Gerasim@Home

Gerasim@Home is a volunteer computing project run by Russian mathematicians dedicated to problems in discrete mathematics and combinatorial optimization. Unlike projects that simulate physical systems, Gerasim@Home tackles purely abstract questions: how to separate parallel algorithms in CAD systems for designing logic control circuits, how to enumerate combinatorial structures with special properties, and how to test heuristic algorithms against hard optimization benchmarks.

A long-running theme of the project is the enumeration and classification of diagonal Latin squares — n×n grids of numbers in which each row, column, and both diagonals contain every number from 1 to n exactly once. These structures have deep connections to experimental design, cryptography, and error-correcting codes, and their full enumeration for order 10 and above is beyond the reach of any single computer. Recent research from the project (2023–2024) has produced novel results on main-class enumeration and orthogonality classification.

The project is hosted on BOINC infrastructure operated by the Russian BOINC community at gerasim.boinc.ru. Despite being a specialized, no-frills academic project, Gerasim@Home has attracted a sizeable volunteer community — more than 8,000 participants across 106 countries — reflecting the BOINC community's appetite for pure-math challenges.

Gerasim@Home is a quiet but serious research project: its work units directly produce results published in peer-reviewed mathematics journals and conference proceedings. If you enjoy projects where your compute cycles go straight into mathematical discovery, this is one of the best fits in the BOINC ecosystem.