Re:Belgian programmer solves MIT’s 20-year-old time capsule ...
by acqq on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @03:47AM
(#19785899)
For those who didn't read the Wired article:
"In mid-March, the group began to run an algorithm" ... "FPGA was about 10 times faster than a high-end commercial CPU running non-optimized software. Based on the chip’s computing efficiency" they "calculated that they would have the correct solution" "on the evening of May 10, just two months after they started the calculation. Yet when they reached out to MIT to let them know a solution was imminent, Rivest informed them that Fabrot had beaten them to the punch."
We read here that he started end of 2015! Rivest believed at the time he constructed the puzzle, almost 20 years ago, that he has constructed the puzzle that would keep the vault locked until 2034, based on his expectations then of the increase of the computing speed. Obviously, predicting the developments of 35 years is not so easy, and the single-CPU computer speeds did improve faster. Anyway...
Re:Belgian programmer solves MIT’s 20-year-old time capsule ...
by eru on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @09:06AM
(#19787523)
It's actually the algorithmic improvements that were faster, if I read everything here and in the article right. Not the raw single-CPU computer speed per se.
"In mid-March, the group began to run an algorithm" ... "FPGA was about 10 times faster than a high-end commercial CPU running non-optimized software. Based on the chip’s computing efficiency" they "calculated that they would have the correct solution" "on the evening of May 10, just two months after they started the calculation. Yet when they reached out to MIT to let them know a solution was imminent, Rivest informed them that Fabrot had beaten them to the punch."
We read here that he started end of 2015! Rivest believed at the time he constructed the puzzle, almost 20 years ago, that he has constructed the puzzle that would keep the vault locked until 2034, based on his expectations then of the increase of the computing speed. Obviously, predicting the developments of 35 years is not so easy, and the single-CPU computer speeds did improve faster. Anyway...
Congratulations!