Bernard Fabro
In the laboratory of computer Sciences and artificial intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of technology announced the decision of the landmark crypto-puzzle. It was specially developed in 1999 to test the predictions of the then leading luminaries of IT-technologies on the pace of development of the industry. Initially it was believed that the search for a solution will take approximately 35 years, but two independent Challenger did 15 years faster.
The puzzle is not very difficult by itself, but it is designed with a “function check delay” — that is, the answer can only be obtained after a certain number of steps. To exclude the possibility of using parallel computing, to remove the temptation of using supercomputers to solve the problem, the authors have added several conditions. In fact, you need as quickly as possible to run the sequential squaring the original number of 80 trillion times.
As explained by Ron Rivest, one of the authors of crypto-puzzle, the idea was to track how the change will be computing power for the operation of squaring. And as people learn to apply them to solve real-world cryptographic tasks, such as scaling the blockchain structures or safety of the use of cryptocurrencies. He admits that he underestimated the pace of development of the industry, so the solution was found much earlier than the predicted time.
The winner was a computer programmer and self-taught Bernard Fabro from Belgium on an ordinary home PC with a processor Intel Core i7-6700 and library GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library for 3.5 years, spent all the necessary calculations. Competition it was the team of Professor Simon Peffers that used the new algorithm squaring from scientist Ardenza Ozturk from Sabanci University. They used a programmable hardware accelerator, FPGA, and computes the result with its help it will only take two months. But the answer doesn’t come until 11 may 2019, so the victory is awarded Fabro.
Source — CSAIL