Searching for a Record

Here are the instructions to look for large prime constellations and attempt new records using the rieMiner's Search Mode, or via mining. We assume that you already downloaded rieMiner or built it, and are able to configure it. Go to the Riecoin Forum or chat in the #competition Channel of the Riecoin Discord if you want to discuss.

Preliminary remarks

You should have a recent (less than 3 years) and high-end processor (at least 8 cores) if you want to try to beat records, as it would take a lot of time to find a record with slow processor. Look at the rieMiner benchmarks to have an idea of how different CPUs perform. Having 16 GiB or more RAM is also recommended (especially if you mine shorter tuples, but for longer constellations 8 or even 4 GiB could be enough).

Please note that in this competition, luck is involved (the appearance of prime constellations of a certain length can be modeled as a Poisson Process). We can precisely estimate the average time to find a constellation of a certain length or how much time is needed to have 50% chance to find one, but there is no way to predict when exactly you will find a record. You may be lucky and find one pretty quickly, as well as having bad luck and not finding anything during several multiples of the estimated average time, that is part of the game!

It is strongly recommended to tune rieMiner, read the tuning guide to get the best performance. Also read the README.md to see more options for the configuration file.

The list of records is maintained by a hobbyist, Norman Luhn, and can be found here. He is the person to contact if you find a new record, and you are of course encouraged to share your result to the Riecoin community! Also check the Constellation Explorer.

Prime constellation pattern and Difficulty choice

There is one record for every prime constellation pattern, so you have to choose one. The choice can be based on personal preference, or whether the record would be easier or in contrary more challenging and rewarding to beat. Shorter tuples are more suited for systems with a lot of cores (more than 16) and memory while longer ones can cause a lot of CPU Underuse and reduce the efficiency of many cores.

Possible Prime Constellation Patterns

Constellations having different patterns but the same length are as hard to find, so we tend to care less about the actual pattern and only consider their lengths for the record. To find out the Difficulty setting for searching, check the records pages and convert the number of digits of the chosen record to number of bits ("digits" in base 2, multiply by log(10)/log(2) = ~3.321928), and add some margin.

Mining for a Record

Riecoin accepts 7-tuplets since the second fork for the PoW. Both patterns 0, 2, 6, 8, 12, 18, 20 and 0, 2, 8, 12, 14, 18, 20 are accepted and rieMiner chooses to mine one of them at random if no choice was made. Such constellations could be part of a longer one in both cases, from k = 8 to k = 15. However, rieMiner is not yet written to support the second case yet if you want to beat a record (for example 0, 2, 8, 12, 14, 18, 20 could be part of 0, 6, 8, 14, 18, 20, 24, 26, add 6 to the offsets of the 7-tuple), though it is still possible to find these accidentally while looking for 7-tuples. But for now, you can only choose patterns that start with 0, 2, 6, 8, 12, 18, 20 to optimize mining of 8-tuples and longer. Use the ConstellationPattern to configure it, note that the offsets are offset differences and not just offsets from start.

Riecoin 2507 introduced the Difficulty Offset which allows to mine Prime Constellations with larger Prime Numbers than the Difficulty indicates. To look for a record, find out the Difficulty equivalent of the current record, and adjust the Difficulty with the DifficultyOffset option. This is a number between 0 and 2047, and 32 times that number will be added to the Difficulty, so if the current Difficulty is 1000 and you aim for Prime Numbers of 1300 bits, DifficultyOffset = 10 will change the Difficulty to 1320. Due to the Difficulty variations, check regularly if the adjusted Difficulty still meets your requirement, or put a large margin.

In summary, use your pooled or solo mining configuration file and append the chosen constellation pattern and Difficulty Offset like

ConstellationPattern = 0, 2, 4, 2, 4, 6, 2, 6, 4, 2
DifficultyOffset = 10

rieMiner will then look for these tuples. This will reduce the mining efficiency and earnings, however you will have a chance to get a record and there are some bounties to earn! If you do not configure rieMiner for a longer tuple, it is still possible that it eventually finds a 8-tuple or longer, but the probability of this happening would be significantly lower and it will never find a tuple with larger Prime Numbers.

Good luck! Norman Luhn is regularly checking for Constellations found by Riecoin so he will add any record himself to his database, though he will generically credit the finder as Riecoin. Feel free to contact him if you also want to have your name credited.

Search

The Search Mode is offline and independent of the Riecoin network. So, it offers more flexibility and you can choose patterns that are currently not accepted by Riecoin, but you will not find any Riecoin block nor get payouts, though you can check if there is a bounty for beating a record. Pick a pattern and a target difficulty and configure rieMiner following this template.

Mode = Search
Difficulty = 600
ConstellationPattern = 0, 2, 4, 2, 4, 6, 2, 6, 4, 2

Good luck! If you found a record, contact Norman Luhn on the Riecoin Forum or via the email is given on his page. Do not forget to mention that you found the record with rieMiner so it gets credited. Note that you may be asked to prove that your numbers are really prime (rieMiner only makes probabilistic Fermat tests). In this case you can look for such prime proving software or ask in the #competition channel in Discord.

If you are looking for a k-tuple, do not discard the (k − 1)-tuples as you can submit them as well and usually get easy top 10 submissions (they also act as consolation prizes in case you are unlucky and do not find a k-tuple). They will also be shown in the miner. By default, these tuples will be saved in a Tuples.txt file next to the binary.