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Russian E2K cracking RC5
Tuna Phish writes "Apparently the new Russian E2K computer is being used to crack distributed.net's RC5 contest! The user has come out on top the past few days with 2.7GK/s, more than 6 times the keyrate of second place. His message states "Russian Elbrus E2K is REAL POWER!" " Great-now we just need to get them to join Team Slashdot, and he can get all the pr0n he needs. *grin* So, I've been doing some looking around, and am doubting the veracity of this: bogus client? First prototype? Anyone have more info? Post it in the comments.
First, there're no VT-based computers produced in Russia, believe me, 'been there, seen it'.
:) And least likely it's some ten Elbrus 2's running emulated x86 clients.
It is true that Russian silicon technologies used to fall behind western ones for some period of time. But not so badly as to produce VT-based computer equipment. They've been able to make (illegal) clones of IBM/360, PDP/11, VAX/11, x86 (386 was the last AFAIK) without much delay from initial release dates, the use of so called ES line of computers (IBM/3x0 clones) in 1970/80-s put an end to the much promising BESM line. The power of the BESM and its derivative AS/6 (high-performance BESM cluster) was clearly shown during th Soyuz-Apollo event when it gave the exact coordinates of the meeting point of two ships way before the American Cray. This (the march of ES series) is now considered by some Russian experts a clever move by Western intelligence agencies to shut down Russia's own technologies. BTW, IBM representatives never protested these clones, they even had a deal recently for those institutions that still had them to change two ES machines by one S/390 with full transfer of running software. No surprise here - these machines had fair amounts of precious metals (gold, silver, platinum) in them.
Elbrus was one of the homemade Russian (and not only Russian but also Armenian and others, now they're all different countries) technologies that was not buried by the ES's, mostly because they were under the militaries' wing. The folks there are trues experts in WLIV aka EPIC design - AFAIK Elbrus used it from the start. And sure, Elbrus 1 and 2 were not built using VTs, last ones are definitely VLSI. They're extremely good performance wise, but ther're not intended for mass markets due to high production costs (read: only those who really need can afford this, e.g. weather prognosis centers and nuclear simulators)
As for the tubes - well, Russian scientists never put an end to this technology, it is mostly used in analog devices that deal either with high power or with high precision (amplifiers, etc.) There were efforts on th low-end to make sub-millimeter sized VTs for embedding, dunno about mass production of those beasts.
The financial problems of E2k were solved by the major of Moscow Yury Luzhkov this spring: "At the end of two-hour visit Yury Luzhkov gave concrete orders on intensifying the works and providing all needed conditions to complete the works" (very free translation from this link)
I don't think that this RC5 result is a working E2k though, it's most possibly the large number of computers using one e-mail. Maybe they worked for half a year and submitted all they did in one day
I would be very much inclined to think this is a fraud and here is why. First of all, I believe that the E2k used its own intruction set, there is not E2k client.
Secondly when we last heard they hadn't even put the chip in silicon yet. I'm sorry, but even for large companies it takes several months to go from the final design to silicon.
It just doesn't seem feasible. Here is another thing, lets do some math. Slashdot did 1.55 billion keys yesterday. That is done with 912 people. Assuming only 1500 computers doing RC5 on slashdot that would be about 1000kkeys a second for each computer (seems high, my k6 only gets 330 or something). That would put this thing approximately 2700 times faster than the current cpus. I'm sorry, thats not true.
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
From looking at the actual work being performed, there is no reason to believe that this person is using a hacked client. We've been in contact with the user and although the details are sketchy his story seems legitimate.
We're still talking with him, but for now the assumption is that this activity is legitimate. Our biggest fear is not that he's compromised the project but that he's using resources he doesn't have permission to use.
For what it's worth, he's not claiming that the blocks are being completed by an E2K. The motto is just his way of showing enthusiasm for the platform. In reality, it's win32 (and a few sparcs) all going through a linux proxy.
It's still way too early to draw any conclusions, but so far there's been nothing to set off any alarms on our end.
Here's more info on the E2k:
t ml
:P
http://www.el2000.ru/press-releases/25031999-01.h
At least it won't be those AnandTech weenies who overtake us first!
Occasionally send out a key which is known, but unknown to the client. See if the client reports it as positive.
> You really think that their first move would be to waste processor time on a silly game.
Yes, that's quite likely. Consider, for example, how many people own machines with horsepower and RAM leaking out of the seams, and dual interleaved 3D video cards just to play Quake and such like.
BTW, he doesn't say "I am running an Elbrus/Elbrii," just "Elbrus is really cool." And I agree.
They get their speed by ignoring the derived-from-4004-25-years-ago Intel architecture to build the basic CPU core, then building a good on-the-fly Intel-to-reality translator for it. Which is essentially what everything since the PentiumPro has done.
AMD seem to finally be getting a process like this right with the K7, shpiing in weeks, whereas Intel might get around to shipping Merced before RC5-64 finishes. Perhaps instead of just selling out, Cyrix should have started making Elbrus?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
A lot of the myths about Russian vacuum tubes came from the reports about the MIG-25 that was flown by defector Victor B****** in 1976 to Japan.
The main radar of the MIG-25 used vacum tubes because it was extremely powerful. Tubes excel when power is required. First, it's cheap to build a powerful tube and expensive to build a powerful transistor. Second, when tubes fail, they go *plink* and when transistors fail, they explode and could bring down the aircraft. Try connecting a cheap diode in forward bias to a 12 volt power supply. It'll explode like a firecracker. My uncle used to work at a TV transmitter run by CBS. He showed me the driver for the final RF stage to the broadcast antenna. It was a gigantic vacuum tube.
MIG-25's are interceptors and they need to locate their targets over the vast distances of the Russian north. They don't usually have AWACS support, and their targets don't usually have transponders (!). So, the MIG-25 radar is far larger than what you'll find in an F-15. A vacuum tube is the perfect choice for such an application.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
The thing about hacking up a fake client is that it can report "key not found in block X" really rapidly by not actually doing the search. This is an excellent heuristic which is correct in very close to 100% of all cases, with the minor drawback that it completely misses the point. If someone measures the size of a "not found" report message, we can use that to perform a meaningful calculation on their computer system: not the number of keys per second, but the throughput of the proxy server as measured from their client. Still, the hacked client thing is a bit of a problem. How do you tell whether the client at the other end of a net connection is legit? Too hard for me, Jimmy.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
For them to say that the E2K will be 3-5 times faster than the Merced is silly, considering:
The Merced is not out yet
There are no benchmarks for the Merced yet
The E2K has only been SIMULATED with Verilog
I don't care just how explicitly parallel the E2K is, you are not going to get that kind of performance gain.
For those who are curious, a bit about how explicit parallellism works:
Every intel cpu since the 386 has had a 32 bit instruction word. A portion of this is the actual instruction, and the rest is the data that it operates on (which register, memory address, etc.)
With Merced's EPIC (explicitly parallel instruction computing) ISA, the instruction word is _128_ bits wide. In this the 128 bits are actually *3* instructions plus a template that contains extra information. This is how it is explicitly parallel.
You may have heard how EPIC requires a lot of code analysis during compilation. This is so that the compiler can find portions of code that do not depend on other parts. These are separated and executed in parallel by the Merced.
There are a lot of other features that I won't bother explaining (predication, speculation, etc.). Just be assured that the EPIC architecture is VERY fast. For the Elbrus guys to claim this kind of performance gain over a cpu that is still not out (using benchmarks from a SIMULATOR, mind you), is ludicrous.
Then there's the issue of the insanely high keyrate.
Take one look at those numbers again. 2.7 GIGA keys/second? The fastest cpus today still operate in the area of millions of keys per second. I'm curious how an unknown company using unknown technology on an unknown cpu could get a keyrate an order of magnitude larger than anything else. That alone should make anyone a little skeptical.
It's just 8k computers using the same email.
maybe it's the new playstation
>>>please remove "nospam" from email address
True, Russia does not have "modern" fabs that match the US/Japanese standards, but it is flat out wrong that they were "decades behind" Western semiconductor technology or designed all their computers/electronic systems with vacuum tube technology. I believe this is a hoax, but there is still a dispute on whether it was the Russians(the team headed by Dr. Boris Babaian, the guy behind E2K project, and Elbrus supercomputers) or the Americans who designed the first superscalar machine. There is no doubt the Soviets had a fully functional, mass produced supercomputers in the late 1970s and early 80s that almost matched their Western counterparts in performance(Elbrus series).
Besides, McKinley is not the right example to give here. McKinley is still nothing more than a design, while the Alpha is real. As the process technology improves, the current Alpha 21264 and the upcoming 21364 design should still be faster or as fast as McKinley or E2K, unless there is a "quantum leap" kind of innovation in the microarchitecture.
This particular incident is clearly a hoax, but for God's sake, give the Russians the credit they deserve, guys. They can damn well design advanced microprocessors along a lot of other goodies. Remember, these guys were a superpower not long ago.
One thing I think the Russians will not be able to design for a long time is a decent car, though. Has anyone here in Slashdot ever driven a Lada Samara?
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Isn't it amazing that Trasmeta, without any thing, has most people here believers.
While E2K, on the same boat, with evidence, has most people here yell fraud?
The irony of slashdot...