Mersenne Digest Saturday, May 15 1999 Volume 01 : Number 557
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 14:53:11 -0700
From: "Gilmore, John (AZ75)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: RE: Mersenne: Screen saver killers?
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steinar H. Gunderson [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Friday, May 14, 1999 12:10 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Mersenne: Screen saver killers?
>
> OK, second message in a row, I just thought it would be nice to separate
> them.
>
> Has anybody got experience in turning off/disabling screensavers under
> Win95?
>
[Gilmore, John (AZ75)] Start -> Settings -> Control Panel ->
Activate "Display" Icon -> ScreenSaver Tab -> then in the Screen Saver
window, select either "Blank Screen" or "(None)"
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------------------------------
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 20:47:46 -0400
From: Jud McCranie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: Apology
I publicly apologize to Mark Honey for misinterpreting his motives.
+-------------------------------------------+
| Jud McCranie [EMAIL PROTECTED] |
| |
| I have macular stars in my eyes. |
+-------------------------------------------+
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------------------------------
Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 02:53:15 -0500
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Screen saver killers?
Why not just write a piece of code that (during installation of Prime95)
removes the screensaver start-up line in the ini (windows) files. Then,
restart the PC with these new settings and the screensaver start-up lines
will be invisiable to the bootup. This would automatically turn off
screensavers. Once the Prime95 program is uninstalled (forbid that to
happen), the screen saver can be added back into the ini file and the
computer can load the screensaver files.
or perhaps just copy the screensaver files into a temp directory while
the Prime95 program is running. That way, the computer cannot run the
files at all. When Prime95 is ended, the files are returned to the
original directory.
hope this would work...
- -oliver
On Fri, 14 May 1999 21:10:17 +0200 "Steinar H. Gunderson"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>OK, second message in a row, I just thought it would be nice to
>separate them.
>
>Has anybody got experience in turning off/disabling screensavers under
>Win95?
>We run Prime95 at 40 machines (most of them 486'es, though) at school,
>and
>screen savers are CPU hoggers (I suppose... at least everybody tells
>me so).
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------------------------------
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 21:03:22 -0400
From: Marc Getty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: Ghosting Solutions
In our labs we ghost our machines as often as we can: during winter
break, spring break, beginning and ending of the summer. We also
re-ghost as needed around the lab. When I first started in GIMPS I had
Prime95 on each machine locally and just as you describe they lost the
work they started each time I re-ghosted.
My solution was to put a different copy of Prime95 on the home
directory of each workstation on the server they connect to. This
works quite well, no work gets lost on a re-ghost now. Also, I can
remotely check up on each workstation via this directory on the
server. I think this is an excellent way of implementing Prime95 in my
case. Of course it does waste about 4 MB of disk space for each
workstation * 275 workstations = 1.1 GB which is nothing in server
space these days.
> BTW, we had another problem that I'm in the process of fixing: Every now and
> then, these machines will be reset using Ghost, losing both the [pq]* files
> and the worktodo.ini files (the rest of the files are not that important). I'm
> now writing a Linux pseudo-proxy that will give out the same exponent every
> time if it has not been cleared. (The [pq]* problem remains unsolved :-( ) If
> anybody are interested (I could make this work under Windows, too, if there is
> a need for it), let me know. (Of course, if there is no uncleared exponent,
> the request will be forwarded to the standard PrimeNet server. I'm wondering
> how Prime95 will cope if it wants more than one exponent, and gets the same
> all the time. Setting `Days of work to get' to 1 should fix this problem.)
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/Cell: 215-962-5603
________________________________________________________________
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------------------------------
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 20:24:09 -0700
From: Gordon Irlam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: Sign-on letter to Vice President Gore regarding his opposition to
African access to essential medicines
[I provide this list to you free of charge. In return I ask for you
to consider helping me with one of the things that really matters to
me...]
Why this issue matters to me:
Current estimates are 34 million people in Africa have been infected
by HIV/AIDS. 12 million of them have already died. The numbers are
only going to rise. The numbers are already staggering. To put
them in context, the entire combined civilian and military death
toll associated with World War II is variously estimated at around
30 million people.
We all need to figure out how to best respond to the alarming spread
of HIV/AIDS in Africa. The current US government approach of seeing
this as an opportunity to maximize drug company profits is totally
unacceptable, and *must* be reversed. Please send your
name/city/state/country to [EMAIL PROTECTED] to sign on to the letter to
Vice-President Gore below to help reverse this policy.
I would be extremely grateful to you for having done this.
thanking you in advance,
gordoni (list admin)
- -------- Original Message --------
From: James Love <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Sign-on letter to Vice President Gore regarding his opposition
to African access to essential medicines
*****************************************************************
Sign-on letter to Vice President Gore regarding his
opposition to African access to essential medicines
*****************************************************************
** Over the past three years public health groups have
repeatedly petitioned Vice President Gore (co-chair of the
US/South Africa Binational Commission) and US trade
organizations to stop pressuring South Africa and other
developing countries over to access to medicines.
** The disputes involve complex intellectual property and trade
matters. In essence, the US government is demanding that
South Africa, India, Thailand and many other countries not
enact provisions in WTO/TRIPS rules on intellectual property
that would lower drug prices. The US position is that WTO
rules regarding protection of patent rights are not high
enough.
** Africa is suffering from a mind boggling public health
emergency. According to the US Surgeon General, in nine
south African nations, 20% to 26% of people between the ages
of 15 and 49 are infected with HIV/AIDS. The disease is
also widespread and growing in Thailand, India and other
parts of the world, and is associated also with new
epidemics in tuberculous, meningitis and other diseases.
Public health authorities believe this is creating new
treatment resistance strains of infectious illnesses.
** So far all efforts to change US policy have failed. On
April 30, 1999, Vice President Gore authorized the USTR to
issue a sweeping new review of South Africa policies on
compulsory licensing, parallel imports and approval of
generic drugs such as Taxol. Among other things, the US
government is officially punishing South African for
permitting its public health officials to speak out on
trade and intellectual property issues in the World Health
Organization.
** Public health groups now are trying to reach a broader
audience. We are asking for signatures on the following
letter to the Vice President. We hope we can raise enough
public awareness in this issue that the Vice President will
be forced to change US policy. Please help circulate this
important letter.
James Love <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 202.387.8030
http://www.cptech.org
If you are willing to sign, please send the following information
to James Love by mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or by fax 202.234.5176.
Yes, include my name:
Name:
Title (optional):
Affiliation (optional):
City, State, Country:
(For more info, see http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/sa
signatures will be accepted through June 30, 1999)
<-----the sign-on letter to Vice President Gore------>
Dear Vice President Gore,
We are writing to express opposition to trade pressures you
are bringing against the people of South Africa over their
struggle to obtain access to essential medicines.
The White House dispute with South Africa concerns three
basic points.
1. The South Africa government has indicated it wants to use
compulsory licensing of medical patents to produce cheaper
copies of HIV drugs and other essential medicines. This is
of course legal under the WTO/TRIPS agreement, subject to
Article 31 safeguards.
2. The South Africa government wants to authorize "parallel
imports" of pharmaceuticals, so that it can buy drugs in the
United States, Europe or elsewhere, in order to get the best
world price. As you know, parallel importing of
pharmaceuticals is legal under Article 6 of the WTO/TRIPS
agreement, and is a common practice in Europe.
3. The South African government has approved generic versions
of Taxol, a US government invention for treating cancer.
As co-chairman of the US/South Africa Binational Commission
(BNC) you have authorized a wide range of trade pressures against
South Africa, much of which is documented in a February 5, 1999
report to the Congress by the US Department of State.
(See:http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/sa/stdept-feb51999.html).
Despite increasing criticism of the US bilateral pressures
on South Africa, here and internationally, your office has
authorized new trade pressures against South Africa on April 30,
1999. (http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/sa/sa301-ap99.html)
The April 3 "in many southern African countries, HIV/AIDS
has become an unprecedented emergency, with 20% to 26% of people
between the ages of 15 and 49 infected." 0, 1999 announcement of
a Special 301 out-of-cycle review of trade pressures against
South Africa ignored every shred of information that has been
provided to your office by public health groups. Indeed, this
most recent announcement is basically a recycled version of the
February 16, 1999 submissions by the Pharmaceutical Research and
Manufactures Association (PhRMA), the trade association that
represents giant drug companies like Bristol-Myers Squibb, Glaxo,
Pfizer, and Johnson and Johnson that are trying to stop South
Africa from implementing policies to cut costs for
pharmaceuticals in South Africa.
It is shocking that the US government is adapting such an
aggressive trade policy on behalf of US pharmaceutical companies,
when all of sub-Saharan Africa is confronted with a public health
crisis of historical dimensions. The US Surgeon General, Dr.
David Satcher, recently wrote in the Journal of the America
Medical Association that "HIV/AIDS can be likened to the plague
that decimated the population of Europe in the 14th century."
Dr. Satcher says that "in many southern African countries,
HIV/AIDS has become an unprecedented emergency, with 20% to 26%
of people between the ages of 15 and 49 infected."
This is a here-and-now emergency. It is not a hypothetical
or potential emergency. These people will die without access to
pharmaceutical drugs.
Your response to this emergency should be to find ways to
save lives. But look what you are doing.
** You are aggressively seeking the repeal of legislation in
South Africa that would permit that country to do what
nations in Europe do, use parallel imports to buy drugs at
the best world price. South Africa wants to use market
forces to cut drug costs. You are pushing to protect
pharmaceutical companies from global competition, thereby
forcing the South Africa people to pay premiums to buy
drugs.
** You are punishing South Africa for even speaking out in
favor of compulsory licensing of HIV/AIDS and other
essential medicines. The April 30, 1999 report on South
Africa complains that:
During the past year, South African
representatives have led a faction of nations
in the World Health Organization (WHO) in
calling for a reduction in the level of
protection provided for pharmaceuticals in
TRIPS.
In fact, everything South Africa is seeking to do is legal
under the WTO/TRIPS agreement, so this and countless other
statements by US government officials are bald lies. But
regardless, the exercise of free speech in international
forums is an astonishing basis for trade sanctions. As an
elected official, indeed, as a human, how would you act if
20 percent of all sexually active young people in the United
States were infected with a fatal disease, and a foreign
country was trying to prevent you from purchasing drugs on
the global market to save money, and was preventing you from
licensing firms to manufacture life saving medicines? Would
you simply show up at the World Health Assembly and docilely
applaud the actions of that country? Even if that foreign
country was engaged in a relentless public relations
campaign to label every legal action as a form of piracy or
lawlessness? At what point would you have the guts to tell
the world the truth, and to speak out on behalf of millions
of infected young men and women?
** You are punishing South Africa for giving approval to
generic versions of Taxol, a cancer drug that was invented
by the US government. There are aspects of the US
government complaint about Taxol that are absurd, on
technical grounds, such as the insistence that South Africa
extend longer periods of data exclusivity than are required
in the United States. But the larger issue is more basic.
Why on earth should Vice President Al Gore or any other US
government employee seek to prevent global competition for
Taxol, a life saving cancer drug that was invented and
developed by the US National Institutes of Health? Taxol
was in NIH sponsored Phase III trials before the Bush
Administration gave BMS exclusive rights to use NIH research
for drug approvals. What is the moral basis for extending
the BMS monopoly on Taxol in a country that is so poor?
As the Vice President of the United States you are in a
position to do much good or much harm in the world. US voters
will soon be asked to determine if you should be the next
President of the United States. Please explain why they should
choose you.
Sincerely,
James Love
Director
Consumer Project on Technology
Dr. Bernard P�coul
Project Director
Access to Essential Drugs
M�decins Sans Fronti�res
Joelle Tanguy
Executive Director
Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres USA
Eric Sawyer
Executive Director
HIV/AIDS Human Rights Project
Kim Nichols
Development Director
African Services Committee, Inc.
Bas van der Heide
Director
Health Action International Europe
Beryl Leach
Africa Program Coordinator
Health Action International
Lori Wallach
Director
Global Trade Watch
Professor Richard Laing
Boston University
Robert Weissman
Co-Director
Essential Action
David Scondras
President
Search for a Cure
Bob Lederer
Senior Editor
POZ Magazine
Steve Suppan, PhD
Director of Research
Institute for Agriculture and Trade
Axel Delmotte
Act Up - Paris
Professor Patrick Bond
University of the Witwatersrand
Graduate School of Public and Development Management
Johannesburg, South Africa
Clarence Mini, MD
Treatment Action Campaign
Johannesburg, Gauteng Province, South Africa
Ellen 't Hoen
International Drug Policy Consultant
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- --
James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
I can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED], by telephone 202.387.8030,
by fax at 202.234.5176. CPT web page is http://www.cptech.org
>From - Fri May 14 20:19:35 1999
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
BCC: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 19:33:55 -0700
From: Gordon Irlam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.0.27 i586)
X-Accept-Language: en
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Sign-on letter to Vice President Gore regarding his opposition to
African access to essential medicines
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
[I provide this list for free. In return I ask that you consider
helping me with one of the things that really matters to me...]
Why this issue matters to me:
Current estimates are 34 million people in Africa have been
infected by HIV/AIDS. 12 million of them are already dead.
The numbers are only going to rise. The numbers are already
staggering. To put them in context, the entire combined
civilian and military death toll associated with World War II
is variously estimated at around 30 million people.
We all need to figure out how to best respond to the alarming
spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa. The current US government approach
of seeing this as an opportunity to maximize drug company profits
is totally unacceptable, and must be reversed. Please send your
name/city/state/address to [EMAIL PROTECTED] to sign on to the
letter to Vice-President Gore below to help reverse this policy.
I would be very grateful to you for having done this.
many thanks,
gordoni (list admin)
- -------- Original Message --------
From: James Love <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Sign-on letter to Vice President Gore regarding his opposition
to African access to essential medicines
*****************************************************************
Sign-on letter to Vice President Gore regarding his
opposition to African access to essential medicines
*****************************************************************
** Over the past three years public health groups have
repeatedly petitioned Vice President Gore (co-chair of the
US/South Africa Binational Commission) and US trade
organizations to stop pressuring South Africa and other
developing countries over to access to medicines.
** The disputes involve complex intellectual property and trade
matters. In essence, the US government is demanding that
South Africa, India, Thailand and many other countries not
enact provisions in WTO/TRIPS rules on intellectual property
that would lower drug prices. The US position is that WTO
rules regarding protection of patent rights are not high
enough.
** Africa is suffering from a mind boggling public health
emergency. According to the US Surgeon General, in nine
south African nations, 20% to 26% of people between the ages
of 15 and 49 are infected with HIV/AIDS. The disease is
also widespread and growing in Thailand, India and other
parts of the world, and is associated also with new
epidemics in tuberculous, meningitis and other diseases.
Public health authorities believe this is creating new
treatment resistance strains of infectious illnesses.
** So far all efforts to change US policy have failed. On
April 30, 1999, Vice President Gore authorized the USTR to
issue a sweeping new review of South Africa policies on
compulsory licensing, parallel imports and approval of
generic drugs such as Taxol. Among other things, the US
government is officially punishing South African for
permitting its public health officials to speak out on
trade and intellectual property issues in the World Health
Organization.
** Public health groups now are trying to reach a broader
audience. We are asking for signatures on the following
letter to the Vice President. We hope we can raise enough
public awareness in this issue that the Vice President will
be forced to change US policy. Please help circulate this
important letter.
James Love <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 202.387.8030
http://www.cptech.org
If you are willing to sign, please send the following information
to James Love by mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or by fax 202.234.5176.
Yes, include my name:
Name:
Title (optional):
Affiliation (optional):
City, State, Country:
(For more info, see http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/sa
signatures will be accepted through June 30, 1999)
<-----the sign-on letter to Vice President Gore------>
Dear Vice President Gore,
We are writing to express opposition to trade pressures you
are bringing against the people of South Africa over their
struggle to obtain access to essential medicines.
The White House dispute with South Africa concerns three
basic points.
1. The South Africa government has indicated it wants to use
compulsory licensing of medical patents to produce cheaper
copies of HIV drugs and other essential medicines. This is
of course legal under the WTO/TRIPS agreement, subject to
Article 31 safeguards.
2. The South Africa government wants to authorize "parallel
imports" of pharmaceuticals, so that it can buy drugs in the
United States, Europe or elsewhere, in order to get the best
world price. As you know, parallel importing of
pharmaceuticals is legal under Article 6 of the WTO/TRIPS
agreement, and is a common practice in Europe.
3. The South African government has approved generic versions
of Taxol, a US government invention for treating cancer.
As co-chairman of the US/South Africa Binational Commission
(BNC) you have authorized a wide range of trade pressures against
South Africa, much of which is documented in a February 5, 1999
report to the Congress by the US Department of State.
(See:http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/sa/stdept-feb51999.html).
Despite increasing criticism of the US bilateral pressures
on South Africa, here and internationally, your office has
authorized new trade pressures against South Africa on April 30,
1999. (http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/sa/sa301-ap99.html)
The April 3 "in many southern African countries, HIV/AIDS
has become an unprecedented emergency, with 20% to 26% of people
between the ages of 15 and 49 infected." 0, 1999 announcement of
a Special 301 out-of-cycle review of trade pressures against
South Africa ignored every shred of information that has been
provided to your office by public health groups. Indeed, this
most recent announcement is basically a recycled version of the
February 16, 1999 submissions by the Pharmaceutical Research and
Manufactures Association (PhRMA), the trade association that
represents giant drug companies like Bristol-Myers Squibb, Glaxo,
Pfizer, and Johnson and Johnson that are trying to stop South
Africa from implementing policies to cut costs for
pharmaceuticals in South Africa.
It is shocking that the US government is adapting such an
aggressive trade policy on behalf of US pharmaceutical companies,
when all of sub-Saharan Africa is confronted with a public health
crisis of historical dimensions. The US Surgeon General, Dr.
David Satcher, recently wrote in the Journal of the America
Medical Association that "HIV/AIDS can be likened to the plague
that decimated the population of Europe in the 14th century."
Dr. Satcher says that "in many southern African countries,
HIV/AIDS has become an unprecedented emergency, with 20% to 26%
of people between the ages of 15 and 49 infected."
This is a here-and-now emergency. It is not a hypothetical
or potential emergency. These people will die without access to
pharmaceutical drugs.
Your response to this emergency should be to find ways to
save lives. But look what you are doing.
** You are aggressively seeking the repeal of legislation in
South Africa that would permit that country to do what
nations in Europe do, use parallel imports to buy drugs at
the best world price. South Africa wants to use market
forces to cut drug costs. You are pushing to protect
pharmaceutical companies from global competition, thereby
forcing the South Africa people to pay premiums to buy
drugs.
** You are punishing South Africa for even speaking out in
favor of compulsory licensing of HIV/AIDS and other
essential medicines. The April 30, 1999 report on South
Africa complains that:
During the past year, South African
representatives have led a faction of nations
in the World Health Organization (WHO) in
calling for a reduction in the level of
protection provided for pharmaceuticals in
TRIPS.
In fact, everything South Africa is seeking to do is legal
under the WTO/TRIPS agreement, so this and countless other
statements by US government officials are bald lies. But
regardless, the exercise of free speech in international
forums is an astonishing basis for trade sanctions. As an
elected official, indeed, as a human, how would you act if
20 percent of all sexually active young people in the United
States were infected with a fatal disease, and a foreign
country was trying to prevent you from purchasing drugs on
the global market to save money, and was preventing you from
licensing firms to manufacture life saving medicines? Would
you simply show up at the World Health Assembly and docilely
applaud the actions of that country? Even if that foreign
country was engaged in a relentless public relations
campaign to label every legal action as a form of piracy or
lawlessness? At what point would you have the guts to tell
the world the truth, and to speak out on behalf of millions
of infected young men and women?
** You are punishing South Africa for giving approval to
generic versions of Taxol, a cancer drug that was invented
by the US government. There are aspects of the US
government complaint about Taxol that are absurd, on
technical grounds, such as the insistence that South Africa
extend longer periods of data exclusivity than are required
in the United States. But the larger issue is more basic.
Why on earth should Vice President Al Gore or any other US
government employee seek to prevent global competition for
Taxol, a life saving cancer drug that was invented and
developed by the US National Institutes of Health? Taxol
was in NIH sponsored Phase III trials before the Bush
Administration gave BMS exclusive rights to use NIH research
for drug approvals. What is the moral basis for extending
the BMS monopoly on Taxol in a country that is so poor?
As the Vice President of the United States you are in a
position to do much good or much harm in the world. US voters
will soon be asked to determine if you should be the next
President of the United States. Please explain why they should
choose you.
Sincerely,
James Love
Director
Consumer Project on Technology
Dr. Bernard P�coul
Project Director
Access to Essential Drugs
M�decins Sans Fronti�res
Joelle Tanguy
Executive Director
Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres USA
Eric Sawyer
Executive Director
HIV/AIDS Human Rights Project
Kim Nichols
Development Director
African Services Committee, Inc.
Bas van der Heide
Director
Health Action International Europe
Beryl Leach
Africa Program Coordinator
Health Action International
Lori Wallach
Director
Global Trade Watch
Professor Richard Laing
Boston University
Robert Weissman
Co-Director
Essential Action
David Scondras
President
Search for a Cure
Bob Lederer
Senior Editor
POZ Magazine
Steve Suppan, PhD
Director of Research
Institute for Agriculture and Trade
Axel Delmotte
Act Up - Paris
Professor Patrick Bond
University of the Witwatersrand
Graduate School of Public and Development Management
Johannesburg, South Africa
Clarence Mini, MD
Treatment Action Campaign
Johannesburg, Gauteng Province, South Africa
Ellen 't Hoen
International Drug Policy Consultant
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- --
James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
I can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED], by telephone 202.387.8030,
by fax at 202.234.5176. CPT web page is http://www.cptech.org
________________________________________________________________
Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 22:57:02 -0500
From: "David M. Moore" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: usefulness and 486's
Up until a few weeks ago, I had one Pentium 200 machine doing LL
testing, and one Pentium 120 doing factoring. I noticed that the P120
generally completed factoring an exponent in roughly 2 days.
A few weeks ago, after growing tired of my mother worrying about her
486DX2-66 machine blowing up on 1/1/00, I gave in and let her have my
P120 machine (with a Y2K complient bios) in exchange for her 486
machine. I now have this 486 machine doing the factoring that was
being done by the P120. Generally, it is taking almost two weeks per
exponent.
Therefore, my question is even with this two week time, is the 486
machine doing "useful work" for GIMPS, or is it merely heating up the
CPU? I ask this because in a couple or three weeks I may have access
to a quantity (30 to 75) of 486DX-50 machines. If these machines can
contribute useful work to GIMPS, I will happily give them each a mouthful
of exponents to factor :-)
David
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
________________________________________________________________
Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 22:31:45 -0600
From: "Aaron Blosser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: RE: Mersenne: usefulness and 486's
> A few weeks ago, after growing tired of my mother worrying about her
> 486DX2-66 machine blowing up on 1/1/00, I gave in and let her have my
> P120 machine (with a Y2K complient bios) in exchange for her 486
> machine. I now have this 486 machine doing the factoring that was
> being done by the P120. Generally, it is taking almost two weeks per
> exponent.
The 486 really isn't as good at doing those types of calculations, but
still...
> Therefore, my question is even with this two week time, is the 486
> machine doing "useful work" for GIMPS, or is it merely heating up the
> CPU? I ask this because in a couple or three weeks I may have access
> to a quantity (30 to 75) of 486DX-50 machines. If these machines can
> contribute useful work to GIMPS, I will happily give them each a mouthful
> of exponents to factor :-)
I'd say most definitely. Factoring is a good workout for a 486, but
considering that current factoring assignments are approaching 10M, it will
still be quite some time before the LL tests get up that far, so the fact
that it takes a 486 a couple weeks just to trial factor those numbers is of
little consequence.
It does seem lopsided that your 486 takes 2 weeks to do what one of those
beastly PIII-550's can do in 12 hours (just a guess), but that's still 12
hours less, and that beastly CPU can do a lot more LL iterations in that
time, so you'd still be contributing to the effort.
You could also do something more conducive to the 486 environment...I don't
know - is ECM good work for a 486?
Aaron
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Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 01:05:13 -0500
From: "David M. Moore" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: RE: Mersenne: usefulness and 486's
On 14 May 99, at 22:31, Aaron Blosser wrote:
> You could also do something more conducive to the 486 environment...I
> don't know - is ECM good work for a 486?
I don't know. That was going to be my next question if it was decided
that 486's are wasting time :-) Although none of the other projects have
really grabbed my attention, I would put the 486's on to another project if
they were more suited to what ever that project does.
David
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 08:23:04 +0200 (CEST)
From: Henrik Olsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: RE: Mersenne: usefulness and 486's
On Fri, 14 May 1999, Aaron Blosser wrote:
> It does seem lopsided that your 486 takes 2 weeks to do what one of those
> beastly PIII-550's can do in 12 hours (just a guess), but that's still 12
> hours less, and that beastly CPU can do a lot more LL iterations in that
> time, so you'd still be contributing to the effort.
On a related note, I've found that for LL testing, the speed of a
Pentium MMX and a Pentium II is about the same adjusted for clock speed,
but for factoring, the P-II seems to finish in about half the time.
This indicates to me that there's room for more improvement, though how
that would work in details isn't clear, since I couldn't find the source
for the factoring part of the program when I looked.
- --
Henrik Olsen, Dawn Solutions I/S URL=http://www.iaeste.dk/~henrik/
`Can you count, Banjo?' He looked smug. `Yes, miss. On m'fingers, miss.'
`So you can count up to ...?' Susan prompted.
`Thirteen, miss,' said Banjo proudly. Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
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Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 07:19:32 -0000
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Screen saver killers?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>Why not just write a piece of code that (during installation of Prime95)
>removes the screensaver start-up line in the ini (windows) files. Then,
>restart the PC with these new settings and the screensaver start-up lines
>will be invisiable to the bootup. This would automatically turn off
>screensavers. Once the Prime95 program is uninstalled (forbid that to
>happen), the screen saver can be added back into the ini file and the
>computer can load the screensaver files.
I'm not in favour of "forcing" this solution on to users, it sounds a
bit draconian to me. Also, I've been known to criticise vehemently
software vendors whose setup programs trample on users' personalizations.
I would much prefer a programme of user education - either convince them
that animated screensavers are a waste of resources which could be used
more profitably, or at least get them to change the priority of Prime95
to 4 so that it's guaranteed a reasonable chance of getting CPU cycles.
BTW experiments indicate that screensavers usually don't consume more than
25% of the available CPU cycles anyway. I'd rather have a user who feels
they really need their animated screensaver run Prime95 at 75% of its
potential than not run Prime95 at all.
Regards
Brian Beesley
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Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 07:27:16 -0000
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Mersenne: usefulness and 486's
>On a related note, I've found that for LL testing, the speed of a
>Pentium MMX and a Pentium II is about the same adjusted for clock speed,
>but for factoring, the P-II seems to finish in about half the time.
Perhaps because the LL test is critical on the FPU speed, whereas the
factoring code is critical on the integer part of the CPU, in particular
the efficiency of the (I)MUL instruction.
On a Pentium P5 ("classic" and MMX), (I)MUL takes a minumum of 9 clocks,
whereas a Pentium P6 (PPro, PII, PIII, Celeron, Xeon) can execute (I)MUL
in 4 clocks.
The 486 takes 13 to 42 clocks to execute a 32 bit (I)MUL instruction.
Probably more typically 42 than 13.
This would appear to adequately explain the performance difference
between P5 and P6, and also give an explanation as to why the 486 is
apparently so much less efficient even after correction for clock
speed.
Regards
Brian Beesley
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Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 07:51:22 -0000
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Getting maximum speed out of a Linux machine
>I've ported ReCache to Linux, and tested it out. Oddly enough, it didn't help.
>I'm not sure if I've ported the spawnl() call in a wrong way (I'm doing a
>fork() and then an exec()), but it certainly doesn't help (the iteration
>time goes up from 0.201 to 0.203 secs). Perhaps the Linux MM is better than
>Windows after all.
Ah, well, worth a try I suppose.
Actually the virtual to physical memory mapping mechanism is a part of
the processor architecture, not the operating system - which is why I
thought it was worth a try. What may well be different is the way in
which the OS actually allocates physical memory and/or its strategy in
balancing disk buffers against process memory allocation, especially
when there is heavy demand on swap/page file I/O.
Your interpretation of spawnl() is probably correct. The child process
should start to execute immediately and the parent should not hang
around waiting for the child's exit code.
With Windoze I found that starting the child process halfway through
the second pass seemed to work best, maybe a different strategy would
work better with linux. It might be worth trying at the end of the
first pass then exiting ReCache immediately, or at the end of the
first pass & starting the second pass - you could then abort the
second pass at the halfway mark, the idea being that ReCache should
continue thrashing long enough for Prime95/mprime to get itself
initialized as far as allocating its work vectors.
>
>What _does_ help, however, is killing everything (by going to a different
>runlevel) and starting again (by going back). This is a bit surprising; I
>thought this kind of thing was reserved Windows users. (The iteration time
>is still at 0.201 secs, but it is in fact needed to get maximum speed back
>after running ReCache.)
>
>Result: I don't have any clue about what's going on.
Me neither, so far as linux is concerned.
I did find that ReCache "worked" in the sense of at least making things
no worse on a wide selection of systems running Win 9x & NT. It had least
effect on systems which had minimal physical memory, and most effect on
systems with lots of memory & high clock rate multipliers. e.g. on my
PII-333 system (96 MB, NT WS 4.0) on a 256K FFT a "random" start of
Prime95 gets an iteration time somewhere between 0.190 & 0.195 - towards
the high end if Prime95 is started automatically by means of a shortcut
in the "Startup" folder - whereas using ReCache I get 0.188 _consistently_.
If you find ReCache doesn't work for you - even on a Windoze machine -
then I'm sorry, but you do have the option not to use it!
Regards
Brian Beesley
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End of Mersenne Digest V1 #557
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