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

Already joined? Log in.

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

Steve Dodd
Crunching for The Planetary Society since May, 1999. Love chasing after badges and RAC :) All the while trying to help worthwhile BOINC projects.

Eternity II now runs on macOS and 64-bit ARM Linux
• macOS: Apple Silicon (M1–M4) and Intel Macs (macOS 10.15+), same CPU tasks as Windows and Linux. First results validated, same credit.
• 64-bit ARM Linux: Raspberry Pi 4/5 (64-bit OS), ARM boards and servers.

Just click "Update" in BOINC Manager. Thanks to rilian and gemini8 for testing, and to everyone who asked!
6 Nov 2026, 22:52:26 UTC · Discuss

---

GPU: end-of-task fix (2.81), bigger tasks for the biggest cards, and a new "bigger size" option
• Version 2.81 of the GPU application is rolling out. It fixes the tasks that crawled for hours near 98%: when progress almost stops, or when the final part takes more than an hour, the last tickets are handed to CPU tasks and the GPU task ends normally (and is credited).
• Bigger tasks for the RTX 4090 and RTX 5090: we measured that a 65,536-ticket task only filled about 60% of an RTX 5090 (it runs about 109,000 tickets at once) and 80% of an RTX 4090. These cards now get a new, bigger GPU application (up to 131,072 tickets per task, often 85,000 to 110,000 depending on the search lane). Credit stays the same per ticket, so a bigger task pays proportionally more. First results are validated.
• New option in your project preferences: "GPU: also accept the next bigger task size than the one chosen for my card". Off by default. If you tick it, your card also gets the next size up (one step only). Useful if you want longer tasks or hours on a second GPU application (WUProp).
• Shorter tasks for the RTX 5070 and RTX 5060 Ti: they now get 32,768-ticket tasks instead of 65,536, about twice as short, for the same amount of work per hour.
• CPU cores for GPU tasks: each GPU task reserves 2 CPU cores by default. If you prefer another value, set in an app_config.xml in the Eternity project folder (BOINC Manager → Options → Read config files). We are also testing 1 core on a few card families before deciding a new default.

Thanks to pututu, Dargo75, mmonnin, Michael H.W. Weber and everyone who measured and reported!
5 Nov 2026, 19:18:48 UTC · Discuss

---

GPU: more tasks per card, more cards accepted, and you can now choose your applications
As promised after the database work, three changes are live:
• Up to 8 GPU tasks per card (it was 2). You can run two at once on the same card (app_config.xml with gpu_usage 0.5) and still keep a small buffer.
• Choose your applications: in your Eternity II project preferences, you can now tick which applications you want, for example CPU only or GPU only. Important for GPUs: the server picks the GPU task size for your card model, and a card only runs its own size. So if you want GPU work, keep all the GPU applications ticked: unticking a size can leave your card with nothing to do. If you also answer yes to "If no work for selected applications is available, accept work from other applications?", your machine never runs dry.

• More GPU models accepted: TITAN Xp, Tesla T4, T500, Quadro RTX 6000, and the RTX 4070 / 4080 / 4090 / 5060 Laptop GPUs. If your NVIDIA card is still refused, please check your driver first: we need at least 528.33 on Windows or 525.60 on Linux (CUDA 12). With an older driver the card is refused whatever its model.

Thanks to mmonnin, Freewill and Magiceye04 for asking!
4 Nov 2026, 13:48:23 UTC · Discuss

---

Thank you all: what a sprint!
The Formula BOINC sprint ends tonight at 22:00 UTC, so there's still time to crunch, but I already want to say thank you to everyone.

This sprint was a real test for me, with very little sleep for the past four days. Originally, Eternity II was only planned for CPUs. I worked like crazy to offer you GPU computing as well, and you answered with incredible power.

What you've achieved in three days (as of 20:00 UTC)
• 3.38 trillion positions per second at the peak: a new project record, almost double the previous one
• 14,827 threads working at the same time: another new record
• 777 quadrillion positions explored: nearly a third of everything the project has computed since it began
• 88,923 boards scoring 463 or more: about 1 in 5 of all the boards of that level the project has ever found
• among them, 3,553 at 464 and 90 at 465, just one point below our best

Unfortunately, we didn't break the score record: our best is still 466 with the five official clues. But finding so many high-scoring boards in three days is still extraordinary.

I'm also very happy that the server held for the whole sprint, at about twice its usual load.

Because GPU support came late, there were cases I hadn't planned for, and some of you ran into them. I'm sorry about that. Every one of them has been written down, and I'll do everything I can to fix them.

Thank you to Formula BOINC for giving me this opportunity. And thank you to all the participants for your commitment, for the enormous power you brought, and for your feedback, which keeps the project moving forward.

We're really happy with this great experience, and we hope to do it again soon!

Benjamin
1 Nov 2026, 20:53:27 UTC · Discuss

---

Thank you, and a word about your feedback
Hi everyone,

Eternity II is my first project, and I'm amazed by what you've made of it. I keep working on it every day to answer your requests, fix problems and improve the apps.

Thank you to all of you who give your computers' time to the search, and to everyone who takes a moment to send feedback. Your reports have helped me find real problems, often very quickly.

Every piece of feedback is noted, even when the answer is "not now". All your requests and ideas are on one list that I'll go through after the sprint. I can't promise that everything will be done, but nothing is forgotten.

During the Formula BOINC sprint, though, making changes is complicated. A new app version or a server change could disturb the computers of everyone taking part. So for now I'm mostly keeping things stable, and the bigger improvements will come afterwards.

Thanks for your patience, and enjoy the sprint!

Benjamin
31 Oct 2026, 11:57:57 UTC · Discuss

---

... more

News is available as an RSS feed