A 16 × 16 board, 256 square pieces, each edge painted with one of 22 patterns. Neighbouring edges must match. Launched in 2007 with a $2 million prize, Eternity II was never solved: there are around 10⁵⁴⁵ possible boards.

Every task you run explores one starting position and reports the best board it reaches. The closer a board gets to 480 matched edges, the rarer it is.

Join in three steps

1. Create your account with the invitation code eternityathome.
2. Install BOINC, free for Windows and Linux, from boinc.berkeley.edu.
3. Add the project: in BOINC Manager choose Add project and paste https://boinc.eternityathome.org/eternity/

Tasks last about one hour and earn 300 credits each. They pause automatically when you use your computer.

Discover the challenge and how your computer helps →

Join Eternity II

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Boards at 465 or better found by BOINC participants. Your name appears here when your computer finds one. All project discoveries →

[AF] Phil1966
Rien de très intéressant à raconter ici

Looking for teams to help with a stress test
The project is growing, and before more people join we want to check that everything holds up under heavy load: task creation, downloads, result uploads, validation and the live dashboard. To do that, we need a lot of computers running at the same time, for a few hours.

We're looking for team members and team captains who would be willing to bring their team along for a short stress test. No date is set yet: we'll pick one together, at a time that suits the teams who volunteer.

If your team could take part, or you'd like to help organise it, please reply in this thread (or send me a private message) with:

your team name;
roughly how many computers or cores you could bring;
the days and times that would suit you.
All tasks during the test are real work and are credited normally. Thanks a lot, it really helps us get ready for the next step!
6 Oct 2026, 7:35:53 UTC · Discuss

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New task generator is live
Our new task generator is now in production. It has been tested end to end and is about three times faster than the previous one, while using half the server resources. It keeps several hours of work ready at all times and refills automatically as demand grows, so everyone should always have tasks available, even with many more computers joining.

A few other improvements went live at the same time:

the progress bar now goes all the way to 100% instead of stopping early;
very large machines that had trouble reporting results can now connect normally again;
results reach our database faster.
Thanks to all of you for your patience and your support!
3 Oct 2026, 8:39:46 UTC · Discuss

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Night of 1–2 October — tasks showing "download failed"
We're working hard on a new, much faster work generator: the project is growing and the current one won't keep up for long.

It ran into a problem last night. It has been stopped, work generation is back on the usual path, and the affected tasks were cancelled server-side — your clients will drop them on their own, nothing for you to do.

Impact. No validated results lost; the cancelled tasks had not started computing. Queues are refilling.

We're continuing to work on it to make it solid before putting it back in service.
2 Oct 2026, 5:21:11 UTC · Discuss

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Version 2.31 deployed on Windows and Linux
Version 2.31 of the Eternity II BOINC application is now available to all participants.
This update includes:
- Correct handling of task and project suspension: computations now actually stop when BOINC suspends them.
- Reliable resume after suspension or BOINC restart.
- Completed tickets are saved and are no longer recomputed after a restart.
- Improved checkpoint handling.
- More accurate reporting of real computed nodes and progress.
- Several stability improvements for both Windows and Linux.
The new version was tested with validated results on both platforms before deployment. BOINC clients will receive it automatically during their next communication with the server. Existing 2.29 tasks can finish normally.
Thank you to everyone who reported issues and helped test this update.
30 Sep 2026, 18:15:02 UTC · Discuss

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Scheduled server maintenance — September 30 at 09:00 Paris time (07:00 UTC)
I will physically relocate the BOINC server. This requires shutting it down for approximately 15 minutes.
Tasks already running will continue normally. Completed results will remain queued locally and will be uploaded automatically when the server returns. No action is required on your side.
29 Sep 2026, 15:50:24 UTC · Discuss

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