Mersenne Digest Thursday, 11 March 1999 Volume 01 : Number 528 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Conrad Curry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 15:38:52 -0600 (EST) Subject: Re: Mersenne: VME claim > With regards to the claim made by VME, Brian Beesley and I asked them to > produce a factor of M(727). They did not come up with a factor. Instead > they came up with the following (mass) reply which I leave to everyone's > own thoughts. They also attached a letter in .gif format which can be > viewed at http://home.wxs.nl/~tha/Mersenne/endorse.gif Before anyone believes anything from this company I would strongly suggest reading the snake oil FAQ. One version is at http://www.cs.uu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/cryptography-faq/snake-oil.html If a strong pseudoprime test identifies a number as composite it is definitely composite, otherwise it is a probable prime. The chance that it returns prime when it is actually composite is bounded by 1/4 for each base. If a 100 bases are used then the chance of error is (1/4)^100 = 6.2*10^-61. It would be more likely the calculation was affected by cosmic radiation. A probablistic primality test could be as fast as the timings given by meganet on their deterministic primality test. Their claim of 5 minutes for a sparc II workstation for a probabilistic primality test of a 1000 bit number is absurd. In Dr. Milstein's endorsement of this primality test, he states "I applied the assertions of the paper to a number of non-trivial values." and "I did not develop rigorous proofs, but I did recast the proposed techniques within a sound mathematical framework ... I also believe that rigorous proofs are less important than validating the performance of the algorithm." I emailed Dr. Milstein and asked if he has not rigorously proved this then is it possible that it could a probabilisitic primality test. This is his response: "The answer to your question is NO, I've formulated the raw material given to me by Meganet as a clear mathematical representation, i.e. Lemma, Theorem, Corollary etc. I've proven some results and 'convince myself' after a serious analysis that there is merit to the claim of 'a deterministic algorithm'. Moreover, I've checked specific cases were other techniques identified pseudo primes as primes or skipped all together a specific prime. My first choice at this time, is to exhibit a working algorithm rather than generating an analytical proof (I might do it in the future)." Dr. Milstein states that there is "NO" possibility that this is a probabilistic primality test, despite having no rigorous proof. I don't know what technique would identify a pseudoprime as prime. I have some doubts as to Dr. Milstein's ability or bias. In my opinion Meganet is making fraudelent claims of its software. Why would anyone trust an unproven unpublished algorithm especially for cryptography and primality testing? Meganet has sent me four emails about their claims, despite responding with complaints they believe I had some interest. Others on this list have also received their emails which leads me to believe they may have taken addresses from the mail archive. So I have removed the zip files from the web page. From a traceroute Sprintlink appears to be the upstream provider of Meganet. I have sent three complaints to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ From: Jud McCranie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 16:50:14 -0500 Subject: Re: Mersenne: Milstein At 01:52 PM 3/10/99 -0500, Joth Tupper wrote: >Thanks for sharing the bib search results. There seems to be about a 10 >year gap between the >2 sets of papers as well as some shift in field. > >The linear algebra papers My guess is that they are from his PhD theses, and perhaps Moshe Goldberg was the advisor. ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ From: "Ernst W. Mayer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 19:23:14 -0500 Subject: Mersenne: Re: buy 1 sphere, get the 2nd free! Joth Tupper writes: >the Bolzano-Tarski theorem proved (what, back in the 1920's?) >that you could cut a solid 3D sphere into finitely many chunks, >then rearrange the chunks to make another solid (no holes or gaps) >3D sphere with _twice_ the volume. Pretty spooky, I always felt. I don't know about spooky, but 'twould seem to violate conservation of mass (or mass/energy, if you're a postmodern relativist :), 'twouldn't it? (BTW, the word "'twouldn't" has NOT been certified as correct English by Professor J. Milstein - something about waiting for the check to clear...) Now back to our regular programming. - -Ernst ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ From: "Leslie Burrow" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1999 01:22:41 -0000 Subject: Re: Mersenne: Milstein I was not the only one to run a check on Prof. Milstein on the web then. It seemed odd that the only three recent mentions of Jaime Milstein are in the field of linear algebra with the same co-author, Thomas L Moeller. One wonders who the other "top ranking " mathematician that he submitted the theory to could have been. <BG> Les ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ From: Marc Getty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 20:23:15 -0500 Subject: Mersenne: Abolish PrimeNet? - Top Producers Chances - Aging Machines - Rate Rankings Abolish PrimeNet? - ----------------- > I guess we could do that by getting rid of primenet ;-)) if it was all done > by email and manually entering the exponents on each machine (like in the > old days) then I can still manage my 9 machines. Would you still run over > 300? ;-) Not a chance in hell. I spend 1 hour a week working with my machines, thetas it, no more. I spend that 1 hour a week on late Friday afternoons making sure all the machines are up and running for the weekend. I can not afford to spend any more time then this. This is a good point, PrimeNet has made it incredibly more easy to run large setups like mine. Without PrimeNet I would probably only run my fastest machines and the rest would have to simply run screen savers. I know your comment was simply in jest, or a rhetorical comment but it is my opinion that PrimeNet is the best thing to come around since Prime95. I ran Prime95 on my personal machine at home back before PrimeNet, and found the e-mail system to be quite cumbersome and left the GIMPS effort. I did not even look at the GIMPS site for about a year after this. But when I did come back, last summer, I was so impressed with PrimeNet that I gave it another shot. I ran it on my new at the time PII-350 and liked it enough that I installed it on 200 of my 285 machines that September. Without it I would probably still be running screen savers. Thanks Scott! Top Producers Chances - --------------------- > eh? if i buy 10,000 tickets and you buy one, then I have 10000 times more > chances than you. OK that is still only 1 in 1400 (in the uk) as opposed to > 1 in 14,000,000 but I know which I would choose.... FYI: Here in Pennsylvania in the US, our lottery odds are about 70 million to one. My point is that everyone still has minuscule odds of winning. You would have a 1 in 7000 chance (0.14%) in winning vs my 1 in 70,000,000 (0.00014%), not that great of odds for either of us, chances are someone else will win. Lets say that I bought 910 tickets (the equivalent number of P90s I have) and Stephen Wood bought 600 tickets (a guess at the equivalent number of P90s he has). Lets also say that the odds are 1 in 25,000 (an estimate as to the number of P90s equivalents participating in GIMPS). Overwhelmingly the chances are that someone else, with fewer machines, will find the next Mersenne Prime. Together, as the two leading producers in GIMPS we only have a 6% chance of finding the next Mersenne Prime. Now granted these odds beat the pants off the odds of winning Pennsylvania's Lotto, but the fact remains that chances are someone else will be the winner either way. Aging Machines - -------------- > Aging machines - 97 (was it?) PII-300's I can think of a lot of corporates > in the uk who would look in envy at your hardware setup and consider it > pretty much state of the art.... And it could be 5 years before they are replaced. My lab of 48 PPro 200s are now old enough that they are on the schedule to be upgraded in the FY 2001- 2002. By this time they will be positively ancient. Yes, I realize that many, perhaps most, envy at 97 PII-300 machines, but my point is that my machines are only fast now, and will be slow soon. It may be the year 2003 or 2005 before the PII-300's are replaced. By this time someone with 50 PentiumIX 9 GHz machines will blow past me in the rankings like I am standing still. My 300 machines will not hold a candle to their 50 machines. Rate Rankings - ------------- > A good idea, how about we split the rankings into separate lists judged by > the number of hours per day produced... > <50 <500 <5000 I think this is a poor idea. Not because I am currently on top, but what purpose does this have? Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with yet another page listing Top Producers, by rate rather then years produced. There is nothing wrong with the spirit of what you are proposing, but statistically there is no way to have the little guy at the top of any list, at least as far as I can tell. A person with a single brand new PIII-500 will, after turning in one result, rocket into the middle of the <500 list as you propose. Does this make this person with a new hot rod of a computer a member of the multiple machines at home list along with the person with a PII-233, a Mac, a 486 and a Laptop? Or does this make this person a single machine owner that is bumped "down" onto a different list, one with people with one machine? Early on in my GIMPS participation I corresponded with an engineer in the midwest who was running a whole bunch of 486/33's and was quite happy doing so. This makes him a member of the <50 hours a day list, but he still has a bunch of machines. The rate of a participant in GIMPS can not display the number of machines they have producing that rate. One could have a single PIII-500, or an entire truckload of 5 year old machines and still produce the same rate. Other top producers lists, whether sorted by rate, by number of machines or by rate per machine could segment the GIMPS effort even further. Pages representing these statistics would be quite informative, but none of them would allow the "little guy" to rise to the top of any of these lists. Only individuals/teams with large numbers of machines, or individuals/teams with the absolute newest bleeding edge machines would ever rise to the top of any top producers list. Marc Getty - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - ICQ: 12916278 http://www.getty.net - http://www.vwthing.org Work: 215-204-3291 http://etc.temple.edu/ Home: 215-322-8363 ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ From: "Leslie Burrow" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1999 01:34:40 -0000 Subject: Re: Mersenne: [Mersenne] Celeron - -----Original Message----- From: Jud McCranie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: 10 March 1999 23:55 Subject: Mersenne: [Mersenne] Celeron >How does the current Celeron stack up against a P-II for this work? > > see my reply to Aaron Blosser about mid-January for comparison with a Xeon currently LLtesting 6989963 getting 0.198secs per iteration (on a good day with a following wind) with no other processes running .Except of course the operating system which cannot be ignored as it's Win98.(I'm working on a Linux set-up but don't have the experience or expertise to make the transition easy; but it is fun learning something new every day) Les ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ From: "Aaron Blosser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 21:15:43 -0700 Subject: RE: Mersenne: [Mersenne] Celeron > From: Jud McCranie > Subject: Mersenne: [Mersenne] Celeron > How does the current Celeron stack up against a P-II for this work? I would speculate that it would be a tad bit slower: 1) The newer Celerons have a 128k L2 cache, less than the 256K L2 cache found on the PII 2) Even though the Celeron L2 cache runs at CPU speed (rather than CPU/2 speed like the PII), it's smaller size negates any improvement. What I'd really like to see are comparisons between Xeon's running at the same speed but with different L2 sizes, including the 2MB L2 cache model. But since those are REAL expensive, I don't expect anyone has any of those? Aaron ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ From: "Curtis (Jewell) Whalen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 23:01:08 -0600 Subject: Re: Mersenne: Mersenne Machine & Single Floppy LL Tester >From: Marc Getty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 09:23:18 -0500 >Subject: Mersenne: Mersenne Machine & Single Floppy LL Tester ... >Single Floppy LL Tester? >======================== > >What would be good to have is an all in one magic Prime95 bootable >floppy disk. I would find it incredibly useful to have a bootable >disk that runs LL tests w/o an Windows operation system on the hard >disk of the machine. ... If I >could use these completely idle CPUs I could get perhaps 160 LL >tests done that would not be done otherwise. I would also "burn-in" >these machines at the same time. If anyone out there has a >configuration like this already, please let me know! > >What I propose is to do one of the following: > >Method One >- ---------- >1. Make a bootable disk using MS-DOS or MS-Windows95's DOS, the end >user must provide this for software licensing reasons, GIMPS can't >go around giving out MS software. Win95 B or Win98 bootable would >be preferred so FAT32 partitions can be "seen". I like this idea. Would FreeDOS work? I don't think it has Fat32 yet... but GIMPS could certainly give THAT out. ... >3. Being that rather large temporary files are created, often greater >then a floppy disk, they can be temporarily redirected to the hard >drive of the computer. Assuming, of course, that your "floppy" is not a SuperDisk or a Zip. If it is, why redirect? >Method Two >- ---------- >Use a linux bootable disk with mprime on it set to automatically >load on boot, again only manual testing, with temporary files >redirected to the hard drive of the computer. The linux kernel >would have to be both FAT32 aware, because most new machines >ship with FAT32 formatted hard drives now. Hell, if you are really >good network support could also be built into this disk! > >I am not a linux guru by any means, but I'm pretty sure this is >possible, and can then be freely distributed as a disk image. I REALLY like this idea. If this disk got distributed, maybe put LS-120 (SuperDisk) drivers on the disk for an alternate temporary files location as well. I know Linux has them. Or just make a big ramdrive! - --Curtis ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ From: lrwiman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1999 00:16:37 -0500 (EST) Subject: Mersenne: M(M3021377) All, How long would it take to run LL testing on M(M3021377) asuming that this number was prime. Could we complete it before the sun explodes? Could the Litho-universe computer complete it before protons start to decay? - -Lucas ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ From: Greg Hewgill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 23:38:36 -0800 Subject: Re: Mersenne: Mersenne Machine & Single Floppy LL Tester On Wed, Mar 10, 1999 at 11:01:08PM -0600, Curtis (Jewell) Whalen wrote: > >Method Two > >- ---------- > >Use a linux bootable disk with mprime on it set to automatically > >load on boot, again only manual testing, with temporary files > > I REALLY like this idea. I've actually done something like this. I have three machines, that have essentially the following components: - - Celeron (of varying overclocked speeds) - - 440BX motherboard (for 100 MHz memory bus) - - 32 MB PC100 RAM - - NE2000 clone network adapter - - floppy drive - - case (not into wiring my own power supplies) No keyboard, video, or hard drive. The floppy boots a Linux kernel which mounts an NFS root file system from a networked P90 (the same P90 is the file server for all three machines). The mprime files are stored on the P90 - in fact, I only have one boot disk, I just move it from one machine to another when I boot them. They talk to the primenet server through an HTTP proxy, and are pretty much hands-off operation. Works really well. Greg Hewgill ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ From: "John R Pierce" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 23:52:58 -0800 Subject: Re: Mersenne: M(M3021377) > All, > How long would it take to run LL testing on M(M3021377) asuming that this > number was prime. Could we complete it before the sun explodes? Oh, I suspect if we could build a computer with a bunch of 4 million bit wide multipliers that ran at a few terahertz it would take significantly less time than that. - -jrp ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ End of Mersenne Digest V1 #528 ******************************
