Welcome to the Perseid Shower Challenge

The night sky can offer some wonderful sights, like distant stars and planets, the milkyway but also meteor showers. The Perseids are a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Swift-Tuttle. The Perseids are so-called because the point from which they appear to come, called the radiant, lies in the constellation Perseus. The name derives in part from the word Perseides (Περσείδες), a term found in Greek mythology referring to the sons of Perseus. [wiki] This shower has been observed for approximately 2000 years, so as themes for a challenge go: it's one with a few years of history. PrimeGrid is therefor offering a 48 hour Challenge on The Riesel Problem (Sieve).

To participate in the Challenge, please select only the TRP (Sieve) project in your PrimeGrid preferences section. The Challenge will begin August 10th 2015 18:00 UTC and end August 12th 2015 18:00 UTC. Application builds are available for MacIntel, Linux 32 & 64 bit and Windows 32 & 64 bit.
Note: 64 bit builds benefit from a 1.7X speed advantage over 32 bit...so 1.7X the credit. :)


NOTE: In your PrimeGrid preferences section, set "Send work from any subproject if selected projects have no work" to no to guarantee that no other work will be sent.

Recommendation: The TRP (Sieve) application requires a one time download of a 22.2MB sieve file. Please consider running a few TRP (Sieve) WU's before the Challenge begins so your client will already have the sieve file. This way, bandwidth can be used to deliver WU's instead of the sieve file. :) Thank you!


The World Clock - Time Zone Converter
NOTE: The countdown clock on the front page uses the host computer time. Therefore, if your computer time is off, so will the countdown clock. For precise timing, use the UTC Time in the data section to the left of the countdown clock.

Scoring Information

Scores will be kept for individuals and teams. Only work units issued AFTER August 10th 2015 18:00 UTC and received BEFORE August 12th 2015 18:00 UTC will be considered for credit. Since this is a fixed credit project, we'll be using BOINC credit for scoring. A quorum of 2 is NOT needed to award Challenge score - i.e. no double checker. Therefore, each returned result will earn a Challenge score. Please note that if the result is eventually declared invalid, the score will be removed.

Clean up
Since this is the first sieving challenge being run with double checking turned on for these type of projects there will be a clean up just like with LLR and GFN challenges.

At the Conclusion of the Challenge

We would prefer users "moving on" to finish those tasks they have downloaded, if not then please ABORT the WU's instead of DETACHING, RESETTING, or PAUSING.

ABORTING WU's allows them to be recycled immediately; thus a much faster "clean up" to the end of an LLR Challenge. DETACHING, RESETTING, and PAUSING WU's causes them to remain in limbo until they EXPIRE. Therefore, we must wait until WU's expire to send them out to be completed.

Please consider either completing what's in the queue or ABORTING them. Thank you. :)

About The Riesel Problem

Hans Ivar Riesel (born 1929 in Stockholm, died 2014) is a Swedish mathematician. In 1956, he showed that there are an infinite number of positive odd integer k's such that k*2^n-1 is composite (not prime) for every integer n>=1. These numbers are now called Riesel numbers. He further showed that k=509203 was such one.

It is conjectured that 509203 is the smallest Riesel number. The Riesel problem consists in determining that 509203 is the smallest Riesel number. To show that it is the smallest, a prime of the form k*2^n-1 must be found for each of the positive integer k's less than 509203. As of December 2013, there remain 52 k's for which no primes have been found. They are as follows:

2293, 9221, 23669, 31859, 38473, 46663, 67117, 74699, 81041, 93839, 97139, 107347, 121889, 129007, 143047, 146561, 161669, 192971, 206039, 206231, 215443, 226153, 234343, 245561, 250027, 273809, 315929, 319511, 324011, 325123, 327671, 336839, 342847, 344759, 362609, 363343, 364903, 365159, 368411, 371893, 384539, 386801, 397027, 402539, 409753, 444637, 470173, 474491, 477583, 485557, 494743, 502573

For a more detailed history and status of the Riesel problem, please visit Wilfrid Keller's The Riesel Problem: Definition and Status.

Additional Information


Riesel Number (Wolfram MathWorld)
Riesel Number (Wiki)
Riesel Number (The Prime Glossary)


The Riesel problem is to k*2^n-1 as the Sierpinski problem is to k*2^n+1. There is no equivalent to the 'prime' Sierpinski problem since k=509203, the conjectured smallest Riesel number, is prime.

What is sieving?

Sieving is the first step to prime finding. In general, a sieve separates wanted/desired elements from unwanted material using a tool such as a mesh, net or other filtration or distillation methods. The word "sift" derives from this term. (Wikipedia - Sieve)

In PrimeGrid's case, the desired elements ultimately are prime numbers and the unwanted material are composite numbers. Our tool of choice for PSP/SoB sieve is Geoff Reynolds' sr2sieve program. It eliminates possible candidates by removing numbers that have small factors. As this process is much faster than primality testing, it is good to thoroughly sieve a data set before primality testing.

Sieving removes many candidates at the beginning. However, the deeper the sieve goes, the slower the rate of removal, till eventually sieving removes candidates at the same rate as primality testing. This is sometimes referred to as "optimal depth". Primality testing is recommended at this point.

There are many factors that determine how much time and how deep to sieve. After sieving, all the remaining candidates must be primality tested to determine their "prime" status.

32 bit OS with 64 bit CPU

This is for those who are "driving with the hand brake active" (running a 32 bit OS on a 64 bit machine) ;) Wubi is a very nice tool that installs Ubuntu as a dual boot to your 64 bit machine. It's as simple as adding a program to Windows. You can even uninstall it like you would any other program. :)

Wubi - Ubuntu Installer

After getting 64 bit OS running on your machine, here's a link to ALL BOINC clients (including Linux x64): http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php If you are new to Linux and need help getting set up, let us know.

It really is simple. :) With that said, check what installations WUBI will NOT work on: Unsupported set-ups
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PrimeGrid Challenge Overall standings --- Last update: From Pi to Paddy (2016)

PrimeGrid's 2015 Challenge Series
Perseid Shower Challenge this is the 1,12 software right because i am not showing up

All the work you've completed so far was downloaded before the start of challenge and therefor doesn't count towards the challenge.
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PrimeGrid Challenge Overall standings --- Last update: From Pi to Paddy (2016)

All the work you've completed so far was downloaded before the start of challenge and therefor doesn't count towards the challenge.

Frankly I haven't a clue what I'm doing! I've had to abort several jobs that were due to last well over a year, dumb I know I didn't read the fine print when I set my preferences, but all are running fine now.

Biggest problem is I have only a South facing window and full summer sunshine, I've had to leave the door open and keep an eye on the cats, perhaps someone will create a BOINC job that will tell me why cats like chewing cables with 237V inside ;)

Good luck to everyone, looking forward to seeing how close to the bottom I come, It's my birthday tomorrow so I'm hoping for good news.

Malcolm in Beziers on the Mediterranean coast
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Half way through the challenge...

Half way through the challenge, about 380 thousand tasks have been sent out, and about 200 thousand have already been returned. A normal day's traffic would be about 15 thousand tasks, so this is a huge increase! Great job everyone!

Malcolm, I have a heat issue too here in SWFlorida. Maybe you need more cat toys or some catnip spray on other areas. I also have two cats. They are not interested in wires.

Biggest problem is I have only a South facing window and full summer sunshine, I've had to leave the door open and keep an eye on the cats, perhaps someone will create a BOINC job that will tell me why cats like chewing cables with 237V inside ;)

having started this thread with an i am stupid question I will likely break 9000 even missing credit for half the time o well and it is good to be back much has changed in the last year.

Looks like you snuck into the top 300, too.

I think this is the first time I've earned challenge points on my one-laptop setup, and that was with a 5-hour drive where my computer was off.

Probably a litte less points in total than last year. Not everybody that participated last year, participated this year.

However, those who participated in both years have often scored 5-10% more in points this year compared to last year. Maybe slight advancement in computer speed in that one year.

And a freakishly tight finish for gold and bronze medal, less than half a precentige point difference from Pos.1 to Pos.2 and from Pos.3 to Pos.4.

It's much worse with parrots --

Of the 1400+ validated TRP Sieve tasks I recently completed, there were only 5 errors. Is this a reasonable error rate?

Also, of these Sieve tasks there was a variance in CPU time of +11% from fastest to slowest. I examined file results and could not find any reason for this variance. Is this normal?

Finally, the Factor's found rate this year is far less than in 2013, when I last performed these tasks on a different machine. Is this diminishing return to be expected?

Thanks,
Charles
running mostly a Win7, i7-4470 CPU not overclocked for this challenge
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@Prawdzik:On all of your 5 errant tasks you ran "Out Of Memory". Add to that the 10% difference in task times (probably shared CPU time with other apps on the longer running tasks) then it can be concluded, you may have worked the computer a little bit too much the last two days. ;)

It's much worse with parrots --

So now my question is, you have a parrot on the loose in your house? That must make for a fun clean up :)

Yup! Our guard dog has wings. :)

Hope you're ok now Neo if it was yourself. Because real life.

I'm due to move over the coming days into somewhere which should allow the PC to be better positioned to exhaust its hot air directly outside and/or accept direct cool air.

I live in Naples, FL, home of the heat, day and night. Like AZ. I run 5gpu's(one is on the hospital waiting for a transplant, lol.) Yes, my room is hot too, a small bedroom and the temp is 78 with only 4 running right now. The AMD with the 580GTX runs very hot and half as fast as each 770GTX. The 770s run cooler and the 780ti's run even cooler. Must be the water cooling in the latter one.

After a swift cleanup the standings are final!

Top participants are zunwantan, Grandpa and Scott Brown.

Top teams are Czech National Team, Sicituradastra. and Aggie The Pew

And overall standings have been updated :)
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PrimeGrid Challenge Overall standings --- Last update: From Pi to Paddy (2016)

Are you talking about the PrimeGrid Birthday challenge results in the Perseid Shower Challenge thread or am I missing something here? Thought Perseid Shower Challenge team ranking was Sicituradastra., Czech National Team and Aggie The Pew. The individual rankings were zunwantan, Scott Brown and RaymondFO*. I have been wrong before.