Guidance for new contestants

151 views

Skip to first unread message

James Bowery

unread,

Feb 23, 2024, 12:58:21 PMFeb 23

to Hutter Prize

The best route is to run Geekbench5* on a Google cloud instance of your choice of machine, so that exactly the same machine configuration is available to anyone wanting to replicate your winning entry. Quoting the rules:

Each program must run in less than 70'000/T hours on a machine using at most 10GB RAM and 100GB HDD for temporary files, where T is the machine's Geekbench5 score. No GPU usage.

This is because:

1) Every prize winner since Starlit crashes on my Ryzen machine. This is due to a bug in the LLVM compiler that they apparently can't fix.

2) Lengths of binaries do change slightly with different target CPU architectures -- and this can affect the payout if not the award decision.

However, if you would prefer to run on my Intel laptop, I've recently upgraded it. But be forewarned: If it does not execute on that hardware, you'll probably have a delay in the award until either globe-trotting-in-retirement Matt Mahoney can get around to doing the test, or until you are able to get it to run on a Google cloud instance. Moreover, it is possible there will be a change in the length of the binary that affects the judgement.

* We should probably update to Geekbench6 in the rules. I'll look into that. Until then, you'll have to run the legacy Geekbench5: