News from BOINC Projects

Recent items from the news feeds of various BOINC projects.

[NFS@home] New Mac sievers

We’ve also rolled out new Mac versions of the 14e, 15e and 16e lattice sievers, built from the current lasieve5 code as a single universal binary. They run natively on Apple Silicon, where they’re about 1.5–1.7 times faster than under Rosetta. To get the native speed, make sure you’re running a current BOINC client. An older Intel-only client will still run the Intel version under Rosetta. The new apps need macOS 10.13 or later on Intel Macs, and macOS 11 or later on Apple Silicon.

View article · Thu, 5 Nov 2026 19:03:28 +0000

[NFS@home] New Windows sievers (and a quick fix for Windows 7 / 8.1)

We’ve rolled out new 64-bit Windows versions of the 14e, 15e and 16e lattice sievers. They’re built from the current lasieve5 code, so Windows machines run better on newer, larger jobs that the old Windows apps couldn’t handle. They’re also quicker. If your CPU supports AVX-512, the app uses it automatically, and on our test machine that was about 1.4–1.6 times faster.

The few of you who still use Windows 7 or 8.1 may need one small update from Microsoft. The new apps need Microsoft’s “Universal C Runtime”. Most machines already have it, but some don’t. If yours doesn’t, NFS@Home tasks will fail right away with an error like:

exit code -1073741515 (0xc0000135)

Check first: if the file C:\Windows\System32\ucrtbase.dll exists, you already have it. If it’s missing, install the update one of these ways:

Windows Update (easiest). Open Windows Update and install the recommended updates. The one you’re after is called “Update for Universal C Runtime in Windows”.

Direct download:
Windows 7 SP1, 64-bit:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=51161
Download Windows6.1-KB3118401-x64.msu and run it. Windows 7 needs Service Pack 1 installed first.

Windows 8.1, 64-bit: search the Microsoft Update Catalog:
https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=KB3118401
Download “Update for Windows 8.1 for x64-based Systems (KB3118401)”. It needs the April 2014 update (KB2919355), which almost all 8.1 machines already have.

Windows 8 (not 8.1): Microsoft no longer offers this update for Windows 8. Please upgrade to 8.1 (it’s free).

Restart if Windows asks you to. New tasks should then run normally. Any tasks that already failed will be sent to other computers, so no work is lost.

Thanks for participating, and let us know on the forums if you run into anything!

View article · Thu, 5 Nov 2026 07:53:01 +0000

[PrimeGrid] Lehmer's Birthday Challenge

From November 6 18:00 to November 13 18:00 PrimeGrid will be running a 7 day challenge on the Generalized Cullen/Woodall project. For more information, please see this forum thread.

View article · Sun, 1 Nov 2026 06:26:46 +0000

[SRBase] base S579 Megaprime and proven!

Sightus@CAU, a member of the team Planet 3DNow! found a megaprime for base S579.
The prime 6*579^725792+1 has 2.005.131 digits and entered the T5k PrimePages.
The base S579 has been proven!

This is the first find of the year

View article · Fri, 30 Oct 2026 07:55:53 +0000

[SRBase] cable provider down

As some of you may have already noticed, the site was unavailable for more than a day.

This outage was widespread and marks the second such occurrence this year.

We have extended the grace period to 72 hours to compensate for this downtime.

Please do not cancel any tasks for which the deadline has already passed; these should still be validated. If you encounter any issues, please let us know.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

View article · Thu, 29 Oct 2026 12:57:13 +0000

[YAFU] Aliquot sequence 3828928 has terminated!!!

View article · Wed, 28 Oct 2026 19:40:46 +0000

[YAFU] Aliquot sequence 3719628 has terminated!!!

View article · Mon, 26 Oct 2026 18:01:07 +0000

[LHC@home] Unexpected Downtime

We apologize for the unexpected downtime over the past day.
The outage was caused by the global PHP issue which also affected us. Our team has applied the necessary patches to the servers, and all project services are now back up and running.
Thank you for your patience and ongoing support! Please let us know in this thread if you notice any remaining issues or error messages.

View article · Thu, 22 Oct 2026 13:28:45 +0000

[SRBase] base S60 Megaprime

Sightus@CAU, a member of the team Planet 3DNow! found a megaprime for base S60.
The prime 853*60^613855+1 has 1.091.530 digits and entered the T5k PrimePages.

View article · Wed, 21 Oct 2026 06:49:33 +0000

[NumberFields@home] New Faster Apps Coming Soon

New optimized versions of the GetDecics app have been discussed in other threads, but I thought it best to start a new thread.

First, a thank you to Alperen for optimizing the current apps. Yes, he used Claude, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I don't have the experience required or the time to learn the AVX tricks that were used here. So without Alperen and Claude, this probably never would have happened.

I have spent many hours going through the new code. The original code was basically left untouched, and the change was in the addition of a new subroutine that pre-filters the polynomials prior to the normal processing chain. This leaves just the one subroutine that needs validation. From a theoretical perspective, the method is sound. The method can be decomposed into 2 parts:

    1. The first part was a simple trick (I wish I had seen this myself!) that allows us to deal with the polynomial discriminant modulo a small set of primes. This eliminates the need for the multi-precision integers that were growing to ~1000 bits, and gives the first speed improvement. This was simple enough I could independently code it up myself using Pari's built-in functions. In some offline tests I was seeing a speed improvement of between 2 and 3, just for this simple change.

    2. The second improvement was in the coding of the resultant modulo q. This was essentially done in parallel using AVX2, which allows resultants to be computed for several primes simultaneously. This is the part that is very tricky and hard for me to follow. I welcome any expert in this kind of optimization to look at the code. Alperen has made it public here:
    https://github.com/alplix/passiflora



So the method in general is sound, but the second part was hard for me to validate. For this reason, I will use sufficient testing to validate the new apps. The idea is to test each new app version on ~1000 old cases which can be taken as truth. This will be done using the "testDecics" app that was recently created. When an app is deemed good, it will be transitioned into an official app.

I will be creating a new app called fastGetDecics where the new validated apps will go. This will still allow me to keep the results separate. It will also allow me to create new WUs for the fast apps that will not put a burden on the server, while retaining older style WUs for the legacy apps. This will give me time to test and migrate the fast apps in pieces rather than all at once. App versions for the original GetDecics will be deprecated once the corresponding fast version has been deemed trustworthy.

View article · Fri, 16 Oct 2026 18:24:26 +0000

[SRBase] base R235 Megaprime

vaughan, a member of the team BOINC@AUSTRALIA found a megaprime for base R235.
The prime 3788*235^455521-1 has 1.080.075 digits and entered the T5k PrimePages.

View article · Sun, 11 Oct 2026 14:16:30 +0000

[SRBase] base S52 Megaprime

Science United found a megaprime for base S52.
The prime 25492*52^638823+1 has 1.096.227 digits and entered the T5k PrimePages.

View article · Sat, 10 Oct 2026 14:09:23 +0000

[Asteroids@home] New models published

It's my pleasure to announce a new paper based on A@H computations with about 30,000 asteroid models reconstructed from survey photometry. This triples the number of asteroids with a shape model. The paper is available at the Astronomy and Astrophysics journal page: https://www.aanda.org/component/article?access=doi&doi=10.1051/0004-6361/202662316 or at Arxiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.06082. The models are available at Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22812438 and will also be placed in DAMIT: https://damit.cuni.cz. We thank all the volunteers for their contribution! Meanwhile, the amount of available data has increased, so you are now computing updated datasets, including the first photometry from the Vera Rubin Observatory. We are also currently using the project to process synthetic data to be ready to debias results based on the Gaia Data Release 4, which will be available in December 2026.

View article · Thu, 8 Oct 2026 12:18:33 +0000

[RakeSearch] Processing of the square # 71 completed

Dear participants, processing of the square # 71 is fully completed! The square:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B
1 2 0 4 5 3 8 6 7 B 9 A
3 4 5 0 1 2 9 A B 6 7 8
6 8 7 9 B A 1 0 2 4 3 5
8 7 6 B A 9 2 1 0 5 4 3
9 B A 6 8 7 4 3 5 1 0 2
A 9 B 7 6 8 3 5 4 0 2 1
B A 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
7 6 8 A 9 B 0 2 1 3 5 4
4 5 3 1 2 0 B 9 A 8 6 7
2 0 1 5 3 4 7 8 6 A B 9
5 3 4 2 0 1 A B 9 7 8 6

has 25110 diagonal transversals and 443460340 orthogonal mates which puts it on the 60th place of the rating which included at now 6246 items. Description and results of other studies can be found on Publications page also.

Thank you for project attention, support and donation of CPU time!

View article · Tue, 6 Oct 2026 07:03:58 +0000

[SRBase] base S298 Megaprime

Sightus@CAU, a member of the team Planet 3DNow! found a megaprime for base S298.
The prime 168*298^566667+1 has 1.402.059 digits and entered the T5k PrimePages.

View article · Mon, 5 Oct 2026 08:50:06 +0000

[PrimeGrid] Suzuki's Birthday Challenge

From October 2 17:00 to October 7 17:00 PrimeGrid will be running a 5 day challenge on the GFN-19 project. For more information, please see this forum thread.

View article · Wed, 30 Sep 2026 03:37:56 +0000

[YAFU] Aliquot sequence 3772368 has terminated!!!

View article · Sat, 26 Sep 2026 20:42:44 +0000

[SRBase] BOINC Games challenge 09/25/2026 04:00 (UTC)-09/28/2026 04:00 (UTC)

The project was selected. Good luck everyone!

View article · Fri, 25 Sep 2026 07:12:32 +0000

[RakeSearch] Processing of the square # 70 completed

Dear participants, processing of the square # 70 is fully completed! The square:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B
1 2 3 4 9 8 B 5 A 0 6 7
3 4 9 0 1 6 5 A B 2 7 8
7 5 8 A 6 3 0 2 4 B 9 1
5 8 A 6 B 4 1 3 9 7 0 2
9 0 1 2 3 7 A B 5 4 8 6
6 B 7 5 8 1 4 0 2 A 3 9
2 3 4 9 0 A 7 8 6 1 B 5
A 6 B 7 5 0 3 9 1 8 2 4
B 7 5 8 A 2 9 1 3 6 4 0
4 9 0 1 2 B 8 6 7 3 5 A
8 A 6 B 7 9 2 4 0 5 1 3

has 25140 diagonal transversals and 435445464 orthogonal mates which puts it on the 61th place of the rating which included at now 6221 items. Description and results of other studies can be found on Publications page also.
Now "high part" of spectra of ODLS-12 looks like this (squares # 66 .. 70 marked by magenta):


Thank you for project attention, support and donation of CPU time!

View article · Thu, 24 Sep 2026 07:20:00 +0000

[YAFU] Aliquot sequence 3833886 has terminated!!!

View article · Wed, 23 Sep 2026 18:19:50 +0000

[YAFU] Aliquot sequence 3662904 has terminated!!!

View article · Sun, 20 Sep 2026 14:32:20 +0000

[NFS@home] Testing GPU Sieving on Apple silicon Macs

A test version of the GPU sieving application is now available for Apple silicon Macs (M1 and newer). The cuda-sieve code has been ported to Apple’s Metal GPU API, allowing the integrated GPUs in Apple M-series processors to participate in the sieving work.

This is a new port and has had relatively limited testing, so additional testing across the different generations of Apple silicon would be very helpful. If you have an M1, M2, M3, M4, or newer Mac, please give it a try and let us know how it performs.

View article · Thu, 17 Sep 2026 07:02:21 +0000

[NFS@home] GPU sieving

Work has progressed nicely on the GPU sieving apps based on cuda-sieve. Linux and Windows apps are now available for NVIDIA GPUs, with support extended to Maxwell (such as the GTX 970) and newer GPUs with at least 4 GB of GPU memory.

For AMD, the code has been ported using HIP, and a Windows app is now available supporting all RDNA-based GPUs (Radeon RX 5000 series and newer) with at least 4 GB of GPU memory.

If you have a supported GPU, give it a try!

View article · Sat, 12 Sep 2026 20:02:19 +0000

[YAFU] Aliquot sequence 3841086 has terminated!!!

View article · Sat, 12 Sep 2026 19:33:11 +0000

[LODA] Shutdown of LODA BOINC

Dear LODA BOINC community,

After careful consideration, I have decided to shut down the LODA BOINC project.

When LODA BOINC started, distributed computing was an effective way to search for new LODA programs and mathematical solutions. Recent advances in AI have changed this significantly, and AI-based approaches are now becoming much more effective for this kind of program and formula discovery.

Therefore, I believe it is time to bring the LODA BOINC project to an end. I would like to sincerely thank everyone who contributed computing power and supported LODA BOINC over the years. Your contributions have been greatly appreciated. The LODA programs and results will remain available on GitHub, so the work produced by the project will continue to be accessible.

Thank you for being part of the LODA BOINC community!

View article · Thu, 10 Sep 2026 10:00:44 +0000


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