> I am interested to learn more about how they solved it if not brute force.
"Professors Booker and Sutherland's solution for 42 would be found by using Charity Engine; a 'worldwide computer' that harnesses idle, unused computing power from over 500,000 home PCs to create a crowd-sourced, super-green platform made entirely from otherwise wasted capacity."
>SUSTAINABLE, ULTRA-LOW CARBON - using PCs that already exist but are just underused
Wow, do they honestly believe their own marketing nonsense? There's no way the PUE and power efficiency of a bunch of old random desktop computers is going to come close to beating a modern Amazon, Google, or Microsoft datacenter. Cost wise, yeah sure, I'd bet it would be cheaper even with the lower efficiency and increased power usage but as far as "super-green" and low emissions this is just absurd. I think they might honestly not know that idle power usage is a small fraction of full load usage for any modern processor.
We don't need the datacenters at all. That's the difference.
No facilities. No hardware. No bricks, mortar, shipping, mining of metals or rare earths. No replacing of millions of obsolete machines every three years. We tread lighter than any datacenter owner can ever dream of
"Professors Booker and Sutherland's solution for 42 would be found by using Charity Engine; a 'worldwide computer' that harnesses idle, unused computing power from over 500,000 home PCs to create a crowd-sourced, super-green platform made entirely from otherwise wasted capacity."
https://phys.org/news/2019-09-sum-cubes-solvedusing-real-lif...