I have a few quad processor PPro machines that I run NTPrime on.
Currently, they're set up to run 4 instances of NTPrime with affinities from
0-3, and this works just fine.
Now, I'm sure George has thought of this, maybe, but wouldn't it be fun to
have a version of NTPrime that was capable of multi-processor computations?
Does the algorithm lend any good ways to do this?
The reason I thought of this was that if this is possible, would it not also
be possible to use multiple computers on a network to work on the same
number? With Windows OS', you could use DCOM or even just RPC to get many
machines working on the same number.
I thought perhaps it might look something like you assign a "group" name in
prime.ini, identifying that PC as belonging to a group of others all working
in tandem.
It might be too slow for the Internet since the dataset we're talking about
can be big, but for a LAN, I think it's reasonable, and certainly a good
idea for multiprocessing on the same machine.
I just don't know enough about the LL algorithm to see for myself whether it
can be scaled to MP in any useful way. Basically I think it'd be fun to
hook my 32 current PC's together and have them crank out a single LL test on
an exponent above 7M in less than a day. It'd make a great double-checking
"engine" when we find the next prime. We could verify it in hours rather
than weeks. :-)
Just a thought, maybe someone has more thoughts on this.
Aaron
________________________________________________________________
Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
