NFS@Home
NFS@Home is a volunteer distributed computing project that needs your help to push the boundaries of integer factorization by performing the lattice sieving step in the Number Field Sieve factorization of large integers.
Why NFS@Home?
Previous participation in volunteer computing and an interest in integer factorization led to following the development of the GGNFS and msieve implementations of Number Field Sieve (NFS). NFSNet had been developed for distribution of NFS sieving, but never caught on. Creating a BOINC project at this point was considered, but BOINC project RSA Lattice Siever had been launched to distribute the NFS sieving to factor the signing keys for TI calculators.
Dr. Greg Childers contributed to RSA Lattice Siever behind the scenes and assisted with the linear algebra. Implementation details were shared in return, which was used to inform the development and launch of NFS@Home.
After three years, RSA Lattice Siever lost interest in continuing, so their work was merged into NFS@Home with the addition of queues for smaller factorizations.
Goal
Once the TI keys were done, the RSA Lattice Siever project continued with smaller numbers while NFS@Home focused on factoring larger numbers.
Project team / Sponsors
NFS@Home is developed by Dr. Greg Childers and is based at California State University Fullerton and support by grants from the National Science Foundation ACCESS program.
Scientific results
All results are posted on the NFS@Home web page.
* Detailed status of lasievee_small
* Detailed status of lasievef_small
Cunningham factors are posted on the Cunningham project website.
Contributing
If you're interested in supporting this project, download and install BOINC and attach to the project using its official URL: https://escatter11.fullerton.edu/nfs/.
