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发表于 2006-7-11 16:36:45
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1998年12月20日
Don't worry, I'm still alive ;-). Here's what's been going on in the last two months:
I had hoped to finish calculating the forty trillionth bit by the end of November. Obviously we didn't quite make it, due to several events piling up on top of each other, including three people going on vacation. It looks now like we will finish the forty trillionth bit sometime in the middle of January. After that, of course, all the computers will be working on the quadrillionth bit, so that should go a bit faster.
After a couple months of hacking together communications code for version 6.0 of PiHex, I've decided that actually getting it released is more important than all the features that I wanted to put into it (having one copy of PiHex 'proxy' communications for another, for example). So (assuming that I get my christmas shopping done before I go back to university in the new year) it should come out relatively soon.
别担心，我还活着;-)。这里是最近两个月的进展：
我曾经希望在11月底结束第40兆比特位的计算。显然我们
Many people have told me that they are running PiHex 'until the SETI project is ready'. Such people will not have to quit PiHex in April because the SETI project will be a screensaver and will therefore not use all the idle cycles during normal use. As long as PiHex's priority level (implemented in version 5.10) is set to something less than four, PiHex will not interfere with the SETI project screensaver, and will still get a large amount of work done.
People have been asking me where we will be going after the quadrillionth bit. Once we finish computing the quadrillionth bit, we will have accomplished everything that we set out to do, and so PiHex will stop there (at least until someone challenges our record!)
However, in my effort to prove to the world that idle-time computing (aka. distributed computing, but I prefer the name idle-time computing because distributed computing is also used to refer to java scripts and the like) is useful, I am planning on challenging Kanada's record for a 'classical' computation of Pi (ie, all the digits up to a point, rather than 'jumping in' as PiHex does). This will require two things, namely a lot of disk space, and fast communication. I think that this is practical, however, since many people now buy 6GB hard drives with the expectation that it will be enough for the next three years, and because cable modems, ADSL, and other high-bandwidth options are becoming increasingly common. The code would, of course, be written to only use network bandwidth in 'quiet' periods, and to make sure it left significant amounts of free disk space (so it shouldn't get in anyone's way).
To determine how much support there would be for something like this, I am conducting an informal survey. Please send me an e-mail and tell me what sort of internet connection you have (and if you expect that to change in the next year), how much disk space you could spare (knowing that you could get it back when you needed to), and any other comments you have.
1998年10月29日
PiHex version 5.10 is now available for download. As mentioned below, I think that it fixes the 'overheating' bug, at least in some cases. To upgrade to version 5.10, just download it, and unzip it over the old files.
Because of the added features in version 5.10, most people will probably want to download it.
1998年10月28日
I have (I think) tracked down the problem with version 5.00. It does indeed cause some systems to overheat which don't overheat when running version 4.11, but there is also a bug which can cause PiHex to report that it is overheating when in fact it isn't.
I will be releasing version 5.10 soon, which fixes this bug, and also adds some long-awaited features, including the option of either setting the calculation thread priority, or having PiHex vary it to match any screen saver or other project client which is using a lot of cpu time.
I would also like to make use of this opportunity to congratulate the editors of Science News on publishing the first error-free article on our computation of the five trillionth bit of Pi.
1998年9月29日
Several people have had trouble with version 5.00 of PiHex on Pentium II systems. It appears that version 5.00 can cause the cpu to overheat, but it might just be a bug in version 5.00. As a result, I have put version 4.11 back up. If you experience problems with version 5.00, you should use version 4.11, but otherwise you should use version 5.00, since it is faster.
1998年9月18日
Help, I'm buried by e-mails! Well, not quite, but almost. The New York Times published an article about our calculation of the five trillionth bit on Thursday the 17th, which lead to over 50 new participants, and over 100 e-mail messages. As a result, I might take a bit longer than usual to respond to all of them.
I'm pretty much satisfied that PiHex 5.00 is (relatively) bugfree. As a result, it is now available for download. I have also uploaded the PiHex 5.00 source code.
People running PiHex on Pentiums don't need to download version 5.00, since it only faster non-Pentium cpus. Everyone else, however, should download it, since it is 40-60% faster than the Pentium version.
[ Last edited by youyancao on 2006-7-11 at 16:41 ] |
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