4 ms·

Different approach to engineyard contest

56 points by daleharvey 17y ago

raymorgan 17y ago
We also have some C and Java implementations helping out. C = 500,000 a sec per core and Java just under that. Also, we will be tweeting out what our analytics say about how many computations took place in the browser sometime soon after the competition is over.
daleharvey 17y ago
apparently not "that" different, just started seeing a few pop up, I guess I am going to have to be careful about what tabs I leave open over the next 30 hours.
Periodic 17y ago
I have to give this site some props for that sweet little graph they have of throughput. I want to use it to profile various browsers and operating systems, which has the nice side effect of helping them out.
- jodrellblank 17y ago
  Currently getting ~1840/second on Firefox 3.5 (Windows) and ~620/second on IE8.
  - jodrellblank 17y ago
    ~2750/second on Chrome, same machine, after a while with lots of tabs. (Starts at around 3400/sec with one tab).
    - calvin 17y ago
      Chrome is doing ~1634/sec for me on an old Pentium 4.
antirez 17y ago
This was one of my first ideas when I saw the contest, but I think it will not work unless you have a very large site you can open a more or less background popup, a lot of javascripts engines running at the same time are needed in order to compete even with just a single GPU of a good nvidia card...
- dmillar 17y ago
  Indeed, I'm using CUDA (PyCUDA) and getting about 200,000 iterations per second.
  - grandalf 17y ago
    what's your best one so far?
    - dmillar 17y ago
      Hamming distance? Lowest looks like 31, and I've seen a bunch around there, but to save on iterations it's only dumping out every 1 million comparison, or ones less than 20. What's notable is that my average is in the mid 30s. Seems like these JS based computers higher. Not sure why this is.
      - jcapote 17y ago
        Either my hamming distance algo sucks, or my entropy pool rules. Lowest has been 28
        grandalf 17y ago
        that's not bad... i did a very quick attempt in ruby and it's been chugging away for a few hours and the best is 46 :) rfc1036 tHreaded File poStgres donGarra MckusicK send blocks Postgres wozniak utc kahan
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
metachris 17y ago
good luck!
fsniper 17y ago
copying from my faulty comment on silentmac implementation: Sorry for dual post: This idea is a really well thought and implemented. This may be a new way of cloud sourcing. Have you considered making a facebook app? It would definitely attract many more people than this. Of course you should offer some carrots for users that do not have any idea what's going on.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
ErrantX 17y ago
Uh either it's a bug or they've easily won - the current best score no my screen says 0. http://screencast.com/t/Q4c50esrBpf http://screencast.com/t/Q4c50esrBpf EDIT: meh sorry, apparently chrome is a bust :) I see it's 43 in Firefox
jdrock 17y ago
Essentially the same idea: http://pluraprocessing.com/ http://pluraprocessing.com/. I reached out to Ray to see if they'd be interested in using us, but if anyone else would like to as well, just drop us a line.
kogir 17y ago
I'm sure it'd be a lot faster if they made a Java Applet or JavaFX version. Is there a reason they didn't? They could always fall back to Javascript if Java wasn't installed.
vulpes 17y ago
Best pure Mac solution seems to be http://www.stainlessapp.com/ http://www.stainlessapp.com/ in my own uneducated tests I can 100% load my MacBook Pro with 4 tabs each chugging at 2000/sec permutations
jerf 17y ago
Well, since I have no intention of participating, let me share my idea: I'd ignore the words entirely and just choose some random ones. Then, I'd work the SHA1 hash up to the very last letter, then save the internals of the SHA1 data. From there, work all of the possible last letters. When that fails, back up one step (which I saved earlier), advance with the next letter, then keep going again with just hashing the last letter/number. This ought to get you another order of magnitude over naive brute forcing. Probably as clever as it is possible to get. It's those last five characters that are the most interesting. If you have the time to get through all of a given set of words, then you can try a new word. Good luck.
mveytsman 17y ago
Lately, I've been thinking about the applications of a distributed system like this. What you really need is an incentive for users to stay on your site. Porn is a good way to get people to do silly things like letting their browser eat up all their CPU. There used to be a virus that would popup a picture of a girl who would take off her clothes as you solved captchas for spammers (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2210674,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2210674,00.asp) Maybe something like: "the lower the hamming distance, the lower my top!"

56 points by daleharvey 17y ago

We also have some C and Java implementations helping out. C = 500,000 a sec per core and Java just under that. Also, we will be tweeting out what our analytics say about how many computations took place in the browser sometime soon after the competition is over.

daleharvey 17y ago

apparently not "that" different, just started seeing a few pop up, I guess I am going to have to be careful about what tabs I leave open over the next 30 hours.

Periodic 17y ago

I have to give this site some props for that sweet little graph they have of throughput. I want to use it to profile various browsers and operating systems, which has the nice side effect of helping them out.

jodrellblank 17y ago
Currently getting ~1840/second on Firefox 3.5 (Windows) and ~620/second on IE8.
- jodrellblank 17y ago
  ~2750/second on Chrome, same machine, after a while with lots of tabs. (Starts at around 3400/sec with one tab).
  - calvin 17y ago
    Chrome is doing ~1634/sec for me on an old Pentium 4.

antirez 17y ago

This was one of my first ideas when I saw the contest, but I think it will not work unless you have a very large site you can open a more or less background popup, a lot of javascripts engines running at the same time are needed in order to compete even with just a single GPU of a good nvidia card...

dmillar 17y ago
Indeed, I'm using CUDA (PyCUDA) and getting about 200,000 iterations per second.
- grandalf 17y ago
  what's your best one so far?
  - dmillar 17y ago
    Hamming distance? Lowest looks like 31, and I've seen a bunch around there, but to save on iterations it's only dumping out every 1 million comparison, or ones less than 20. What's notable is that my average is in the mid 30s. Seems like these JS based computers higher. Not sure why this is.
    - jcapote 17y ago
      Either my hamming distance algo sucks, or my entropy pool rules. Lowest has been 28
      - grandalf 17y ago
        that's not bad... i did a very quick attempt in ruby and it's been chugging away for a few hours and the best is 46 :) rfc1036 tHreaded File poStgres donGarra MckusicK send blocks Postgres wozniak utc kahan
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]

metachris 17y ago

good luck!

fsniper 17y ago

copying from my faulty comment on silentmac implementation: Sorry for dual post: This idea is a really well thought and implemented. This may be a new way of cloud sourcing. Have you considered making a facebook app? It would definitely attract many more people than this. Of course you should offer some carrots for users that do not have any idea what's going on.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

ErrantX 17y ago

Uh either it's a bug or they've easily won - the current best score no my screen says 0. http://screencast.com/t/Q4c50esrBpf http://screencast.com/t/Q4c50esrBpf EDIT: meh sorry, apparently chrome is a bust :) I see it's 43 in Firefox

jdrock 17y ago

Essentially the same idea: http://pluraprocessing.com/ http://pluraprocessing.com/. I reached out to Ray to see if they'd be interested in using us, but if anyone else would like to as well, just drop us a line.

kogir 17y ago

I'm sure it'd be a lot faster if they made a Java Applet or JavaFX version. Is there a reason they didn't? They could always fall back to Javascript if Java wasn't installed.

vulpes 17y ago

Best pure Mac solution seems to be http://www.stainlessapp.com/ http://www.stainlessapp.com/ in my own uneducated tests I can 100% load my MacBook Pro with 4 tabs each chugging at 2000/sec permutations

jerf 17y ago

Well, since I have no intention of participating, let me share my idea: I'd ignore the words entirely and just choose some random ones. Then, I'd work the SHA1 hash up to the very last letter, then save the internals of the SHA1 data. From there, work all of the possible last letters. When that fails, back up one step (which I saved earlier), advance with the next letter, then keep going again with just hashing the last letter/number. This ought to get you another order of magnitude over naive brute forcing. Probably as clever as it is possible to get. It's those last five characters that are the most interesting. If you have the time to get through all of a given set of words, then you can try a new word. Good luck.

mveytsman 17y ago

Lately, I've been thinking about the applications of a distributed system like this. What you really need is an incentive for users to stay on your site. Porn is a good way to get people to do silly things like letting their browser eat up all their CPU. There used to be a virus that would popup a picture of a girl who would take off her clothes as you solved captchas for spammers (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2210674,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2210674,00.asp) Maybe something like: "the lower the hamming distance, the lower my top!"