News feed

Select project:


2018-12-20: News

Dear VGTU project@Home users,

We have decided to stop the computations with the current application for grillage optimization. Some results have been obtained. We have prepared and submitted according publication, which is currently under review. However, new ideas are needed to move forward.

Now, we stop the generation of new tasks and wait for all results to return back to the project server.

Next, we will update the server software to support GDPR - the European General Data Protection Regulation.

We thank you for active participation and wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

With best regards,
The Project Team

2018-03-16: News

Dear VGTU project@Home users,

We are constantly working on the current research problem.

Although, you don?t see changes in the client applications (versions are the same), generation of work and assimilation/processing of the results are changed from time to time.

After one of such changes, the bug was introduced into generation of tasks (workunits). We believe that we have fixed this bug in work generator on Monday, March 12. It seems that there are no problems with the tasks/workunits generated since then. However, some older erroneous work units may still be there? We don?t know exactly which to cancel them. Don?t worry, no time is lost: application simply fails to start and generates ERR_TOO_MANY_EXITS error after some number of trials.

The good news is that we have started to write a draft of the paper on the current research using our BOINC project.


With best regards,
The Project Team.

2017-07-19: New application

Dear VGTU project@Home users,

We have decided to stop the computations with the current application for dynamic visual cryptography based on non-linear oscillations. Some results have been obtained and published. However, new ideas are needed to move forward.

In the meantime, we have developed a new application in collaboration with our colleagues from the VGTU Department of Information Technologies. New application is solving the grillage optimization problem with parallel global optimization algorithms. More detailed description is here.

We thank you for your active participation and hope that you will find the new application also worthy of your computer?s time.

We have tried our best to test it. However, some undiscovered issues may appear. So, we will start with small portions of work.

With best regards,
The Project Team.

2017-03-15: Application description update

Dear VGTU project@Home users,

We have updated information on our current application for studying the dynamic visual cryptography based on non-linear oscillations. Extended description and scientific publications on the topic are presented here.

With best regards,
The Project Team.

2016-10-13: SSL enabled for VGTU@Home project server

Dear VGTU@Home users,

We have obtained from our university SSL certificate for our project server. Trying to minimize configuration efforts, all non-SSL traffic to http://boinc.vgtu.lt is now redirected to https://boinc.vgtu.lt.

Now, the communication during login is protected from the man-in-the-middle attacks.

We have also changed project?s scheduler URL.

However, at the moment, we do not plan to change project?s master URL.

Please, inform us in case of problems. Some problem could be expected with older internet browsers and BOINC clients.

With best regards,
The Project Team.

2016-04-27: Paper accepted for publication

Dear VGTU@Home users,

We are glad to share with you the news that our paper "Application of distributed parallel computing for dynamic visual cryptography" has been accepted for publication in Journal of Supercomputing. We will post the link to the article as soon as it will be available on the journal site.

With best regards,
The Project Team.

2016-03-07: New problem #3 to solve

Dear VGTU@Home users,

We start solving the new problem. We have again increased the problem size. The speed of computations is increasing. Solving previous problem it was reaching 4.5 TeraFLOPS. The optimal solution was found in workunit solved by user RDC from the BOINC Synergy team.

As always, we thank our users for active participation, especially our top users. We are glad to inform that our university has agreed to test the usage of computers from the two classrooms in our project. You can see their contribution under the user ITSC from the VGTU team.

2016-03-02: Finishing solution of the problem #2

Dear VGTU@Home users,

All workunits of the current problem have been generated and sent. Now we wait for all results to return back to the project server. We remind that our problem is a global optimization problem; therefore even last workunits potentially can produce the optimal solution. So we ask not to cancel them?

2015-12-25: New problem (#2) to solve

Dear VGTU@Home users,

We start solving the new problem. The problem size has been increased. First problem of our new dynamic visual cryptography application was essentially solved in one week. We have reached the speed of 625 GigaFLOPS. Using 4 nodes of our computer cluster http://vilkas.vgtu.lt/ganglia, the same problem would be solved in around 180 days.

At this point, we would like to thank our users for not abandoning the project and active participation, especially our top users, who currently make a major contribution to the project! Our current top contributor is Ralfy from the BOINC Synergy team, which also our current top team.

Our problem is a global optimization problem from the mathematical point of view. So, we will always have a user, who will be lucky to find the optimal solution. This time the lucky workunit was solved by Bazooka_CZ from the Czech National Team. Congratulations! :-)

We use this opportunity to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

2015-12-12: New application

Dear VGTU@Home users,

We would like to announce a new beginning of our project. We have finally managed to find and develop a true scientific application for our project. With your help, we hope to obtain interesting results!

2013-06-14: Test problem (#6) solved!

The key has been found by one of our new users ? [AF] zerizno from L'Alliance Francophone Team. Congratulations! Our thanks to all participants!

We proceed as usual. Job generation has been stopped. We wait for all results to return before the purging of database. Next, we will update the server code and start the new test with the new application versions.

With best regards,
The Project Team.

2013-04-26: New problem (#6) to solve

We start solution of a new problem. The delay bound of the single job (deadline) has been extended to 7 days.

2013-04-05: Test problem (#5) solved!

The key has been found by one of our new users ? Ezra Rowitsch. Congratulations! Our thanks to all participants!

2013-02-26: New problem (#5) to solve!

Finally, we start the solution of a new problem. As more academic than scientific project at the moment, we wanted for some time to get our students involved into it. Eventually, two of our students from Technomathematics programme (lt) ? Stasys Biek?a and Aivaras Sukackas have got interested in creating a graphical visualization for our current ?DES key searching? application. And today we release the new application version with graphics developed by Aivaras (aivaras.sukackas@vgtu.lt).

So far, graphical application is available only for Windows. You can try it out from BOINC Manager: go to ?Tasks?, select running task from ?VGTU project@Home? and choose ?Show graphics? or enable it as BOINC screensaver.

We have included some information on our university, city and the country. We hope you will find it interesting!

2012-07-23: Test problem (#4) solved!

The key has been found by [AF>WildWildWest] lamoule from L'Alliance Francophone team. Congratulations! Our thanks to all participants.

Job generation has been stopped. We wait for all results to return before the purging of database and start of the new test.

With best regards,
The Project Team.

2012-06-08: New problem (#4) to solve

Checkpointing of the application has been essentially rewritten to solve the problems with the reported errors on reads and writes, especially, with the boinc client versions 7.0.x. New application versions seem to work with the latest recommended version of boinc client ? 7.0.25.

New 32-bit linux application version (i686-pc-linux-gnu) has been added. It requires kernel 2.6.24 or higher.

With best regards,
The Project Team.

2012-05-23: Test problem (#3) solved!

The key has been found by our current top user ? laurenu2 from Free-DC team. Congratulations! Our thanks to all participants!

2012-04-03: New problem (#3) to solve

Solution of the new more complicated problem has been started with the new application version, which should have smaller error rate. The size of the single job remains the same.

2012-03-19: Test problem (#2) solved!

The key has been found by B Johansson from AMD Users team. Congratulations! Our thanks to all participants, especially, to our top users, which currently make a major contribution to the project!

2012-03-01: New problem (#2) to solve

Solution of the more complicated problem has been started with the new application version. This version has a checkpointing, so we have increased the size of the single task.

2012-02-24: Test problem solved!

The key has been found by our current top user (surprisingly :-)) ? laurenu2 from Free-DC team. Congratulations! Our thanks to all participants!

Job generation has been stopped. We wait for all results to return before the purging of database and start of the new test. In the meantime new application versions are developed.

With best regards,
The Project Team.

2012-02-24: Test problem (#1) solved!

The key has been found by our current top user (surprisingly :-)) ? laurenu2 from Free-DC team. Congratulations! Our thanks to all participants!

2012-02-22: New problem to solve

Solution of the more complicated problem has been started with the corrected versions of the applications and validator. According to the first reports, linux application version seems to be also working now.

2012-02-15: Start of the project

Dear All,

We would like to announce some kind of reincarnation of VTU@Home project. Some of you may remember that project, which was created in 2006 by Aurimas Norkevi?ius (VGTU postgraduate student at that time). Over that time, several different applications in various fields were developed in VGTU Department of Mathematical Modelling. They have gained significant attention from BOINC volunteers. Project had almost 3.500 users, which was actually on the top of capabilities of available server. However, in late 2009 due to hard drive failure, all project data were unrecoverably lost? and we had no technical and human resources to continue.

However, after two years, we have decided to recreate our BOINC project. We believe that in volunteer computing there is a place for true Olympic principles and spirit, and so we hope to find a place for our small academic project among the others. We start with cryptographic applications and hope to find scientists from our university and other Lithuanian academic institutions interested in solving their problems using this computational platform. In any case we believe that our project can contribute to popularization of ideas of volunteer computing in VGTU community.

At this point, we would like to thank the users of VTU@Home for their contribution and apologize for the possibly lost work due to hardware crash. Old project?s database is lost. Therefore we do not announce the return of VTU@Home, but the start of ?VGTU project@Home?. Furthermore, this project name indicates correctly the name of hosting institution, which was changed some time ago.

With best regards,
The Project Team.