News archive

BOINC is a finalist for an notable award, and needs your vote (*by Sunday)
The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) is a United Nations-sponsored initiative aimed at harnessing the potential of information and communication technologies to build inclusive and equitable information societies worldwide. BOINC has been nominated for a prize at the 2024 forum, and has passed initial hurdles; the next and last step ("Phase 3") requires public votes. The award would be a very nice boost and validation for BOINC and all our projects; if we can get our communities to vote, we should have a decent shot at this point...

Voting is pretty simple, takes just a few minutes; instructions are here.

(*The deadline for votes is Sunday: 31 March 2024, 23:00 UTC+02:00)
26 Mar 2024, 15:49:23 UTC · Discuss

server maintenance
Just a heads up, the server was upgraded to the latest version of Ubuntu this morning.

The database seems to be crashing every so often with an error about exceeding max connections. Bear with me as we look into this.
19 Jan 2024, 23:40:14 UTC · Discuss

2023 Year End Summary
2023 was basically a good year. The main achievements were:
1. Competed 100% of subfield 3.
2. Got subfield 7 to the point where it is essentially complete.
3. Completed several rows of the subfield 6 table.

Going forward we will continue chipping away at subfield 6. Meanwhile, the last remnants of subfield 7 have been farmed out to Gerasim.

Thanks everyone for your contributions and have a wonderful New Year!
1 Jan 2024, 21:41:36 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 3 Officially Complete
I am pleased to report that the search over ℚ(√2), also known affectionately as "subfield 3", is now officially 100% complete.

This search has been in the works, off and on, for several years. It goes without saying that this is a major computational achievement. We couldn't have done it without all the volunteers, so I thank you all!

The batch status tables have been updated accordingly with subfield 3 moved to the archives. The results of the search can be found here.
23 Jun 2023, 6:41:29 UTC · Discuss

Batch Plan
Some of you may have noticed, the search over subfield 7 DS16x11 is coming to an end, and you are probably wondering where we go from here.

We are going to start by making a quick detour to subfield 6 and start the search over DS11x12. The only reason for doing this is to keep the WUs consistent for the BOINC Pentathlon (timing stats for the 2 searches are very similar - WUs average about 2 hours on my CPU)

After that we will go back to subfield 3 and finish that search once and for all.

Then it's back to the final part of subfield 7, and then finally subfield 6.
12 May 2023, 5:18:15 UTC · Discuss

BOINC Pentathlon 2023

Welcome BOINC Pentathlon participants!
12 May 2023, 5:01:15 UTC · Discuss

2022 Year End Summary
2022 was the year of ℚ(√-10) (subfield 7), as most of our time was spent on that search. Many new fields were found and we are now entering the final row of the search. In the next 3 to 6 months we should be at the point where we can say with almost certainty that it is complete.

The goals for 2023 are simple:
1. Get subfield 7 to the point where it is essentially complete.
2. Go back and officially complete subfield 3, so we can say with 100% certainty that it is done.
3. Do more on subfield 7 or move on to subfield 6 (the final search).

Thanks everyone for your contributions and have a wonderful New Year!
1 Jan 2023, 20:20:10 UTC · Discuss

Future of the Project
I've been procrastinating in sharing some news and I finally got around to doing it.

My old thesis advisor who has been backing this project retired in May. I don't actually work for the university, so this means the project has lost is primary benefactor.

The good news is that the university has allowed the project to continue. The bad news is that they will not be supporting any more hardware upgrades. This means when the current hardware fails the project will come to an end.

I'm hoping the current hardware can last several more years. One of the most critical parts is the hard drive, and we just got a new one about 1.5 years ago. Given that the previous hard drive lasted over 4 years, this is a positive.

This news has played into my reasoning on the order of the searches. Given that sf3 is practically guaranteed to be complete, I though it was prudent to use our finite time to first concentrate on sf7. The short term goal is to get sf7 to the same state that sf3 is currently in, which should take us into early next year. At that point, we can either spend the time to finish off sf3 and sf7, or continue on with sf6. Doing sf6 will allow us to find more fields in the finite time we have left, but finishing off sf3 and sf7 will allow us to say with 100% certainty that they are indeed complete. I am leaning towards finishing off sf3 and sf7, but that may change as time goes on.
10 Aug 2022, 17:18:41 UTC · Discuss

New badge type
To help increase interest in the project, I am creating a new badge based on fields counts, and tuned especially towards subfield 7. If this works well, I will also create separate badges for the other subfields.

I already put the hooks in to keep tract of the field counts for sf7. Now it's just a matter of creating the badge images, etc. Hopefully that should be done in the next several days.

Happy crunching!
1 Jul 2022, 21:42:58 UTC · Discuss

BOINC Pentathlon

Welcome BOINC Pentathlon participants!

I would have posted earlier, but it was hard to reach the server after the initial onslaught. Things seem to be stabilized, at least for the time being...
7 May 2022, 16:22:27 UTC · Discuss

2021 Year in Review
So another year has come and gone.

This was not the best year. We started the year with a severe hard drive crash that took weeks to recover from. After that, the year was spent on the search over ℚ(√2) (subfield 3). This search should be complete within several months. A single search seems like a small accomplishment, but I should point out that this is a gigantic search that just several years ago seemed out of reach.

Other than that, in November support was added for Intel GPUs. The app worked for the most part but performance was disappointing. We look forward to the new Intel Arc GPUs coming out this year which should perform much better.

Thanks everyone for your contributions and have a wonderful New Year!
1 Jan 2022, 20:27:19 UTC · Discuss

Happy Holidays

(Image courtesy of NDMathematicsVN)
21 Dec 2021, 14:55:40 UTC · Discuss

Support for Intel GPUs
I just added support for Intel GPUs. There are 2 versions - 64 bit linux and 64 bit windows, both require openCL 1.1 or higher.

I don't have an Intel GPU, so I can't test them. But it's the same openCL code that works on other GPUs, so in theory they should work. For the linux version, it was just a matter of downloading the Intel openCL SDK and then linking against Intel's include files and libraries. For the windows version, I cross compiled using mingw64 as I do with AMD/Nvidia cards.

Since they are new and untested, I made them beta apps.
17 Nov 2021, 22:57:27 UTC · Discuss

Finally recovering from hard drive crash.
The crash was so bad that the database could not be repaired. The first non-corrupted backup was 2 days old. Restoring from there seems to have worked but there are probably issues since it will be out of sync from results that get returned.

I pushed the deadline back another 4 days for any outstanding WUs to give people time to return them, but anything issued 2 days prior to the crash will not be in the database so I am not sure how that will play out.

Sorry for the inconvenience!
26 Jan 2021, 22:45:59 UTC · Discuss

2020 Year in Review
The 2020 shit show has come to an end. Here are the NumberFields highlights for the year:
1. The miscellaneous tables were completed. Except for the {2,5} case, this gives the fields for all
imprimitive decics ramified at {p}, {q}, or {p,q} for all primes p < q < 13.
2. Finished many of the lower tiers for the search over ℚ(√-10) (subfield 7).
3. Completed a few more batches for the search over ℚ(√2) (subfield 3), essentially leaving the final monster batch. At our current rate, this batch will take approximately the first half of 2021 to complete.
4. The CPU apps (for 64bit machines) were improved to give an average speed increase of about 35%. Improved GPU apps will be rolled out in the near term.

Thanks everyone for your contributions and have a wonderful New Year!
1 Jan 2021, 18:12:28 UTC · Discuss

Server problems this past weekend
We had what we thought was a hard drive crash - the drive went into a read-only state and the server crashed. It would not even allow a remote reboot. We finally got someone in there this morning to do a hard shutdown.

The system came back and appears to be working now. But we will continue to keep an eye on it.

If you are like me, you will have a bunch of WUs that need uploading. Please have patience as everyone will be uploading at the same time, so there might be delays.
16 Nov 2020, 17:21:24 UTC · Discuss

New and improved apps coming soon
I have made some improvements to the cpu code. I am seeing somewhere between 30% and 40% speedup, depending on the case.

I have deployed the new executable for 64bit linux. I am currently trying to get it to build for 64bit windows. I hope to have that ready by tomorrow sometime.

The next step is to use these same tricks on the GPU versions. GPUs can be very finicky, so this might take several weeks before I have something worthwhile.
13 Nov 2020, 2:51:56 UTC · Discuss

Should the fixed credits be higher?
I have had a couple people mention that the fixed credits should be higher. I tried to set the credits to be in line with the cobblestone definition, but it's possible I missed the mark.

I will wait for feedback before making any changes. Please share your credit opinions.
17 Jun 2020, 18:21:19 UTC · Discuss

Expired SSL certificates in BOINC Client -- User Action Required
This was discussed in another thread, and it just occurred to me I should post a news item with more explicit instructions.

The issue is that the BOINC client comes bundled with SSL certificates and these expired earlier today. Here are the basic steps to fix the problem. (Note: this works on linux and I see no reason why it shouldn't work on Windows too.)
1. Download the new "ca-bundle.crt" file from here:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AsVDg7OAm7-whqEqBXKHuOie0UoBKA?e=VHwBAP
2. Replace the old ca-bundle.crt file with the new one (it should be in your BOINC root directory).
31 May 2020, 5:27:43 UTC · Discuss

Moving to fixed credit
I have replaced CreditNew (or CreditScrew as some like to call it) with a fixed credit system.

The fixed value is based on the average runtime from many samples from a single machine in a well controlled environment (one of my own computers). Obviously, the fixed value will change with each batch, since each batch has a different average runtime.

This should be a pretty fair system, especially after a host has processed enough WUs for the average to kick in. The main downside is the potential for cherry pickers - hopefully there won't be too many of them.
23 May 2020, 0:10:28 UTC · Discuss

Not enough available work
There are reports of not enough available WUs.

I believe this is caused by the "accelerated retries" mechanism. So I have temporarily disabled this feature.

This mechanism normally works very well, but I think the current Pentathlon is pushing it to the limit. In particular, if too many WUs are being aborted, then the work queue is flooded with "failed" jobs that now have a higher priority, and these jobs require a "reliable host". To make things worse, any host aborting too many jobs is flagged as unreliable, so won't be given any of these tasks.
11 May 2020, 6:39:44 UTC · Discuss

2019 Year in Review
So another year has come and gone. It has been a very productive year. Here are the highlights:
1. The results for the septic search, which were completed in 2018, were accepted and published in The Journal of Number Theory.
2. A GPU app was developed for the decic search. Versions were eventually introduced for both Nvidia and AMD cards, and for both the Linux and Windows Platforms. During development, I discovered an opportunity for optimizing the CPU version which was subsequently implemented.
3. The decic app completed the search over ℚ(√-5) (subfield 5).
4. The decic app completed the search over ℚ(√-2) (subfield 4).
5. Searches were completed over the lower discriminant bounds for subfields 6 and 7.
6. The search over ℚ(√2) (subfield 3) progressed further into the higher tiers. We now only have 3 more tiers to go in that search.

Thanks everyone and have a wonderful New Year!
1 Jan 2020, 22:30:05 UTC · Discuss

vacation
I will be going on a 2 week vacation starting in a couple days. Internet access will be spotty, so I apologize in advance for any delays responding to the boards.

The rest of the project is fully automated and there is plenty of work in the backlog, so no worries there.
5 Nov 2019, 20:46:18 UTC · Discuss

New GPU OpenCL versions available
I just deployed the windows AMD openCL version as a beta app. I will monitor results for errors, but please report any strange behavior.

I also deployed newer openCL versions for AMD linux and Nvidia windows. The openCL code had a couple minor tweaks; nothing major.
3 Nov 2019, 4:36:57 UTC · Discuss

Batch plan
I know some of you like to know the batch plan, so here it is...

Batch 13x270 is nearing completion for subfield 3. After that, we will spend a week or two picking some of the low hanging fruit on subfield 7. Then it's back to subfield 3, batch 13x271. This is a very big batch, so I expect it to last until the end of December, possibly into January.
9 Oct 2019, 0:33:36 UTC · Discuss

Entering Final Phase of Subfield 4
The final batch of subfield 4 is starting to rear its ugly head. This beast has 1.6M work units averaging about 2.5 hours a piece (on a 4GHz cpu).
7 Aug 2019, 16:22:24 UTC · Discuss

new GPU app versions
I was noticing a slow down with the GPU app versions on the 15x271 data set. I found the problem - a large fraction of the discriminants were exceeding the hard coded precision. When this happens the GPU kicks it back to the CPU to handle. As a result, the GPU spent more time idling as it waited on the CPU to finish the task. A side effect of this was that the WU would also use almost an entire CPU core.

I increased the hard coded precision and tested on the troublesome data sets as well as the newest 16x271 data set. The issue seems to be fixed, but please report any unexpected behavior.
7 Aug 2019, 5:39:56 UTC · Discuss

firewall black listing
It has come to my attention that some users have been black listed by the university firewall system. This usually means that the volunteer cant download tasks or even connect to the website.

We are currently looking at ways to reduce the firewall restrictions so this will stop happening. In the meantime, the work around is for me to request the IT department to white list an IP address on an individual basis.

If you or someone you know is experiencing connection problems, please let me know so I can have them added to the white list.
27 Jul 2019, 2:07:06 UTC · Discuss

Batch Status Update
I have archived the completed batch status tables to their own page - the link is at the top of the batch status page. This should help to clean up the main batch status page.

I have also added a table for the final search over {2,5} (subfield 7). The immediate goal is still to complete sf4, followed by sf3, but I will be dropping in some small batches for sf7 periodically to help set the stage for the future search over sf7.
13 Jul 2019, 23:04:24 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 5 almost complete
As you may have noticed, subfield 5 is nearing completion. In the next few hours the last of the work units will be sent out. Of course it will still take ~2weeks for the final results to trickle in before it's officially complete.

This is a huge milestone! This subfield was originally estimated to take over a year to complete. Due to the new optimized apps (including GPU apps), this was completed in just several months.

We will be moving on to subfield 4. But first we will make a short detour and finish off subfield 6 DS7. Don't let the ~2.5mil work units scare you. These were generated for the old apps, and would have taken about 2 hours a pop, but with the newer apps they should be about 10x faster. That means we should blow through about 350k work units per day. If this turns out to be too much of a strain on the server, then we will jump straight to subfield 4 (and run sf6 DS7 in parallel).

Thanks everyone for your contributions! We couldn't have done this without our volunteers.
16 Jun 2019, 16:38:42 UTC · Discuss

GPU status update
It's been over a month since our last update, but I now have some good news. I have made some improvements to the GPU code and am ready to start deploying the new GPU apps.

I will start with the AMD OpenCL version for Linux. This will be a beta version. I have had a hell of a time with the AMD implementation of openCL, and this app still doesn't work on my Fedora system, and I believe strongly it's due to the graphics driver. But I have had the help of a volunteer named Wiktor and it runs fine for him (I believe he runs Ubuntu). Please keep in mind that AMD officially only supports RHEL and Ubuntu, so I will be interested to hear if this app works for anyone with an "unsupported" linux distro like myself.

I also have openCL Windows apps that were cross compiled using mingW. I have no means of testing these, so I am not ready to deploy them just yet. But if anyone would like to take them for a spin offline, please let me know, and I can send them to you.
15 May 2019, 22:05:56 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 5 entering final phase
Subfield 5 is now on it's final batch (16x12).

This is the first batch of WUs generated since the app was optimized. As a result, run times will be going up. These WUs average 2 hour run times on my AMD Ryzen 2990WX. Note there are 1.6 million of them; with the unoptimized app it would have required 16 million, so this is a huge improvement.

I will be mixing in some subfield 6 WUs with this batch. These were generated a while ago for the unoptimized app, so will run very quickly by comparison. If I were to run them independently, it might put too much of a strain on the server, so I figured this is a good way to get them done (without having to re-generate them which can be tedious).
4 May 2019, 18:25:13 UTC · Discuss

GPU app status update
So there have been some new developments over the last week. It's both good and bad.

First of all, some history. The reason I waited so long to develop a GPU app is because the calculation was heavily dependent on multi-precision libraries (gmp) and number theoretic libraries (pari/gp). Both of these use dynamically allocated memory which is a big no-no in GPUs. I found a multi-precision library online that I could use by hard coding the precision to the maximum required (about 750 bits), thereby removing the dependence on memory allocations. The next piece of the puzzle was to code up a polynomial discriminant function. After doing this, I could finally compile a kernel for the GPU. That is the history for the current GPU app. It is about 20 to 30 times faster than the current cpu version (depends on WU and cpu/gpu speeds).

But then I got thinking... my GPU polynomial discriminant algorithm is different from the one in the PARI library (theirs works for any degree and mine is specialized to degree 10). So to do a true apples-to-apples comparison, I replaced the PARI algorithm with mine in the cpu version of the code. I was shocked by what I found... the cpu version was now about 10x faster than it used to be. I never thought I was capable of writing an algorithm that would be 10x faster than a well established library function. WTF? Now I'm kicking myself in the butt for not having done this sooner!

This brings mixed emotions. On one side, it is great that I now have a cpu version that is 10x faster. But it also means that my GPU code is total crap. With all the horsepower in a present day GPU I would expect it to be at least 10x faster than the equivalent cpu version. Compared with the new cpu version, the gpu is only 2 to 3 times faster. That is unacceptable.

So the new plan is as follows:
1. Deploy new cpu executables. Since it's 10x faster, I will need to drop the credit by a factor of 10. (Credits/hour will remain the same for the cpu but will obviously drop for the GPU)
2. Develop new and improved GPU kernels.

I don't blame the GPU users for jumping ship at this point. Frankly, the inefficiency of the current GPU app just makes it not worth it (for them or the project).

For what it's worth, I did have openCL versions built. Nvidia version works perfectly. The AMD version is buggy for some reason, as is the windows version. Since I will be changing the kernels anyways, there is no point in debugging them yet.
5 Apr 2019, 23:40:01 UTC · Discuss

GPU app - beta version for linux nvidia
After all these years, we finally have our first GPU app. It's only a beta version for 64bit linux with Nvidia GPUs. Support for other platforms and GPUs will be coming soon.

If you'd like to help test this app, you will need to check the "run test applications" box on the project preferences page. I generated a special batch of work for this app from some older WUs that I have truth for. This will help to find any potential bugs that are still there.

A few potential issues:
1. This was built with the Cuda SDK version 10.1, so it uses a relatively new Nvidia driver version and only supports compute capability 3.0 and up. If this affects too many users out there, I will need to rebuild with on older SDK.
2. I was not able to build a fully static executable, but I did statically link the ones most likely to be a problem (i.e. pari, gmp, std c++)

Please report any problems. I am still relatively new to the whole GPU app process, so I am sure there will be issues of some kind.

Also, feel free to leave comments regarding what platform, GPU, etc I should concentrate on next. I was thinking I would attack linux OpenCL (i.e. ATI/AMD) next as that should be a quick port of what I did with Nvidia. I think the windows port will take much longer, since I normally use mingw to cross-compile but I don't think that's compatible with the nvidia compiler.
22 Mar 2019, 18:53:12 UTC · Discuss

Septic Results Paper Accepted for Publication
I mentioned a while back that we submitted the results of the septic search for publication. I am now happy to report that the paper has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Number Theory.

I will continue to post additional details as they become available.

Thank you to all our volunteers for making this possible!
12 Mar 2019, 16:23:33 UTC · Discuss

Server acting up
You may have noticed, connection to the server has been intermittent over the last day or so. That's because it has been rebooting itself randomly.

System logs pointed to either a bad port (or MoBo), bad SATA cable, or bad SSD. We think we narrowed it down to a bad Mother Board. We swapped the SSD into a new server and it appears to be working again, but we are watching it closely.
17 Jan 2019, 23:02:44 UTC · Discuss

User consent required for stats export
If you want your stats exported, you will need to check the consent box on the project preferences page.

In a couple days, the stats export mechanism will be changed, and if this consent is not given, then the default will be to NOT export your stats.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but this was necessary due to the recent GDPR regulations.
12 Jan 2019, 17:01:00 UTC · Discuss

Server upgrade
I just upgraded the project server, including the web code. Things appear to be working properly, but please report anything out of the ordinary. Thanks!
8 Jan 2019, 18:48:56 UTC · Discuss

2018 year in review
Here are the main achievements for 2018:
1. We created a new app to find all septic (degree 7) fields with discriminant less than 200E6. This search took about 6 months to complete and extended the previous best discriminant bound by a factor of 40. Many new degree 7 fields were found and added to the database. We are currently in the process of having the results published.
2. The decic app completed the largest search to date over Q(√-2), dataset 13x271. The decic app also completed a bunch of smaller searches over the lower discriminant bounds for Q(√-5).
3. We made some progress on a GPU app. We now have a multi-precision library (thanks Dan!) and I have started looking into how to port some of the pari functions. This is not a trivial problem and still expect it to take at least several more months.

Happy New Year everyone!
1 Jan 2019, 19:53:45 UTC · Discuss

New record for the decic app
The decic app has completed its biggest search yet, the one over Q(√-2), dataset 13x271. This batch had almost 5 million WUs. Total run time summed over all hosts was 2890 years. It unearthed a total of 148 unique fields. Good job everyone!
8 Dec 2018, 16:20:26 UTC · Discuss

Septic App Complete
The septic app is now officially complete. The final tally of results are as follows:

The key piece of information here is that there are 1,009,140 septic fields with discriminant less than 200E6. We have these fields available as a text file to anyone who might be interested. They will also be added to the numberfields database:
https://hobbes.la.asu.edu/NFDB/

We plan on submitting these results (with a more detailed discussion) in the form of a journal article. I will report back here with details of that as I get more information.
9 Sep 2018, 15:15:41 UTC · Discuss

Vacation
I will be on vacation for 2 weeks, and my internet access will be spotty. So I apologize in advance for any delays in responding to the boards.

I generated enough work to last for the next two weeks, so hopefully I wont need to do any remote logins.

Thanks all!
23 Aug 2018, 4:59:21 UTC · Discuss

New application coming soon
In the coming days we will be introducing a new number field application. This one will target degree 7 fields (called septics). The current best bound is 5E6, and this app will increase that to 200E6. This means it will find all degree 7 fields whose discriminant is bounded by 200E6.

Here is some additional information:
1. This search is expected to run for only 5 to 6 months (but could take longer).
2. It will run side-by-side with the current decic app.
3. It will only support the 64bit Windows and 64 bit Linux platforms.
24 Mar 2018, 6:21:03 UTC · Discuss

Server Maintenance This Friday.
We will be taking the server down for several hours on Friday, Feb 2nd, starting around 9am (AZ time).

This is to replace the failing hard drive in our RAID.
30 Jan 2018, 1:21:26 UTC · Discuss

2017 year in review
Although the list does not look impressive, much was accomplished in 2017. The sub-searches that were completed were some of the longest so far. In summary:
1. The search over Q(sqrt(2)) (subfield 3 of 7) completed several more tiers of the search. There are about 9 tiers left to go.
2. The search over Q(sqrt(-2)) (subfield 4 of 7) filled in a bunch more rows. This one has 7 tiers left to go.

Here are the goals for the new year:
1. Develop a GPU app. I have enlisted the help of a fellow user for this. This is a lofty goal and it could be many months before the GPU app is available. This app will be critical in completing the search over Q(sqrt(2)).
2. Complete the search over Q(sqrt(-2)).
3. Start the search over Q(sqrt(-5)) (subfield 5 of 7).
13 Jan 2018, 0:14:21 UTC · Discuss

Database crash
We had a database crash. We are working hard to get it fixed.
5 Jan 2018, 1:19:20 UTC · Discuss

Minor server overload problems
Over the last couple days we have been having some overload problems on the server. To help reduce the server load I temporarily disabled the batch_status and server_status cron jobs. I will be manually generating those about once a day. Sorry for the inconvenience. I also reduced the "max_wus_in_progress" from 24 to 6, so you may see fewer WUs in your job queues.

For those who are interested in the cause of the overload, it was a combination of things:
1. One of the drives in our RAID is failing, causing HD performance issues. We are working to get this fixed.
2. There were 10k+ WUs that all timed out at about the same time. The server then proceeds to generate new results for all these, causing a backlog. This is the reason for reducing max_wus_in_progress.
3. The transitioner had a DB timout which caused it to crash, increasing the backlog further.
4. Not understanding why WUs were not transitioning, I stupidly ran the "transition_all" admin script since it said this would "unstick" jobs. Big mistake - this script changed the transition time of all 600k WUs in the DB, forcing the transitioner to now reprocess every WU. That only made the backlog worse.

The good news is the server is almost caught up with the backlog. I will keep you posted.
30 Dec 2017, 17:55:35 UTC · Discuss

New subfield search
As you may have noticed, the search over ℚ(√2) (subfield 3) has started to slow down and waiting for results is like watching paint dry. At the current rate it will probably take over 10 years to finish that search. In the interest of making progress, I have decided to start the search over subfield ℚ(√-2). This is the 4th of 7 subfields for the set {2,5}. We will continue to process subfield 3 in parallel, but at least we will be able to maintain progress on other subfields for the overall goal of this project.

The hope is that I can find time this year to develop a GPU app that will help to speed up the search. Of course I've been saying this for years...
4 Mar 2017, 17:03:58 UTC · Discuss

2016 year in review
I meant to send this just before the new year, but the boards were down. Better late than never...

Last year was a productive year for NumberFields@home. To summarize our accomplishments:
1. Last May the bounded app completed its multi-year search. It found all imprimitive degree 10 fields with absolute discriminant less than or equal to 1.2E11.
2. Then in July a special search miraculously found the hypothesized field it had been searching for. This search had been running off and on for about 10 months. This field was an A5 extension of Q(√421), ramified only at 2. You can read more about it on this post:
https://numberfields.asu.edu/NumberFields/forum_thread.php?id=234
3. The regular decics app spent the majority of the year on the final tier of "Data Set 11" (those WUs with DS-11x271 in the name). You may have noticed on the batch status page that this subsearch is just about done - a really big milestone. The search will continue with the higher tiers over Q(√2).

Thank you to all our volunteers who made 2016 such a successful year!
14 Jan 2017, 23:24:12 UTC · Discuss

Upgrade to latest BOINC server
You may have noticed the forums have been down for almost a month now.

This was mainly caused by an upgrade to PHP7. After trying everything else, we finally decided to upgrade the BOINC web code.
10 Jan 2017, 16:04:35 UTC · Discuss

implementing SSL on the server
I enabled SSL on the server, but it seems most browsers don't like the current certificate, so we are still working on getting that resolved.

As a result, you may experience issues trying to access your account. In my case, I got an obnoxious warning, but was able to proceed to the accounts page. It seems that the site still has full functionality; but please let me know if this is not the case.

Thanks!
20 Aug 2016, 0:52:22 UTC · Discuss

Status Report
The boards have been silent for several weeks now so I thought a status report might be in order.

This has been a productive year so far. First, the bounded discriminant app completed it's search several months ago. Then, about a month ago, the search over Q(√421) miraculously uncovered a special field that was only hypothesized to exist - this field alluded us for many months but in the end we found it.

We have since returned to the decic search over {2,5}. It is currently on the last tier of data set 11 (of 16). The ETA on this set is about 160 days. As we wait for this batch to complete, we will periodically pick some of the low hanging fruit that is left on a couple of the other data sets. See the batch status page for details of the remaining batches.
8 Aug 2016, 1:08:01 UTC · Discuss

Bounded App Final Tally of Results
Thank you all for your contributions over the last few years to make the bounded discriminant search a success. Here is a summary of the final results...

The search found all imprimitive decic (degree 10) fields with absolute discriminant less than or equal to 1.2E11. The total compute time (summed over all hosts) was 531 years.

284,410 fields were found within this bound. Among those, the following minimum discriminant fields were of interest (listed by galois group and signature):
10T9 (2,4)
10T21 (6,2)
10T27 (0,5)
10T33 (2,4)
10T41 (2,4)
10T42 (2,4)
10T42 (6,2)
10T43 (6,2)
10T43 (8,1)
About half of these were discovered for the first time. The other half had already been discovered but it was not known until now that they were the minimum.

Although not worthy of a stand alone journal article, the search was an extension of the search discussed in this paper:
http://hobbes.la.asu.edu/papers/MinDiscDecics.pdf
20 May 2016, 21:13:30 UTC · Discuss

The final subfield is almost complete
You may have noticed the bounded app has run dry on work. That is because the last of the WUs have been sent out. We are now just waiting for them to be returned. In a few weeks, after all the results have been returned and processed, I will post the final tally of results.

In the meantime, the regular decics app still has plenty of work, so I hope you all stick around!
14 Apr 2016, 15:09:52 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 48 of 49 complete.
The subfield with discriminant 8, otherwise know as Q(√2), is now officially complete.

The bounded app has moved on to the final subfield: Q(√5).
14 Mar 2016, 5:55:29 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 47 of 49 Complete
Subfield 47 (disc 12) is now complete. Subfield 48 (disc 8) has only a couple thousand WUs left and we are just starting to hand out WUs for the final subfield (disc 5).
28 Feb 2016, 6:48:11 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 46 of 49 Complete
Subfield 46 is now complete. That only leaves 3 more to go (discriminants 12, 8, and 5). Subfield 47 (disc 12) is close behind with only several hundred WUs left and a big dent has already been made in subfield 48 (disc 8). Good work everyone!
22 Feb 2016, 4:45:14 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 45 Complete
Subfield 45 is now officially complete. That only leaves 4 more to go (discriminants 13, 12, 8, and 5). Subfields 46 and 47 are close behind and WUs for subfield 48 are now starting to be sent out.
11 Feb 2016, 15:22:37 UTC · Discuss

Subfields 43 and 44 Complete
With only a couple dozen WUs left between them, I will call subfields 43 and 44 complete. Subfields 45 and 46 are close behind. WUs for subfield 47 have recently been uploaded and are now being sent out. After that there are only 2 left to go. Thanks!
6 Feb 2016, 16:39:33 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 42 Complete
Subfield 42 of 49 is now complete. Subfields 43, 44, and 45 are also close to being done. WUs for subfield 46 have finally been uploaded and are ready for crunching.
31 Jan 2016, 6:50:59 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 41 Complete
Subfield 41 out of 49 is now complete. Progress continues on subfields 42 through 45. WUs for subfield 46 (with discriminant 13) are being pre-filtered and are almost ready to be uploaded. Thanks!
29 Jan 2016, 19:19:36 UTC · Discuss

Subfields 39 and 40 Complete
Much progress has been made over the last 2 weeks. Subfields 39 and 40 are now finished. Following close behind are subfields 41 through 45, with only several thousand outstanding WUs left to go (see the batch status page for details). Thank you!
24 Jan 2016, 21:24:57 UTC · Discuss

Batch status will be updated in about a week.
I am currently out of town and have no access to a PC (just my cell). I will be returning in 8 days, at which time I will update the batch status tables.
14 Jan 2016, 13:15:39 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 38 of 49 complete
Subfield 38 is now essentially complete. Substantial progress has also been made on both subfields 39 and 40 (discriminants 37 & 33). Good job everyone!
7 Jan 2016, 6:46:42 UTC · Discuss

Double credits for problematic work units.
As has been discussed in the message boards, there are a relatively small set of really long running WUs. Some of these may take up to 8 days or even longer.

As an incentive to users to not abort these WUs, double credits will be granted for them.

The bad work units have names of the form Qsqrt421_DS1x5_CV2_S815_*to* OR Qsqrt421_DS1x8_CV1_S815_*to*.

There are about 500 such WUs, of which ~150 are of the really slow variety.
1 Jan 2016, 22:11:39 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 37 of 49 complete
Subfield 37 has only a half dozen WUs left, so can be considered complete. Work continues on both subfields 38 and 39 (discriminants 40 & 37). Thanks!
31 Dec 2015, 22:46:18 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 36 of 49 complete
Subfield 36 is now officially complete. The bounded search has moved on to both subfields 37 and 38. These have discriminants 41 and 40.
28 Dec 2015, 4:48:00 UTC · Discuss

New work for the bounded app coming very soon...
You may have noticed the bounded app is running out of work. I am currently pre-filtering the next set and they should be ready in about a day. In the meantime, there is plenty of work for the standard app.

If you are wondering what happened, the pre-filtering takes about a week and I was unprepared by the recent onslaught of crunchers over the last couple weeks (which is a good thing of course!).
20 Dec 2015, 7:23:45 UTC · Discuss

Subfields 34 and 35 Complete
Subfield 34 is completely finished and subfield 35 has only about a dozen WUs left, so we might as well call that one finished too. The bounded app has already taken a huge bite out of subfield 36, the one with discriminant 44.

This is great progress. We are almost three quarters of the way through the bounded search. Good job everyone!
17 Dec 2015, 18:47:44 UTC · Discuss

Extra long WUs
As some of you may be aware from the message boards, there are a small number of extra long WUs (about 6 per data set). These will eventually be fixed in the WU generator, but until then I am manually deleting them when I come across them.

IF you happen to be crunching on one of these when I pull the plug, please let me know and I will manually grant you credit for the lost work.

I can't think of a better way to handle these troublesome WUs. They are like a hot potato that keeps getting passed around from one user to another. Most results fail with "no reply", others are "aborted via the GUI" (probably because users think they are stuck). With a 10 day grace period and 8 failures before the server cancels the WU, it takes a large amount of time before these WUs naturally disappear.

Note that these long WUs will finish normally within 2 or 3 days, so it doesn't hurt to let them continue if you think you may have one. It takes a history of "no replies" before I become aware of it, so the first few users that get a long one are safe from having it cancelled.
10 Dec 2015, 4:20:33 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 33 of 49 Complete
With only a couple of WUs left to go, subfield 33 is all but complete. The bounded search has moved on to subfield 34 and even beyond that to subfield 35. These have discriminants 56 and 53. Thanks!
1 Dec 2015, 23:02:13 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 32 of 49 Complete
The search over subfield 32 is now complete. In addition, the bounded search has already made a big dent in subfield 33, the one with discriminant 57. Thank you all!
13 Nov 2015, 21:17:04 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 31 of 49 Complete
With only a couple of WUs left to go, subfield 31 is essentially complete. The bounded search has moved on to subfield 32, the one with discriminant 60. Thanks!
29 Oct 2015, 16:09:19 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 30 of 49 Complete
With 99.99% of the WUs finished, subfield 30 is essentially complete. The bounded search has moved on to subfield 31, the one with discriminant 61. Thanks for all your contributions!
20 Sep 2015, 18:01:43 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 29 of 49 Complete
With 99.99% of the WUs finished, subfield 29 is essentially complete. The bounded search has moved on to subfield 30, the one with discriminant 65. Thanks for all your contributions!
31 Aug 2015, 18:07:44 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 28 of 49 Complete
With 99.9% of the WUs finished, subfield 28 is essentially complete. The bounded search has moved on to subfield 29, the one with discriminant 69. Thanks!
24 Jul 2015, 6:40:26 UTC · Discuss

Abort WUs if using old apps
I would suggest aborting any WUs that are still using the old app versions. There's a small bug in the older versions that can cause some WUs to get "stuck" after restarting from a check-point. This was only affecting the windows version. The newer apps have been out for over a week, but some users have a large work queue, and may not have picked up the newer versions.

Here are the latest app versions:
GD: 2.07
GBD: 3.05
5 Jul 2015, 21:18:43 UTC · Discuss

Upgraded Apps
Both the GD and GBD apps have been upgraded to the latest stable PARI version.
29 Jun 2015, 2:17:54 UTC · Discuss

Attention Mac Users
For all Mac users: the NumberFields@home apps require Mac OS X version 12.0.0 or higher (Mountain Lion).

For more information, see this thread:
http://numberfields.asu.edu/NumberFields/forum_thread.php?id=238

Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused!
22 Jun 2015, 15:50:00 UTC · Discuss

New GD apps
I upgraded the GetDecics apps several hours ago in preparation for a slight change to the WU data format. Your client should automatically pick up the change.

Even after extensive testing, it appears that the 32 bit windows app is failing for some users. The "32 bit" app is working on my 64 bit windows machine, so I suspect it's not a true 32 bit app. I am currently looking into this.
8 Jun 2015, 3:44:31 UTC · Discuss

64 bit windows apps now available
I just added 64 bit windows versions of the apps; your clients should eventually pick up the change if they haven't already. I've been testing them for the last couple days on my machine, so they should be good, but I'll keep an eye on them just to be safe.

These versions provide some speed improvement over their 32 bit counterparts, especially with the longer running WUs (those over ~1 hour). In some of the longer cases, the 64 bit version is almost twice as fast.
31 May 2015, 23:51:44 UTC · Discuss

A new search is underway.
You may have noticed some new types of WUs for the decic search. We are taking a temporary detour to search for a special type of field. This search is exploratory in nature, and not a complete search (which would take way too long). Once this special field is found we will return to the search over {2,5}.

The new search is for a particular A5 extension of Q(√421), ramified only at 2. Its existence is known from general theory applied to the 2-torsion points of the Jacobian of a special abelian surface. Due to its geometric origins, it has very limited ramification. On the other hand, it has non-solvable Galois group. This combination is difficult to find, and would provide a good example illustrating the general theory. Having the field explicitly would allow further computations to be done, such as computing the root discriminant of the Galois closure of the field, and computing Frobenius elements for many large primes.
29 May 2015, 2:20:14 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 27 of 49 complete
With 99.9% of the WUs finished, subfield 27 is essentially complete. The bounded search has moved on to subfield 28, the one with discriminant 73. Thanks!
20 May 2015, 2:15:00 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 26 of 49 complete
With only a handful of WUs left, we can consider subfield 26 complete. The bounded search has moved on to subfield 27, the one with discriminant 76. Thanks!
22 Feb 2015, 7:15:36 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 25 of 49 complete.
I just realized I forgot to officially report the completion of subfield 25; it finished about 2 weeks ago.

We are currently crunching on subfields 26 and 27. Note that we started subfield 26 first because the WU generator had those ready first and the bounded app was desperate for new work.

Thanks everyone!
25 Oct 2014, 1:52:01 UTC · Discuss

Modification to bounded app
With the latest subfield (#25) nearing completion, the algorithm moves into a new phase, where it is more efficient to not target the field discriminant. This required no change to the app, but due to WU timing issues, a small change was made to the WU generator (it is now breaking data up into finer pieces). This required a small change to the app interface. I also upgraded to the latest versions of the boinc and pari libraries. Some modifications were also made to the checkpointing and progress meter (finer resolution).

Why am I telling you all this? Because you will be getting a "new" bounded app. It has been thoroughly tested over the last several weeks, but please report anything out of the ordinary. Thanks!
29 Sep 2014, 16:52:29 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 24 of 49 complete.
With only a couple hundred WUs left, we can consider subfield 24 complete. That puts us at about the halfway point through the entire search (total of 49 subfields).

The bounded search has moved on to subfield 25, the one with discriminant 85. Thanks!
13 Sep 2014, 16:07:10 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 23 of 49 complete.
Subfield 23 is essentially complete. The bounded search has moved on to subfield 24, the one with discriminant 88. Thanks!
20 Aug 2014, 4:58:43 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 22 complete.
Subfield 22 of 49 was completed last week (sorry for the delay in posting). The bounded search has moved on to subfield 23, the one with discriminant 89. Thanks all!
9 Aug 2014, 17:53:08 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 21 of 49 complete.
Subfield 21 is essentially complete. The bounded search has moved on to subfield 22, the one with discriminant 92. Thanks!
31 May 2014, 16:45:41 UTC · Discuss

Latest decic results uploaded
The decic search over Q(√5) is officially complete and the results have been consolidated and uploaded. This is a huge milestone! We have now completed 2 of the 7 quadratic base fields.

For those interested, here is your link:
http://hobbes.la.asu.edu/numberfields-old/driver/Decics52.html
(2nd table, 9th row)

4 May 2014, 22:35:01 UTC · Discuss

Server upgrade this Wed
Just a heads up... we will be taking the server down for about 4 to 6 hours on Wed starting at 8am (AZ time). This is to upgrade the OS to the latest version of Ubuntu.

22 Apr 2014, 15:21:46 UTC · Discuss

2nd decic search almost complete
The last of the WUs have been sent out and we are just waiting for them to be returned. We will post the consolidated results in the next few weeks. In the meantime, we have started issuing WUs for the next decic search, the one over Q(√2). Thanks!

17 Apr 2014, 7:09:57 UTC · Discuss

10% left to go...
The decic search over the 2nd subfield Q(√5), is in the final stretch with only 10% left to go. Good job everyone!

29 Mar 2014, 22:57:32 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 20 of 49 complete.
Subfield 20 is essentially complete. The bounded search has moved on to subfield 21, the one with discriminant 93. Thanks!
26 Mar 2014, 1:26:50 UTC · Discuss

Subfield #19 complete
Subfield 19 is essentially complete. The bounded search has already started on subfield 20, the one with discriminant 97. Thanks to all our volunteers!

14 Feb 2014, 6:12:05 UTC · Discuss

Subfield #18 complete
Subfield 18 is now essentially complete. This case took less than 2 weeks to complete, a new record. The bounded app has now moved on to subfield 19 of 49, the one with discriminant 101. Thanks to all!

12 Jan 2014, 21:49:17 UTC · Discuss

Subfield #17 complete
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, another subfield is about to be completed. We are now moving on to subfield 18, the one with discriminant 104. Thanks again to all our crunchers!

30 Dec 2013, 22:55:40 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 16 of 49 complete
With only a handful of WUs left, we can consider subfield 16 complete. The bounded search has already started on subfield 17, the one with discriminant 105. Thanks for all your contributions!

27 Nov 2013, 1:53:40 UTC · Discuss

Subfield #15 complete
With only a handful of WUs left, we can consider subfield 15 complete. The bounded search is well on its way into subfield 16 of 49, the one with discriminant 109. Thanks for all your contributions!

10 Nov 2013, 18:07:50 UTC · Discuss

Number Fields@Home at SpaceVision Conference
Come join Eric and me for a panel discussion on supercomputing at SpaceVision 2013 http://spacevision.seds.org/ on Friday Nov. 8th. We are looking forward to meeting with folks from SETI@home, MilkyWay@home and Asteroids@home to discuss distributed computing. This is your opportunity to meet with representatives of Number Fields@home and other Boinc projects.
5 Nov 2013, 19:53:45 UTC · Discuss

Subfield #14 Complete
With only a handful of WUs left, I will declare subfield 14 complete. The bounded search has progressed to subfield 15 of 49, the one with discriminant 113. Thank you!

14 Oct 2013, 4:10:01 UTC · Discuss

Search Status
The message boards have been quiet for some time now, so I thought I should give a quick status report. The 2nd search over Q(sqrt(5)) is about to enter the final stage. Since run times go up geometrically with discriminant, this final stage will take some time (~6 months). At the same time we will be picking off some of the low hanging fruit for the next search over Q(sqrt(2)), which will allow us to compute timing info for the later stages of that search.
Thank you for all your contributions!

28 Sep 2013, 21:21:30 UTC · Discuss

Subfield #13 Complete
The bounded app has now completed subfield 13 of 49, and has started on the next subfield, the one with discriminant 120. Thank you!

20 Aug 2013, 7:07:10 UTC · Discuss

Results of first decic search posted.
For the first time in history, I present to you the quintic extensions of Q(i) ramified over the set {2,5}. You can be one of the first people to ever lay eyes on these little beauties, all 566 of them. Here is your link:
http://hobbes.la.asu.edu/numberfields-old/driver/Decics52.html
(You want the 2nd table, 8th row. Links to the field data are on the right)

14 Aug 2013, 6:05:54 UTC · Discuss

First decic search complete
With only a handful of WUs left to go, we are declaring victory on the first search. This is a major achievement! In a nutshell, this search has obtained all degree 5 extensions of Q(i) (the Gaussian rationals) which are ramified at 2 and/or 5. The final tabulated results will be posted within the next couple of weeks. Thank you!

7 Aug 2013, 3:36:03 UTC · Discuss

Thank you to all challenge participants!
This was a very successful challenge. A large chunk of the decic search was completed. In particular, the search over Q(i) was essentially finished, and inroads were made into the next 2 subfields. Thanks again for all your contributions!

2 Aug 2013, 7:02:11 UTC · Discuss

Welcome Challenge Participants!
The team at NumberFields@Home would like to thank everyone participating in the latest challenge, and extend an extra special thanks to SETI.USA for organizing the event. With the first subfield nearing completion, the search over the 2nd and 3rd subfields has been opened up. Go get 'em!

25 Jul 2013, 5:54:49 UTC · Discuss

Subfield #12 complete
The bounded app has now completed subfield 12 of 49, and has started on the next subfield, the one with discriminant 124. Great job everyone!
7 Jul 2013, 15:19:08 UTC · Discuss

New Project Description Page
A more complete project description page was added. There is a link from the main page (2nd paragraph of main text), included here for convenience:
Project Description

30 Jun 2013, 20:56:16 UTC · Discuss

Only 25% left to go...
...on the final tier of the decic search over Q(i). Good job all!

23 Jun 2013, 5:39:12 UTC · Discuss

Welcome Challenge Participants!
The team at NumberFields@Home would like to thank everyone participating in the challenge and extend an extra special thanks to SETI.USA for organizing the event. We look forward to the additional science we will collectively complete this week.

Thank you!

9 Jun 2013, 19:45:52 UTC · Discuss

For users who have been away for a while...
It was brought to my attention that some returning users were unable to connect to the project, probably because they are still using the old url.

So if you haven't visited in over a month, you may be unaware that we upgraded the project servers and have a different url now. If you are having problems connecting, then try reattaching to the project.

Thanks!

8 Jun 2013, 5:53:16 UTC · Discuss

Problem with login page
It was brought to my attention that the login page was broken. I hadn't noticed since I was already logged in. If anyone has had problems logging in, it should work for you now. If you were already logged in like me and unaware of the issue, then you can ignore this message.

26 May 2013, 7:50:02 UTC · Discuss

Subfield #11 complete
The bounded app has now completed subfield 11 of 49, and has started on the next subfield, the one with discriminant 129. Great job everyone!

12 May 2013, 21:39:43 UTC · Discuss

Halfway there...
The final part of the decic search over Q(i) has now surpassed the halfway point. Good job all!

9 May 2013, 0:05:36 UTC · Discuss

Server Outage on Friday May 3rd
We will be taking the project server down this Friday to perform the previously mentioned upgrade. We plan to take it down at approx 11am and hope to be back up by 3pm (AZ time). During this time, all project functionality will be disabled, including the main website and the forums.

1 May 2013, 19:26:34 UTC · Discuss

Server Upgrade
We will be upgrading the server hardware in the next 2 to 3 weeks. This should be a smooth transition; however, any user still using the old url (stat.la.asu.edu) needs to change this to the new alias (numberfields.asu.edu/NumberFields). This can easily be done by removing/adding the project. The alias is in place now, so this can be done anytime before the upgrade. Thanks!

21 Apr 2013, 22:56:07 UTC · Discuss

Decic search over Q(i) is making good progress.
The final level of the decic search over Q(i) has surpassed the 1/3 point. As mentioned previously, this is an extremely large search, so this is a worthy achievement. Only 2 more thirds to go. Congrats everyone!

7 Apr 2013, 21:33:40 UTC · Discuss

Subfield #10 is now complete
Congratulations everyone! The bounded app has now crunched through subfield 10 of 49. We are moving on to subfield 11, the one with discriminant 133.

16 Mar 2013, 20:16:05 UTC · Discuss

Another milestone reached
Good job everyone! Another level of the decic search over Q(i) has completed. We now move to the final leg of the search over Q(i). The final batch of WUs is targetting those fields with discriminant (2^29)*(5^18). This will be the biggest and baddest search so far, with a whopping 819200 WUs.

27 Jan 2013, 2:49:27 UTC · Discuss

Thank you!
I just wanted to thank all those who participated in the IBM challenge from a week ago, and also thank team IBM for initiating the challenge. We appreciate the exta TFlops and hope you all decide to stick around.

13 Jan 2013, 21:45:49 UTC · Discuss

Subfield #9 is now complete.
The bounded app has now crunched through subfield 9 of 49. It has moved on to subfield 10, the one with discriminant 136. Only 40 more subfields to go!

9 Jan 2013, 21:06:38 UTC · Discuss

Another milestone reached.
The bounded decics app has now completed subfield 8 of 49. The search has now progressed into subfield 9, the one having discriminant 137. Thanks everyone!

16 Nov 2012, 1:04:40 UTC · Discuss

SPAM Attacks
We started getting an abundance of spam on the message boards this week. We have now configured the boards so that you need to have at least 100 RAC and Total Credit in order to post. This should have little effect on the legitimate users.

20 Oct 2012, 22:43:48 UTC · Discuss

Another milestone reached
Another level of the search has been completed. We are now 1 step closer to finishing the Decics search over Q(i). The next batch of WUs is targetting those fields with discriminant (2^29)*(5^17). After that, we hit the (2^29)*(5^18) discriminants, which is the pinacle of the search over Q(i).

In addition to Q(i) there are 6 other subfields we need to do. I am starting to sprinkle some of those WUs in with the Q(i) work. These other subfields are expected to be much smaller searches, so the idea here is to pick off some of the easier targets while waiting for Q(i) to finish.

16 Sep 2012, 20:55:48 UTC · Discuss

Planned Power Outage
They are making some electrical upgrades to the building housing our server. So there will be a power outage tonight, Aug 6th, starting around 5 pm (AZ time). Power should be restored by the next morning.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

6 Aug 2012, 16:00:52 UTC · Discuss

Another subfield completed!
The bounded decics app has now completed subfield 7 of 49. Thanks for all your hard work!

27 Jul 2012, 17:25:44 UTC · Discuss

Another milestone reached
The Decics search over Q(i) has now progressed to the highest discriminant level. It is now targetting those fields with discriminant having 2^29 as a factor. This final portion of the search will be the most challenging yet.

We couldn't have reached this milestone without our volunteers. Thanks to all of you!

And for those who are interested, the intermediate results have been uploaded. The link is on the main page.

14 Jul 2012, 19:31:23 UTC · Discuss

Planned Power Outage
There was a planned power outage last night in the building housing our server in order to upgrade the network. This happened before I could post a news item, so I apologize for that.

There will be another planned outage tonight starting at 5pm AZ time. The server should be back up by Thursday morning. I am told all upgrades should be complete at that time.

11 Jul 2012, 16:02:18 UTC · Discuss

Badges are here
As the changes are still relatively new, let me know if there are any problems.

17 Jun 2012, 17:10:11 UTC · Discuss

Power Outage
The building housing our server suffered a power outage last night (the first in over a year). Everything is back to normal now.

12 Jun 2012, 16:06:09 UTC · Discuss

Badges coming soon
We have decided to implement a badge system similar to other projects. I estimate it will take a couple weeks before it's fully working. It will be based on total credits, so it will include all credits earned since project inception.

1 Jun 2012, 20:40:53 UTC · Discuss

To all Mac Users:
The Mac version is finally available! But think of this as a beta version. My wife just got a new Mac for work (the first Mac in this household), so I finally had access to a Mac on which to build the executables. It runs great for me, but I am not a Mac person, so I just hope it works for others (my biggest fear is the dependency on dynamic libs). It was built on the latest Mac OS X Lion (64bit).

26 May 2012, 17:53:57 UTC · Discuss

Problem with client version 7.0.24 on ubuntu.
Word on the street is that this is happening on multiple projects, not just NumberFields. According to this link, version 7.0.26 may resolve the issue.

5 May 2012, 21:49:47 UTC · Discuss

New milestone reached
The Decics search has now progressed to the next discriminant level. It is now targetting those fields with discriminant having 2^28 as a factor.

30 Apr 2012, 4:57:08 UTC · Discuss

To all Linux users:
...the 32bit apps are finally available!

16 Apr 2012, 5:55:11 UTC · Discuss

Extra Credit for GetDecics
In case you hadn't noticed, the latest batch of GetDecic WUs have much longer run times than usual (2 days on a fast host). Because of this, some users turned off this app in their preferences, in favor of the much faster GetBoundedDecics.

In the short term, we are more interested in the GetDecics results. So as an extra incentive to get users to run the GetDecics app, we are granting 50% more credits to all successful GetDecics results. This will be for a short time, until the current batch (14x121) is complete. For those who don't know how to select the app, goto your account and click "NumberFields@home preferences"; the rest should be easy.

9 Mar 2012, 5:25:00 UTC · Discuss

Subfield 6 out of 49 is now complete
To recap, we have finished the subfields with discriminant 161, 157, 156, 152, 149, and 145. The next search is over the subfield with discriminant 141. Thanks for all your contributions!

7 Mar 2012, 6:27:16 UTC · Discuss

Link to Batch Status
A link for "Batch Status" was added to the main page (just under server status). I still need to add some more information to the table, but at least it should give you an idea of progress on the current data set.

22 Feb 2012, 8:09:21 UTC · Discuss

The 5th subfield is now finished.
Once again, thank you to all our volunteers. We couldn't do this without you guys. I should also mention that the 2nd application has reached a new milestone, and has progressed to the next level of that search. For those who are interested, a list of the newest fields can be found via the link on the main page (the new fields are under the heading "decics with a quadratic subfield", near the bottom).

2 Feb 2012, 7:26:21 UTC · Discuss

4th subfield out of 49 is now complete.
Actually there are a handful of work units that are slowly trickling in, but it's close enough to declare victory. The 5th subfield is close behind, about 80% complete. Thank you to all of our volunteers!

19 Jan 2012, 5:53:47 UTC · Discuss

The search over the 3rd real subfield is now complete.
A big thank you to all volunteers! Only 46 more subfields to go.
14 Dec 2011, 8:14:02 UTC · Discuss

The search over quadratic subfield with disc 157 is now finished.
The search has now completed 2 of the 49 real base fields. Good job everyone!

1 Dec 2011, 8:06:58 UTC · Discuss

New application added to the project
The goal of this new application is to find all the imprimitive fields unramified outside of a given set of primes. We start with the set {2,5}.

During testing I noticed that this app had more consistent run times, around 20 hours per WU on my 2.6 GHz core i7. You will also notice quick jumps in the progress meter followed by slow periods. This is normal behavior.

22 Nov 2011, 7:35:09 UTC · Discuss

First of the real subfields is now complete
Only 48 more to go. Good job everyone!

19 Nov 2011, 22:22:47 UTC · Discuss

Server upgraded to the latest boinc core release
In addition, the linux app was rebuilt using the same library version. In the next couple days, I should also have the windows app upgraded.

25 Oct 2011, 6:25:51 UTC · Discuss

Last of the complex subfields almost complete -- Good job everyone!
The search will now focus on the real subfields. For our chosen bound, there are 49 such subfields. The search starts with the one having discriminant 161.

17 Oct 2011, 1:25:21 UTC · Discuss

New and Improved executable now available.
I fixed a rare bug that was causing about 1 out of every 1000 WUs to crash. Not a big deal, unless you were one of the unlucky ones to get such a WU.
The app also checkpoints more often now and gives finer resolution with the progress meter.

4 Sep 2011, 23:04:26 UTC · Discuss

Private messaging now operational
At least I was able to send messages to myself. Give it a try and let me know if there are any problems.
24 Aug 2011, 7:07:32 UTC · Discuss

Progress meter fixed
This should also improve the estimate for the time remaining.

22 Aug 2011, 6:43:48 UTC · Discuss

Link to server status added
Link was added under the community heading on the main page.
22 Aug 2011, 6:43:48 UTC · Discuss

Thank you to all the new participants.
I was surprised to come home from vacation and see so many new participants. I only told a handful of people, but apparently the word got around. But this is good! Several issues have surfaced, but nothing too serious. Just a few general comments:
1. There can be large variations in run times between different work units. Each work unit represents a single instance of an outer loop variable, and it is hard to determine a priori how long the inner code will take for a given value of this variable. I have seen run times as long as 12 hours.
2. The windows version reports memory leakage whenever the executable is stopped. I believe this message is wrong, but it is annoying and I will try to find the cause of it.
3. The progress bar is not being implemented correctly. This causes the progress to appear stuck at 0% for the entire duration of the workunit.

20 Aug 2011, 17:41:21 UTC · Discuss

Only Linux and Windows currently supported
In addition, only the 64bit Linux version is available. If you are a 32 bit linux user or a mac user, please check back later. We plan to support those platforms in the near future.
12 Aug 2011, 3:35:38 UTC · Discuss

Banner
Thanks to Wendi for the banner and icon contribution.
8 Aug 2011, 21:01:52 UTC · Discuss

NumberFields@home still under construction
We are still working out a few issues with the client app and hope to have the project fully operational in the next couple of weeks.
8 Aug 2011, 6:26:47 UTC · Discuss

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