Generate extra RAC output with NFS@Home

NFS@Home is a research project that uses Internet-connected computers to do the lattice sieving step in the Number Field Sieve factorization of large integers. NFS@Home is hosted at California State University Fullerton, and is supported in part by the National Science Foundation. It is using BOINC to transfer work-units to computers and has 1288 active members.

NFS@home is also one of the 26 whitelisted Gridcoin projects. Gridcoin rewards BOINC users in paying them for their computing efforts, which can help to offset a part of the costs like electricity bills. Team Gridcoin has 206 active members on this project and generates 68% of the total RAC output.

Today I read an interesting article on the forum about credits provided for workunits. There are 3 types of tasks: 14e-, 15e- and 16e-tasks. Each type requires a different application with varying run-time, memory usage and credits:

• 14e run-times can vary from around 6000 to 10000 secs, uses less than 0.5GB memory but give only 36 credits (regardless of runtime).
• 15e run-times can vary from around 4000 to 6000 secs, uses up to 1GB of memory and give 44 credits.
• 16e run-times can vary from around 5000 to 7000 secs, uses up to 1GB of memory and give 130 credits.

(the run-times are based on a AMD FX 8350 and AMD FX 8320)

So if you are running NFS@Home and want to maximise your RAC output, you need to select the 16e-tasks. Keep in mind that you require sufficient system memory to support this.

You can set these tasks in the preference menu by selecting only the application lasieve5f while deselecting all other applications (see picture below).

Finally, here is the link to the article on the forum.

Enjoy the output increase and keep on crunching!

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