A little Seti

[moo]

Im sure everyone knows of seti@home but seti@home Clasic closed 5 days ago and they posted gimps in a breif history of there project
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/classic.php
it is just a name but it says gimps was before them.

[Mystwalker]

That's right - GIMPS was the first distributed computing project, SETI@home was second and IIRC, distributed.net was third.

[georgekh]

DAMN STRAIGHT!!! i used SETI for a while before i converted after reading a news article on about what was at that time "the biggest Prime number ever!!!" which was on or around Dec 12 2003

[moo]

I first tried prime95 when my computer had some trouble i remember it from the screen savers to bad comcast screwed the screen savers up...

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Mystwalker

That's right - GIMPS was the first distributed computing project, SETI@home was second and IIRC, distributed.net was third.

GIMPS predated the RSA-129 project? Wow! I never realized that GIMPS was so old!

Paul

(P.S. Some of you may need to get your irony detectors serviced before the new year, when 2006 pricing takes effect.)

[Mystwalker]

Originally Posted by xilman

GIMPS predated the RSA-129 project? Wow! I never realized that GIMPS was so old!

I haven't heard of the RSA-129 project yet, so my statement was based on false information...
Thanks for that info, Paul!

Strange that usually, GIMPS is called the first DC project.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Mystwalker

I haven't heard of the RSA-129 project yet, so my statement was based on false information...
Thanks for that info, Paul!

Strange that usually, GIMPS is called the first DC project.

Well, I do have a particularly good reason for remembering it. Now well over 12 years since it started.

Like GIMPS in its early days, the main data transport mechanism was email.

Paul

[garo]

I think we should be talking of "public distributed computing projects" where anyone with a computer can participate. We may add an additional restriction that the exchange of work and results must take place over the Internet (We may relax this definition to include sneakernetting etc.). Does RSA-129 fit this definition?

[akruppa]

I'd also like "ongoing" in the definition. There must have been quite a few other project that were either completed, or faded away.

Alex

[ewmayer]

Doesn't the Cunningham project predate all of these?

[xilman]

Originally Posted by garo

I think we should be talking of "public distributed computing projects" where anyone with a computer can participate. We may add an additional restriction that the exchange of work and results must take place over the Internet (We may relax this definition to include sneakernetting etc.). Does RSA-129 fit this definition?

Yes.

We distributed source code written in fairly portable C. Anyone with a compiler could build the binaries. Allocation of tasks and return of work was done by email over the internet though, of course, some people had to use sneakernet to communicate with non-networked machines.

The project itself lasted only 8 or 9 months (but then all projects have finite lifetimes) but during that time something like 600 people and 1600 machines contributed. The contributors were located in 20-odd countries scattered around the world on every continent except Antarctica. Most machines were Unix workstations (Suns and DEC boxes mostly) but there were at least three MasPar supercomputers and a Cray joining in. One guy ran the siever on a couple of laser printers! You can probably guess which US corporation he worked for.

Paul