PrimeGrid Challenges 2019

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Ken g6

Programming Moderator, Elite Member
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Dec 11, 1999
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Current challenge: Prime Sierpinski Problem (PSP) LLR, December 12-21 (04:19 UTC)

Happy new year! Here's the (tentative) list of this year's PrimeGrid challenges:

Code:
#  Date             Time UTC  Project  Duration  Challenge
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1   7-22 January    05:43:00  SoB-LLR  15 days   Conjunction of Venus & Jupiter Challenge
2   5-10 March      18:00:00  GCW-LLR  5 days    Year of the Pig(ging out on our CPU cycles :P) Challenge
3  24-31 May        00:00:00  TRP-LLR  7 days    Hans Ivar Riesel's 90th Birthday Challenge
4  15-20 July       20:17:00  PPS-LLR  5 days    50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing Challenge
5   3-10 August     00:00:00  ESP-LLR  7 days    Lennart Vogel Honorary Challenge
6  21-26 September  11:00:00  AP27     5 days    Oktoberfest Challenge
7  10-15 October    18:00:00  PPS-DIV  5 days    World Maths Day Challenge
8  24-29 October    00:00:00  321-LLR  5 days    50 years First ARPANET Connection Challenge
9   1-11 November   18:04:00  PSP-LLR  10 days   Transit of Mercury Across the Sun Challenge
10 12-22 December   04:19:00  GFN-21+  10 days   Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi! Summer Solstice Challenge

What you need:
  • One or more fast x86 processors, preferably with lots of cores. (Even slow ones might do!)
  • Windows (Vista or later 64-bit, or XP or later 32-bit), Linux, or MacOS 10.4+.
  • BOINC, attached to PrimeGrid (http://www.primegrid.com/).
  • Your PrimeGrid Preferences with only the above project(s) selected in the Projects section.
  • Patience! All of these projects run long, slow WUs, at least on your CPU. As a result, no challenge is less than five days long. :eek:

What may help LLR (all but two of the challenges):
  • An Intel Sandy Bridge or later ("Core series" other than first-generation) processor with AVX may be 20-70% faster than with the default application. Sadly, that does not include Pentium or Celeron processors, or AMD processors.
  • In most challenges - probably all of these since their WUs are so large - it helps to enable multi-core processing with app_config.xml. Leave hyper-threading on if you do this!
  • Faster RAM might help on many challenges, as long as it's stable.
What may help in other challenges:
  • A GPU helps in two challenges.
  • Juggling in some extra WUs may help in challenges where you run more than one WU on the CPU at a time. (Or, switching to use all cores on one WU at the end may work equally well.)
  • Turning on hyper-threading may help.

What won't help (but won't hurt either):
  • A large amount of RAM.
  • Any Android devices.

What won't help (and will hurt, sort of):
  • Unstable processors. (Invalid work will be deducted! :eek: If Prime95 worked recently on your processor, it should be stable.)
  • Work not downloaded anduploaded within the challenge. (It's not counted.) Should you not be able to be in front of one or more computers at that time, there are several options:
    • You can often set BOINC's network connection preferences to wait until a minute or two after challenge time.
    • And for short work units, you can just set the queue level very low (0.01 days). This also makes it more likely that you will be a prime finder rather than a double-checker. But you might want to raise their queue size after the challenge is underway.

Welcome and good luck to all! :)

P.S. If no one has posted stats lately, try tracking your stats with my user script. With that installed, visit the current challenge's Team stats link for TeAm stats.
 
Last edited:

crashtech

Lifer
Jan 4, 2013
10,523
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I'm setting my expectations low by not thinking I'll find any at all, at least there are points for doing the work, and every number that's found not to be a prime eliminates one more candidate...
 

Howdy

Senior member
Nov 12, 2017
572
480
136
Well the polar vortex didn’t get me , but this ice storm did!!!! Power is out so I’m out of the TDP for now. Go get them guys!!!!!!!
 

emoga

Member
May 13, 2018
188
301
136

Howdy

Senior member
Nov 12, 2017
572
480
136
Well I guess I survived the storm somewhat. The only loss was a wifi card in a machine so now I'm down 2 machines. I didn't have it set to just stay off on power loss, the power cycled ~4-5 times with a couple "brown outs" in between. I consider myself very lucky in that respect!!

Congratulations @emoga ..................BAM!! GFN17-MEGA LOL

"Not sure if I should switch over to PPS-MEGA and GFN-17-Mega to go for a mega prime or not. All or nothing approach."

Now if you pop a PPS-MEGA..I'm thinking it's an inside job!!!
 
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zzuupp

Lifer
Jul 6, 2008
14,863
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Thanks:)
Not sure if I should switch over to PPS-MEGA and GFN-17-Mega to go for a mega prime or not. All or nothing approach.

Is anyone else running mega's?

I've had one GPU on 17-Megas. I'll be switching it over to 16's & 18's soon.

CPU's: I'm playing lotto with 321/Cullen/ESP. Next week will be Woodall & PSP.
 
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Howdy

Senior member
Nov 12, 2017
572
480
136
Weather related issues AGAIN, I can't win. Machines throwing errors and I don't care for that. I'm out until this garbage passes................although 6 errors after running 25k or so tasks isn't all that bad I guess....still do not like it, skews the results for the wing man since it's reported late or errors on my part. Time matters this challenge.................
 

Ken g6

Programming Moderator, Elite Member
Moderator
Dec 11, 1999
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Well, whaddya know, there are team stats for the Tour de Primes!

Eudy Silva said:
Some team stats for the 2019 TdP:
(composite, it's a Perl script yet :) )

Information gathered at 2019/02/21 17:01:43 UTC

Teams sorted by primes found
Code:
Team                          Primes       Score    Members  
1 Aggie The Pew                     46    5,824.00         15  
2 Crunching@EVGA                    20    3,651.67          4  
3 SETI.Germany                      15    5,268.11          7  
4 TeAm AnandTech                    10    2,365.92          3  
5 Czech National Team               10    2,603.92          6  
6 The Knights Who Say Ni!            9    1,531.93          3  
7 BOINC@AUSTRALIA                    9    1,044.79          6  
8 AMD Users                          8    1,765.77          3
 
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Ken g6

Programming Moderator, Elite Member
Moderator
Dec 11, 1999
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Bump for the start of the Pig race!

giphy.gif


...I mean the Year of the Pig Challenge. ;)
 

Ken g6

Programming Moderator, Elite Member
Moderator
Dec 11, 1999
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Day 1 stats:

Stats for team TeAm AnandTech
Rank___Credits____Username
10_____413517_____emoga
15_____354575_____crashtech
24_____213465_____xii5ku
39_____122125_____biodoc
41_____114403_____Ken_g6
47_____96561______Howdy2u2
52_____87339______Orange Kid
110____26612______zzuupp

Rank__Credits____Team
2_____3026311____SETI.Germany
3_____2769034____Aggie The Pew
4_____1863626____Sicituradastra.
5_____1428602____TeAm AnandTech
6_____1021258____Crunching@EVGA
7_____771106_____BOINC@MIXI
8_____592823_____The Knights Who Say Ni!

5th place is nice! It would be sixth if someone were on his previous team. Thanks for sticking with us! ;)
 

Modular

Diamond Member
Jul 1, 2005
5,027
67
91
What's better to run on this project? I've got a 1070gtx folding and an RX580 doing Collatz and Milkyway and a 1070ti that I game with, but would happily add the horsepower to a challenge when I'm not playing.

I'm not a CPU cruncher since my best is an i7 4770k.
 

Ken g6

Programming Moderator, Elite Member
Moderator
Dec 11, 1999
16,242
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Day 2 stats:

Rank___Credits____Username
11_____844813_____emoga
15_____727661_____crashtech
19_____606253_____xii5ku
42_____273949_____Howdy2u2
47_____245723_____biodoc
53_____213303_____Ken_g6
63_____183166_____Orange Kid
104____87120______zzuupp
198____9183_______SlangNRox

Rank__Credits____Team
2_____6984248____Aggie The Pew
3_____6199546____SETI.Germany
4_____3938018____Sicituradastra.
5_____3191177____TeAm AnandTech
6_____2425327____Crunching@EVGA
7_____1553514____BOINC@MIXI
8_____1259843____The Knights Who Say Ni!

Still in 5th, we're right in the middle between 4th and 6th.

What's better to run on this project? I've got a 1070gtx folding and an RX580 doing Collatz and Milkyway and a 1070ti that I game with, but would happily add the horsepower to a challenge when I'm not playing.

I'm not a CPU cruncher since my best is an i7 4770k.
This is a CPU-only project. The next PrimeGrid project you'll be able to use GPUs on is in September.
 

crashtech

Lifer
Jan 4, 2013
10,523
2,111
146
What's better to run on this project? I've got a 1070gtx folding and an RX580 doing Collatz and Milkyway and a 1070ti that I game with, but would happily add the horsepower to a challenge when I'm not playing.

I'm not a CPU cruncher since my best is an i7 4770k.

The 4770K has AVX2 and will do well in this challenge for what it is, just in case you want to run it anyway. If you do, see the info re app_config in the contest thread on the Primgrid forums:

http://www.primegrid.com/forum_thread.php?id=8462
 

Ken g6

Programming Moderator, Elite Member
Moderator
Dec 11, 1999
16,242
3,829
75
Day 3 stats:

Rank___Credits____Username
11_____1407315____xii5ku
14_____1309179____emoga
18_____1128479____crashtech
40_____470433_____Howdy2u2
49_____396137_____biodoc
53_____344510_____Ken_g6
61_____288736_____Orange Kid
114____138671_____zzuupp
229____17579______SlangNRox

Rank__Credits____Team
2_____11824607___Aggie The Pew
3_____10112665___SETI.Germany
4_____6076512____Sicituradastra.
5_____5501043____TeAm AnandTech
6_____3903471____Crunching@EVGA
7_____2401104____BOINC@MIXI
8_____2043602____The Knights Who Say Ni!

Ooh, thanks to @StefanR5R we're getting close to #4! :)
 

StefanR5R

Elite Member
Dec 10, 2016
5,498
7,786
136
Huh? Yesterday I noticed that this xii5ku creep made moves to stalk @crashtech, but today he went past @emoga?

we're getting close to #4! :)
Oh, nice!
BTW, as usual, SETI.Germany have a graph: chart.png
(At our team page of SG's PG challenge app, click the "Vergleich" tab.)

WCG's "Help Stop Tuberculosis" ends soon/this month,
If it is like other WCG subprojects, it may magically reset its progress percentage shortly before the apparent finish. Do you have more info on it, beyond what "Research Overview" is showing?
 
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