I'm also running in Boinc... Malaria & Collatz. Just finished my first Wu - about 4 hrs. on a AMD 5200+ running Vista & probably not enough ram... only 2 G at the moment. Also running GIMPS & OGR-27. Got a 2nd Wu before the 1st finished. Just checked at the project site & seems to be a fair amount of Wus available.

Might be a good addition to the projects list.

[Beyond]

Have been running this for the last couple of weeks. Very smooth, lots of work. WUs are less than an hour on most machines. The credit system has been changed now to fixed, server assigned credit so we don't have to put up with the cheating crowd. It's a big plus to me that the project administrator started this thread, posted information on his project, and asked to be included in the Vault. That's something we don't often see. So far none of the teams have much in the way of credit so it's an unusually even start from here...

[vaio]

All these math projects....it just doesn't add up

[leavitron]

Originally Posted by vaio

All these math projects....it just doesn't add up

THAT was bad! "May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits" kind of bad!

I've run 250k in this project. Server is stable, WUs are stable, and plentiful. I move we add it!

[vaio]

Project has only been around 5 minutes (is hardly proven).......if entering it to the vault is already justified I say nuke Nqueens for 3 days of downtime.

p.s.....joke was meant to be bad......math projects so zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[Rusty]

[Yankton]

I've been doing NFS randomly for a while no with no issues. I think it would look good here.

[Beyond]

This seems to be a very well run project and the admin wants to be included in the vault. I like it.

[NekdDrgn]

I've put in a million cobbles into it... haven't had a problem with it yet. Very stable project that to date has no problem keeping work available.

[Maxwell]

I've also been running NFS@Home on a computer I can't access regularly, and keep producing results. I'm also for including this in the Vault.

[Sport]

A big "Thumbs up" from me.. I've dabbled in it an all seems well

[Beyond]

Looks like two of the moderators give NFS a thumbs up, it's had nothing but positive comments here and the project administrator is eager to have it added.
It even has a really nice logo for Rusty :-)



Are there any negatives at all?