I have been testing the cipher with 3 nulls and 3 skips a bit further. I used the settings, 40000 hill climber iterations and HC factor 1, this means that AZdecrypt will just do runs of 40000 HC iterations without increasing that amount. For 165 runs it recorded a solve rate of 32.12% with solve scores ranging from about 22000 to 24100. The 24000+ ones were perfect solves. I also want to get the solve rates for 10000 and 20000 HC iterations.
What about GHZ. I see 1.6, 2.6, and 3.4. What do you have?
All my machines are around 3Ghz. It is more about the number of cores/threads the CPU has.
If you are unsure I would suggest you wait until you feel more comfortable to spend a bit of money on it or just stick with your current laptop until it dies. With laptops you better spend some extra. You could for example find a 400-500 dollar laptop and it would not be much faster as the one you have now while spending 800-1000 dollar could net you with a i5-8250U CPU that will be so much better. The i5-8250U is the latest generation entry level 4 core 8 thread mobile CPU from Intel. It has a cinebench of around 500 so that should mean somewhere between 14 to 20 MIPS in AZdecrypt.
The reason why my solving machine gets 44 MIPS is because it is a dual-CPU desktop workstation configuration (Dell T5500 from 2010). I bought it several years ago as a refurbished system for about 600-700 euros. It has a total of 12 cores and 24 threads.
Well maybe I should consider a desktop. I could get a fast one for a good price, and keep the laptop for other uses. I will look at those too.
I am still working on your message with 3 nulls and 3 skips and have determined the following solve rates.
10000 HC iterations: 10.13% chance to solve (444 restart samples)
20000 HC iterations: 26.45% chance to solve (257 restart samples)
40000 HC iterations: 32.12% chance to solve (165 restart samples)
Given these rates, if it is supsected that the 340 has 3 nulls and 3 skips or similar we could consider it likely to solve when 40 restarts of 40000 HC iterations are thrown at it. If it doesn’t then we know that likely something is wrong with the particular hypothesis. I also want to use these numbers to improve my algorithm and to gauge how much more difficult it gets to solve this scheme when the amount of nulls/skips go up.
Optimization of the nulls & skips solver is still in process. I have allot of ideas for improvement but feedback is slow, it could take months. At least the 2/2 and 3/3 are solvable without removing the nulls at the end.
smokie, how about a Google spreadsheet where we can input what has been tried on the 340? To manage the searchspace and divide the work. Example entry: period 19, 4 nulls/skips, 20 restarts @ 10000 HC iterations, best score, pc-cycles, solve…
Optimization of the nulls & skips solver is still in process. I have allot of ideas for improvement but feedback is slow, it could take months. At least the 2/2 and 3/3 are solvable without removing the nulls at the end.
smokie, how about a Google spreadsheet where we can input what has been tried on the 340? To manage the searchspace and divide the work. Example entry: period 19, 4 nulls/skips, 20 restarts @ 10000 HC iterations, best score, pc-cycles, solve…
I am on board and was thinking the exact same thing. I will make a spreadsheet and share it on Google Docs, and make it editable for you.
I am also shopping for a computer.
Does the program use the n grams to detect the nulls and skips, or does it use the repeats to detect the nulls and skips? Or first repeats, then n grams after there is an answer with the repeats?
I am on board and was thinking the exact same thing. I will make a spreadsheet and share it on Google Docs, and make it editable for you.
Excellent.
I am also shopping for a computer.
If you are looking for a desktop you could try looking for one with a AMD Ryzen 1700 CPU since it has 8 cores and 16 threads and should probably give somewhere in between 40 to 60 MIPS in AZdecrypt.
Does the program use the n grams to detect the nulls and skips, or does it use the repeats to detect the nulls and skips? Or first repeats, then n grams after there is an answer with the repeats?
No bigrams are used, it is all ngrams. I could still try to add bigrams but I feel they may return too many false positives with the nulls & skips scheme.
No bigrams are used, it is all ngrams. I could still try to add bigrams but I feel they may return too many false positives with the nulls & skips scheme.
I agree. Give me a little time to work up the spreadsheet. Thanks.
What about ranking the positions based on whether they are highlighted in the suspected period repeats, then starting to explore the ones that don’t first?
What about ranking the positions based on whether they are highlighted in the suspected period repeats, then starting to explore the ones that don’t first?
Because a column/position could have more than 1 null/skip.
I see it like this. Period 20 gives 20 columns, and to fix a null or skip you only need to know wether it is a null or a skip and in which column it is. That gives 20 times 2 (columns times null or skip) possibilities per suspected null/skip. The following table then gives the raw combinations/searchspace per amount of nulls/skips. Thank god for hill climbing.
1 null/skip: 40 possibilities 2 nulls/skips: 1600 possibilities 3 nulls/skips: 64000 possibilities 4 nulls/skips: 2560000 possibilities 5 nulls/skips: 102400000 possibilities 6 nulls/skips: 4096000000 possibilities 7 nulls/skips: 163840000000 possibilities 8 nulls/skips: 6553600000000 possibilities 9 nulls/skips: 262144000000000 possibilities 10 nulls/skips: 10485760000000000 possibilities
I am not sure about your experience with computers. When buying a laptop sellers may try to trick you in buying outdated hardware. I recommend to get one with a SDD hard drive, at least 8GB of ram and a i5-8250U or better CPU. Such a system would probably net you with something around 20 MIPS in AZdecrypt.
I just bought an Acer Swift 3, which has all of the above, for $ 599.99. It is still in the box and I have the receipt. I didn’t even get MS Office. I am going to dedicate it to AZDecrypt and work on this until the current laptop, which is almost 6 years old, dies. Then I will buy MS Office and change over all of my stuff.
Good move / bad move ?
Good deal really. I did not think it was possible to get these specs that cheap.
With the Swift, set the CPU threads setting in AZdecrypt to 4 or 6. It could take up to 8 but that may reduce its lifespan. Keep an eye out on the heat and noise production, if it seems a little high I recommend to dial back the CPU threads a bit. How much MIPS you get with 4, 6 and 8 CPU threads?
How much MIPS you get with 4, 6 and 8 CPU threads?
They said it was the best deal in the store. It is still in the box.
