FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 15th 2001
RC5-64 halfway done - the Distributed Amiga team joins the fight against cancer
The ongoing distributed computing effort to find the hidden RC5-64 encryption key has now searched 50% of the keyspace. We did not get lucky after 1331 days, but are currently advancing 2,5 times faster than the average for the first half, and chances of finding the key before the whole keyspace is searched are progressively getting better and better. At the current speed we should have searched the entire keyspace in less than 506 more days in any case, but could find the right key tomorrow just as well.
The Amiga RC5 Team is still ranked 7th overall out of thousands of teams, has over 2500 volunteer members with over 5000 machines involved. Active client development is also continueing.
Additionally, we have joined the fight against cancer in the United Devices THINK Cancer Research project under the Distributed Amiga team name. This is a brute force effort designed to search a large database of molecules for fits against single proteins that are known to be involved in the development of cancer, in a similar approach to searching for an encryption key.
The effort is to take about one year, after which results are analyzed and narrowed down further, eventually these will be tested by pharmaceutical companies in cancer drugs, maybe even leading to a cure within a couple of years. The effort is sponsored by Intel, non profit and the research will become property of the University of Oxford. Unfortunately there are only Windows clients as yet, however this will change in the future.
If you have any Windows machines not working on any other effort, please join our team and help cure cancer, see the effort homepage below.
Everyone is cordially invited to join, with any kind of machine, though one Amiga at least is appreciated (for RC5/OGR). For a full explanation of what the efforts are about, where we are heading, how to participate and everything from statistics to member listings, please visit the team effort homepage at http://distributed.amiga.org.
We are also providing a mailinglist as a forum for the discussion on above topics and the effort in general.
Sincerely,
Distributed Amiga/Amiga RC5 Team effort coordinator
Thomas Tavoly - rc5(at)amiga.REMOVETHIS.xs4all.nl
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