Parlea
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Parlea is a volunteer computing project that needs your help to solve the Orthogonal Diagonal Latin Square (ODLS) problem.
Why Parlea?
The project was created as part of a final qualifying work (выпускная квалификационная работа) at the National University of Science and Technology MISIS (NUST MISIS) in Moscow, Russia.[1] The name "Parlea" is not an acronym; it reflects the project's academic origin as a student thesis deliverable.
Goal
Parlea is a volunteer computing benchmark project that aims to investigate the efficiency and behavior of Android mobile devices as compute nodes on the BOINC platform. Its scientific objective is to solve the Orthogonal Diagonal Latin Square (ODLS) problem using donated computational cycles from volunteers worldwide.
A secondary goal is to demonstrate that mobile devices — which are available in far greater numbers than desktop computers — can serve as viable contributors to distributed computing workloads. As noted in a survey of the BOINC platform, current mobile processors feature on-chip GPUs providing several teraFLOPS of performance, and the near-term potential capacity of volunteer computing from mobile devices alone could reach hundreds of ExaFLOPS.[2]
Project Status
Parlea is currently inactive. As of 22 May 2026, no tasks are being sent to volunteers and no recent credit has been recorded. The project server remains online and the BOINC daemons are running, but the task queue is empty.[3]
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Total registered users (with credit) | 106 |
| Users with recent credit | 0 |
| Total registered hosts (with credit) | 345 |
| Hosts with recent credit | 0 |
| Current performance | 0.05 GigaFLOPS |
| Workunits waiting for validation | 1,000 |
| Tasks ready to send | 0 |
| Tasks in progress | 0 |
A backlog of 1,000 workunits awaiting validation suggests that prior computation was completed and is pending final server-side processing.
Scientific Background
Latin Squares
A Latin square of order <math>n</math> is an <math>n \times n</math> array filled with <math>n</math> different symbols, each occurring exactly once in each row and exactly once in each column.[4] Formally, a Latin square is a set of <math>n^2</math> triples <math>(r, c, s)</math>, where <math>1 \leq r, c, s \leq n</math>, such that all ordered pairs <math>(r, c)</math>, <math>(r, s)</math>, and <math>(c, s)</math> are distinct. The concept was first systematically studied by Leonhard Euler in 1782.
Diagonal Latin Squares
A diagonal Latin square (DLS) of order <math>n</math> is a Latin square in which both the main diagonal and the main antidiagonal also contain each of the <math>n</math> symbols exactly once. Because of this additional constraint, the space of diagonal Latin squares is substantially smaller than the general Latin square space; for example, for order <math>n = 9</math>, only a fraction of all Latin squares are diagonal.[5]
The enormous size of the diagonal Latin squares space makes it computationally infeasible to enumerate all its objects in reasonable time by brute force. Sophisticated search methods and the BOINC platform are essential to meet the computational requirements.[6]
Orthogonal Diagonal Latin Squares
Two Latin squares of order <math>n</math> are said to be orthogonal if, when one is superimposed on the other, every ordered pair of symbols appears exactly once among the <math>n^2</math> cells. An Orthogonal Diagonal Latin Square (ODLS) of order <math>n</math> is a pair of orthogonal Latin squares of order <math>n</math> in which both members are diagonal — that is, both squares carry distinct symbols on their main diagonal and antidiagonal.[7]
It has been proven that ODLS of order <math>n</math> exist for all <math>n</math> except <math>n \in \{2, 3, 6, 10, 14, 15, 18, 26\}</math>, with <math>n \in \{2, 3, 6\}</math> being impossible.[8]
The orthogonality graph of a DLS is a graph in which each node represents a DLS orthogonal to a given base square, and edges connect mutually orthogonal pairs. Reconstructing complete orthogonality graphs — understanding which DLSs are mutually orthogonal — is the central combinatorial challenge that Parlea and its parent project RakeSearch address.
Methods
Application: Cycle Search
Parlea runs a single application called Cycle Search (version 0.09), released on 4 June 2021.[9] The application is derived from the RakeSearch BOINC project. RakeSearch implements a search for row-permutational DLSs orthogonal to a given base square, allowing reconstruction of the full orthogonality graph.[10]
Rather than searching all possible DLSs, the algorithm fixes a starting square and enumerates only its row-permutation mates — squares reachable by permuting rows of the original — greatly reducing the search space while still revealing the orthogonality structure.
In Parlea, this application is deployed specifically to benchmark Android mobile hardware, rather than desktop-class CPUs. Workunits are assigned to mobile volunteer devices, and the timing and correctness statistics are analysed to evaluate mobile suitability as BOINC compute nodes.
Supported Platforms
The Cycle Search application supports four Android targets:[11]
| Platform | Architecture | Version | Created |
|---|---|---|---|
| Android | ARM 32-bit | 0.09 | 4 Jun 2021 |
| Android | ARM 64-bit (arm64-v8a) | 0.09 | 4 Jun 2021 |
| Android | Intel x86 32-bit | 0.09 | 4 Jun 2021 |
| Android | Intel x86 64-bit | 0.09 | 4 Jun 2021 |
The project does not offer Windows, Linux, or macOS clients, distinguishing it from most BOINC projects. This Android-only design is intentional: the benchmark is specifically studying mobile compute behaviour.
Server Architecture
The project runs on a standard BOINC server stack hosted at parlea.ru. As of May 2026, the following daemons are operational:[12]
- Download and upload servers
- Scheduler
- Feeder and transitioner
- File deleter
- Validators and assimilators for three application types: native (
gt_cl), boinc2docker, and VirtualBox
The BOINC server software version is 1.1.0 (database schema 27028).
Related Projects
Parlea is closely related to several other BOINC projects investigating diagonal Latin squares:
- RakeSearch — The parent project from which Parlea's Cycle Search application is derived. Run by the Karelian Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, RakeSearch searches for orthogonal pairs of diagonal Latin squares of order 9 using desktop volunteer computers.[13]
- ODLK1 — A continuation of ODLK, searching for canonical forms of diagonal Latin squares of order 10.[15]
- Gerasim@Home — Used to enumerate diagonal Latin squares of order 9 and search for their canonical forms.[16]
Project Team / Sponsors
The project was created at the National University of Science and Technology MISIS (NUST MISIS),[17] a public technological university in Moscow, Russia, established in 1918 as part of the Moscow Mining Academy and granted national university status in 2008.[18]
| Role | Name |
|---|---|
| Institution | NUST MISIS Institute, Department of Engineering Cybernetics |
| Student / Developer | Dolgov Andrey Andreevich |
| Scientific Supervisor | Associate Professor, Ph.D. Kurochkin Ilya Ilyich |
Publications
The following papers are relevant to the science underlying Parlea, primarily from the RakeSearch project which developed the core algorithm:[19][20]
- Manzyuk, Maxim, Natalia Nikitina and Eduard Vatutin. Start-up and the Results of the Volunteer Computing Project RakeSearch. Communications in Computer and Information Science (2019). DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-36592-9_59
- Vatutin, Eduard, Alexey Belyshev, Natalia Nikitina, Maxim Manzuk, Alexander Albertian, Ilya Kurochkin, Alexander Kripachev and Alexey Pykhtin. Diagonalization and Canonization of Latin Squares. Supercomputing (2023).
- Vatutin, Eduard, Oleg Zaikin, Maxim Manzyuk and Natalia Nikitina. Searching for Orthogonal Latin Squares via Cells Mapping and BOINC-Based Cube-and-Conquer. (2021). DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-92864-3_38
- Vatutin, Eduard et al. Enumerating the Orthogonal Diagonal Latin Squares of Small Order for Different Types of Orthogonality. (2020). DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-64616-5_50
- Vatutin, Eduard, S. Kochemazov, O. Zaikin and S. Valyaev. Using Volunteer Computing to Study Some Features of Diagonal Latin Squares. Open Engineering, vol. 7, no. 1, 2017, pp. 453–460. DOI: 10.1515/eng-2017-0052
- Anderson, David P. BOINC: A Platform for Volunteer Computing. arXiv:1903.01699 (2019). DOI: 10.48550/ARXIV.1903.01699
External Links
- Parlea official website
- Parlea server status
- RakeSearch project
- NUST MISIS official website
- BOINC platform (UC Berkeley)
References
- ↑ About Parlea. Parlea. Retrieved 22 May 2026}.
- ↑ Anderson, David P..(2019}).BOINC: A Platform for Volunteer Computing. DOI: 10.48550/ARXIV.1903.01699. Retrieved 22 May 2026}.
- ↑ Parlea Server Status. Parlea. Retrieved 22 May 2026}.
- ↑ Latin square. Wikipedia. Retrieved 22 May 2026}}.
- ↑ Vatutin, Eduard.(2017}).Using Volunteer Computing to Study Some Features of Diagonal Latin Squares. Open Engineering. pp. 453–460. DOI: 10.1515/eng-2017-0052.
- ↑ About RakeSearch. RakeSearch. Retrieved 22 May 2026}.
- ↑ Orthogonal diagonal Latin squares of order n. Bulletin of the Australian Mathematical Society. Retrieved 22 May 2026}.
- ↑ Orthogonal diagonal Latin squares of order n. Bulletin of the Australian Mathematical Society. Retrieved 22 May 2026}.
- ↑ Parlea Applications. Parlea. Retrieved 22 May 2026}.
- ↑ Manzyuk, Maxim.(2019}).Start-up and the Results of the Volunteer Computing Project RakeSearch. Communications in Computer and Information Science. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-36592-9_59.
- ↑ Parlea Applications. Parlea. Retrieved 22 May 2026}.
- ↑ Parlea Server Status. Parlea. Retrieved 22 May 2026}.
- ↑ RakeSearch — BOINC Synergy. Retrieved 22 May 2026}.
- ↑ ODLK — BOINC Synergy. Retrieved 22 May 2026}.
- ↑ ODLK1 — BOINC Synergy. Retrieved 22 May 2026}.
- ↑ Vatutin, Eduard.(2017}).Using Volunteer Computing to Study Some Features of Diagonal Latin Squares. Open Engineering. DOI: 10.1515/eng-2017-0052.
- ↑ National University of Science and Technology MISIS — Wikipedia. Retrieved 22 May 2026}.
- ↑ National University of Science and Technology MISIS — Wikipedia. Retrieved 22 May 2026}.
- ↑ Publications by BOINC Projects. BOINC / UC Berkeley. Retrieved 22 May 2026}.
- ↑ RakeSearch Publications. RakeSearch. Retrieved 22 May 2026}.