# Go faster

> Raw throughput: the craft below the algorithm (lookup tables, cache-sized structs, generated code) and spreading the work across many machines. It decides whether a node costs 26 cycles or 2,600, and it is the clearest demonstration that speed alone does not move the wall.

- Canonical page (with interactive figures/demos): https://eternity2.dev/research/build/faster/
- Updated: 2026-07-13

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Raw throughput: the craft below the algorithm (lookup tables, cache-sized structs, generated code) and spreading the work across many machines. It decides whether a node costs 26 cycles or 2,600, and it is the clearest demonstration that speed alone does not move the wall.

The pages below go technique by technique: what each is in a line, what it
actually reached on the real 16×16 board, where it stops, and the labs and
measurements to back it. For the whole territory at once, start with
[a map of every known approach](/research/build/approaches-map).

Two entry points if you want the argument end to end.
[Solver engineering](/research/build/faster/solver-engineering) is the community's
twenty-year ledger - every craft technique, what it cost, what it bought - and it
pins down the three different things people mean by "fast" so the numbers stop
sliding around. For a worked first-party demonstration, the
[JIT backtracker experiment](/research/lab/experiments/raphael-anjou/jit-backtracker)
takes portable Rust rung by rung to the speed of the community's fastest hand-tuned
C - a tie on hard, realistic boards - then shows why even that
[does not move the wall](/research/lab/experiments/raphael-anjou/going-fast).

## Pages in this section

- [Solver engineering: the craft below the algorithm](https://eternity2.dev/research/build/faster/solver-engineering) — Every record solver runs the same depth-first backtracker. What separates them is the layer underneath: lookup tables, perfect hashes, cache-sized structs, generated code, compiler archaeology. That craft decides whether a node costs 26 cycles or 2,600. The community's twenty-year engineering ledger, technique by technique, and what it all bought.
- [Distributed solving: swarms, syndicates, and core farms](https://eternity2.dev/research/build/faster/distributed-solving) — Every few years the community threw more computers at Eternity II: BOINC screensavers, prize-sharing syndicates, PlayStation clusters, scavenged single-board farms. What 10^19 operations bought, how a depth-first search actually gets partitioned, and the one job distribution turned out to be good at.

## Related

- [A map of every known approach](https://eternity2.dev/research/build/approaches-map) — The survey the community keeps asking for and never finds: every family of attack tried on Eternity II, what each one actually reached, where it walls out, and a link to the deep page. One organising insight runs through all of them.
- [The techniques](https://eternity2.dev/research/build/techniques) — The technique shelf: the algorithms and pruning ideas that recur in every serious Eternity II solver, each with what it is, what it costs, and what it actually bought when measured on this puzzle.