Project Update

[Dataman]

Minecraft now has badges.

[chooka03]

Ooh that becomes tempting but I'm going to hold off and not join.
Crunching is a personal thing and space, science, health, maths etc is my thing. Sometimes I lash out to help the team but I don't think Minecraft needs my help.

Happy crunching guys! 

[Dataman]

I do not see the point of it either. I am just crunching it now to pad my credits this Summer. I am down to about 55% of my threads and 33% of my GPU's. Forecast for this weekend is HOT so will probably shut down the remaining GPU's. This is the time of the year I start losing the positions I gained last Winter. 

[Dingo]

[Minecraft@Home] Minecraft@Home is Back with New CPU Work – Get Involved Before It's Gone!
We're excited to announce that Minecraft@Home has returned with fresh CPU-based workunits! However, just like the Minecraft universe itself, our computing needs can shift rapidly. While the current tasks are available now, they won't last forever, so we encourage everyone to get involved while you can.

At Minecraft@Home, our projects vary over time, and sometimes we don't need as much (or any) computing power. This is one of those moments where we have specific tasks ready for processing, but once they're completed, the work will wrap up—until our next big discovery awaits! Your contributions will be crucial in helping us achieve our current goals, but remember, the window of opportunity might close sooner than expected.


Earn Your Badge of Honor!

As a token of appreciation for all the contributions, we're introducing badges for each app we launch! By simply participating and running tasks for any specific app, you will automatically earn a badge—symbolizing your hard work and contribution to that particular project. Whether you're a veteran or new to Minecraft@Home, these badges will serve as a lasting reminder of your involvement in our unique discoveries.

Note: Badges may not be implemented for each app immediately and do take at least 24 hrs to populate after you run an applicable task. Do not fret if you don't see it yet.


Current Apps Running on Minecraft@Home:

One of the exciting apps we're running is HDWGH SSG, short for "How Did We Get Here Set Seed Glitchless." This app is dedicated to filtering data to find the ideal seed for speedrunning Minecraft in the highly competitive category where players must obtain the rare advancement "How Did We Get Here." This advancement is considered one of the most complex to achieve in Minecraft, requiring a player to juggle multiple status effects simultaneously. With HDWGH SSG, we aim to uncover the perfect seed that will allow speedrunners to maximize their efficiency in completing this challenging category.

Another active project is Pano121, short for 1.21 Panorama. This app focuses on finding carver seeds, which represent a specific type of internal seed-state in Minecraft. These carver seeds are of particular interest because they match the iconic trial chamber scene shown in the background panorama of the 1.21 update. Minecraft players who love the art and atmosphere of the game's ever-changing panoramas will find this project especially intriguing, as we're searching for seeds that capture the exact features seen in one of Minecraft's latest visual showcases.

Join us now and help push the boundaries of Minecraft exploration! Don't miss your chance to contribute while the work is still available.

Keep mining for knowledge,
The Minecraft@Home Team

View article · Thu, 12 Sep 2024 23:21:02 +0000

[tazzduke]

Well, all gone now

[Dingo]

[Minecraft@Home] High error rate on 'Loneliest Seed' tasks for older GPUs
Hi everyone,

I wanted to put this out there as I'm seeing a high error rate on tasks running on older GPUs.

I've spent a chunk of time digging into these, and the most prevalent error is a launch timeout error from the cuda driver.
This is a possible indication of either hardware failure, or a buggy driver.

If you see a lot of "Error 702" failing tasks, please update your drivers to the latest possible for your OS and video card, as there's potentially an issue with your current driver preventing work from completing on your card.

Please let us know if you have any questions, or need any help determining the issue.

Thanks!

View article · Fri, 17 Jan 2025 05:02:26 +0000

[Dingo]

[Minecraft@Home] Loneliest Seed v1.08
Hi folks!

I know it's been a bit, life gets in the way sometimes. However, I've released v1.08 of the Loneliest Seed project which aims to address the checkpointing issue.

We're experimenting with a CPU project separate from this as well, so stay tuned for that! If the experiments go well on our end we're anticipating launching a CPU app that will aid us in our years-long research into finding methods of reversing PRNG states in the Xoroshiro128++ algorithm.

Best regards,
Minecraft@Home Team

View article · Wed, 26 Mar 2025 15:09:17 +0000

[Dingo]

[Minecraft@Home] Xoroshiro128++ Guessing Order Optimization Project
You may have noticed some new workunits hit the queue. As of the time of writing, the workunits that are available should be considered "beta" as we're working out a few kinks.
That said, this is a new CPU app! As time goes on, we'll be replacing configuration files for it to further refine the results, so work will be sent out in stages and we'll feel out how much workunits make sense for each stage.

I've included a fairly technical explanation from the primary author of the app, MC, longtime contributor to Minecraft@Home:

The Xoroshiro Guessing Order project aims to uncover exploitable statistical weaknesses in the xoroshiro128++ pseudorandom number generator (PRNG). Recent versions of Minecraft now use xoroshiro128++ for specific aspects of world generation, replacing Java's default PRNG. Unfortunately, this shift creates significant challenges for seedcracking projects, as no efficient algorithm currently exists to reconstruct the internal state of xoroshiro from its outputs.

Our primary goal is to develop a reliable method for recovering the PRNG's 128-bit seed from just two sequential 64-bit outputs. Currently, the most efficient known method (excluding SAT solvers) involves guessing 54 bits of the state, after which the remaining bits can be derived, a process requiring roughly 9 quadrillion attempts on average. Our aim is to significantly reduce this computational requirement.

Xoroshiro128++ belongs to the "xorshift" family of PRNGs, which means its core operations are linear. The internal state can therefore be represented as a binary vector within a 128-dimensional vector space, with state transitions represented as matrix multiplications. However, the primary challenge arises from its use of a non-linear "scrambler" function, which maps the internal state to its output. Due to this scrambler, there is no straightforward one-to-one relationship between the 128-dimensional internal state and the 128-bit output.

Fortunately, the scrambler function is imperfect. Most of the information provided by each output bit is concentrated in a relatively small subset, approximately a dozen dimensions, of the total 128-dimensional state. Even with a partial, lower-dimensional guess of the state, it is frequently possible to determine whether the guess is incorrect based on the known output. If we can identify low-dimensional subsets of the state space that are significantly constrained by the outputs, we can efficiently guess and verify these smaller portions first, rapidly eliminating incorrect possibilities.

Participants in our project analyze these lower-dimensional subsets of the state space, identifying those subsets most constrained by observed outputs. To facilitate this process, we use a large precomputed table that estimates the amount of information (in bits) xoroshiro's output data provides about each subset of state dimensions.

By ultimately identifying an optimal sequence of highly constrained subspaces, we can incrementally guess the state one dimension at a time, discarding incorrect possibilities early on. Achieving this optimal guessing order would produce a highly efficient algorithm capable of recovering the PRNG's internal state within a small number of attempts, significantly advancing future efforts in Minecraft seedcracking and related research.

View article · Sat, 29 Mar 2025 05:56:02 +0000

[Dingo]

[Minecraft@Home] Xoroshiro128++ - New version available, new input data
Hi everyone,

As I'm sure was noticed, there's a 2nd version of the "xoroshigo" project denoted by v1.1.
This new version has had changes made to its input variables that made it incompatible with the old version, so we could not run it as an updated version of the same app.

That being said, after extensive testing, we've deployed v1.02 of xoroshigo2(or v1.1.1.02, depending on who you ask) to production.
I believe there should also be a potential fix for the issue where work would not suspend when changes are made to computing preferences or work is just simply suspended.

The most notable change is that a member of our team, Andrew, developed a port of one of the most expensive functions (95+% of execution time spent in this function) used in the app to run it as native code for a 20x speedup.
We've cranked the dials, so tasks should be roughly the same size as before, but you may experience runtime variances compared to before. Overall this just means you're completing 20x what you used to in the same amount of time (cheaper on compute resources) - so the credit values are remaining the same.

There is also now an aarch64 build of this app available. We've made best efforts to test this with our limited aarch64 machines, so if any issues are encountered, please let us know.

Finally, I wanted to mention that as of now, we're enforcing a GLIBC 2.17 or above requirement for our apps going forward. I've built a lot of CI test harnesses over the last day or two that allow me to detect issues before they ever hit BOINC, and while I had been doing this already, there is now a check on our internal repo preventing any merges with binaries with a GLIBC over 2.17. This does also mean you'll need GLIBC 2.17 or higher to run the apps we build going forward.

Anyway, happy crunching! As always, please let us know if you run into any issues.

View article · Fri, 4 Apr 2025 07:46:02 +0000

[Dingo]

[Minecraft@Home] Xoroshigo2 v1.04 - New plan classes
Hello everyone,

We've generated some new work, and while I was at it, I implemented the plan class changes I alluded to in discussion with a few users who were trying to use Windows 7 to run xoroshigo.

Python does not support Windows 7 anymore, hasn't since Python 3.8 back in 2018. 3.9 made breaking changes for Windows 7 and will not run on Windows 7.

To remedy the issue, we've implemented "win-modern" and "lin-modern" as plan classes we can use if our apps won't run on older OSes.

Put simply, on linux if your GLIBC is older than 2.27, you won't get work for xoroshigo2 (or any other app that requires lin-modern - which is likely to be all of our work in the future.)
On Windows, your windows version must be 8.1 or higher.

Let us know if you run into any issues running our apps. Happy crunching!

View article · Sun, 13 Apr 2025 01:15:04 +0000

[Dingo]

[Minecraft@Home] Xoroshigo2 v1.05 - Runtime fix
Hi everyone,

I appreciate your patience while we worked through this.

v1.05 addresses the extreme runtime issues we've been facing lately.

I would recommend cancelling any v1.04 tasks that are running too long.

I'm looking into ways we can credit those who attempted to run broken v1.04 tasks, but as far as I can tell, boinc does not support that scenario. So I don't have an answer quite yet.

I'm deploying some more tasks worth 10,000 credits each as a consolation for this.

Please let me know if you run into any issues.

View article · Fri, 18 Apr 2025 21:45:46 +0000

[Dingo]

[Minecraft@Home] New Badges
Hi everyone,

I've added the following new badges while I was doing some database work today.

1. 1.21 Panorama badge. It's a copper bulb block from Minecraft, which is a block found in Trial Chambers. The pano121 app attempted to find a seed which produces a particular trial chamber matching the one found in the title screen panorama for 1.21.
2. Xoroshigo v1.0. This art was created largely by the lead developer of the xoroshigo project, but I added the "alpha" symbol at the bottom right to represent that it was the first run of the app before optimizations were made.
3. Xoroshigo v1.1. Same art as v1.0, but without the alpha symbol.
4. Xoroshigo Infinity. Same art as v1.0 and v1.1, but with an infinity symbol. I attempted to identify everyone who submitted a task after deadline during the time we had a broken version of the app running that caused runtimes measuring in multiple days for some configurations. If you believe I missed you in error, please let me know. We're in the middle of optimizing the amount of data we're storing in our database, so I may need to review previous versions of the data to ensure I don't miss anybody.

I also managed to re-run the badge assignment for the tall cactus project from years ago. Around 2300 or so participants gained the badge, congratulations!
The discrepancy was likely caused by the method that the previous administrator before me used to apply the badge. Since it did not use a sql clause, it likely used a "snapshot" of data without keeping it updated.

All that said, I will probably also add a loneliest seed badge tonight before I wrap up, but I'll update here if I do.

Thanks for your patience as we've been working diligently to get things running smoothly here.

View article· Mon, 21 Apr 2025 06:22:16 +0000

[Dingo]

[Minecraft@Home] Xoroshigo2 v1.06 - MacOS
Hi everyone,

We've added some new binaries for this project to allow macs to run.
Both x86 and ARM64 based macs should run just fine.

The linux and windows binaries remain at v1.05, there'd be nothing new for them if we did bump them to 1.06.
Macos is on 1.06 because I uncovered a bug in my deployment of the macos binaries and had to use a version bump to replace the old version.

Anyway, something interesting I've discovered is that M1 (and really, all apple silicon so far) LOVES these tasks.

On a sample mini task, I got 120 seconds on my 12700k, and 61 seconds on my M1 macbook air.
On the same sample mini task, one of our project developers tried it on their M4 Pro and got 43 seconds.
Of course, that's not perfectly reflective of runtimes, but I expect to see apple silicon based machines top the charts for this app based on these preliminary results.

Happy crunching, everyone!

View article · Wed, 23 Apr 2025 23:49:47 +0000