Mersenne Digest Sunday, June 13 1999 Volume 01 : Number 575
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 12 Jun 1999 16:39:08 +0100
From: "Brian J. Beesley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Top Producers
On 12 Jun 99, at 7:49, Gary Diehl wrote:
> Maybe I'm just being silly but I wonder...How come I'm not on
> the (longer) top producer's list (albeit near the bottom of the list).
> Doesn't the list update automatically?
Should do, however sometimes (for a reason I don't know) it's
anything up to a day old.
>
> I had my system overclocked to P2-333 for 21 of the 27 days, and then I
> put the clock speed back due to heat and finished the test at P2-266 for
> the remaining 6 days.
>
> 123.49 days = 1 p90 year at 266mhz (365/(266/90))
> 98.64 days = 1 p90 year at 333mhz (365/(333/90))
> (these assume that MHZ is the deciding factor of speed, i.e. my 266 is
> 2.955556 times faster than a p90)
>
Actually it's irrelevant what speed your processor is working at so
far as credit is concerned. George Woltman (the author of the
software) benchmarks the program using a "standard" system, which
happens to be a P90 he has lying around somewhere (was probably state-
of-the-art when he got it). For exponent 7.87 million the transform
size is 448K, so the standard time per iteration is 1.498 P90 CPU
seconds (from http://www.mersenne.org/status.htm). So the credit is
(approximately) 7.87 * 1.498 * 10^6 P90 CPU sec (use the _actual_
exponent less 2) = 11.79 * 10^6 P90 CPU sec = 0.374 P90 CPU yr.
P6 architecture CPUs (PPro, PII, Xeon, Celeron, PIII) are much better
than you'd expect from raw clock speed, due to the improved
pipelining and branch prediction in the chip design. Conversely AMD
K6 chips aren't as good as you'd expect (no pipelining in the FPU at
all), and Cyrix chips are plain miserable.
> Did the change of MHZ on my config mess up the primenet server?
No. You might want to check the setting in the Prime95 setup
(Options/CPU) but this is cosmetic rather than meaningful to the
server.
Regards
Brian Beesley
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Date: Sat, 12 Jun 1999 13:07:56 +0200
From: "Steinar H. Gunderson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: 1111.11 in the fewest number of 1's
I can't remember an explicit `rule' against using other numbers than 1...
What about 2222.22/2, giving us _zero_ ones and only one operator? Or is
that considered cheating?
Optionally, perhaps we could write 1000 in another system than our old,
standard decimal one... (9? 11? 9.5? phi?)
/* Steinar */
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Date: Sat, 12 Jun 1999 18:16:27 +0200
From: "Steinar H. Gunderson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: Re: Mersenne Digest V1 #573
On Fri, Jun 11, 1999 at 03:09:36PM -0700, Mersenne Digest wrote:
>Personally I will not run Prime95 on anything less then a P5-166, and
>I also will not run it on anything that does not have 32 MB or greater
>of RAM. Not that Prime95 is a resource hog, far from it, I just don't
>think it's worth my time to install it on anything slower then a 166,
>and I don't think it is fair to the user of the machine to run a
>program that requires 4 to 5 MB or RAM unless at least 32 MB is
>present. But far be it from me to judge how you run it, this is just
>my opinion.
I've gotten access to all my school's 486s (and a few Pentiums, and
even a Celeron). They're currently doing factoring work, and they're
in fact performing quite well. I can't see how a 486 could harm the
system (these machines all have 32 MB of RAM, if I recall correctly) :-)
The P60 I originally joined GIMPS with (back when P166 was a _real_
powerhouse) is still cracking, and has completed quite a few
exponents, although it needs a few months for each.
If everybody with less than a P166 (or whatever limit you set) would
stop running GIMPS, you would probably get a pretty hard setback in
CPU power. Eventually, most of these machines will be upgraded after
a while, so it's generally not a problem.
(No personal attack on you intended, these are my opinions, just as
what you say are your opinions.)
- ---snip---
>There's the good doc at: http://www.agner.org/assem/pentopt.htm which
>explains all this stuff better than I could ever hope to.
You gave me this link too; it gives a 404. :-) Time for a mirror?
- ---snip---
> mov al, 0
Would it be a big problem replacing this with eax, etc.? Generally, 16-bit
stuff isn't good for P6, although I can't see a direct partial stall in your
code.
- ---snip---
>It doesn't affect me personally in the slightest, other than wanting to see
>that line item on the GIMPS home page under "Milestones", that we know M37
>is truly M37 and not M38.
I was about to say `this will never happen', but then I remembered it actually
_has_ happened, although not with GIMPS.
>the progress in material ways like that
I think most of us evaluate the project in quite material ways: New primes,
CPU power, money (EFF prize(s)), etc. Simply that `the project is progressing'
isn't very much, or at least most people don't consider it that way. A
project will always be evaluated after its direct results.
- ---snip---
>I had 3 quad-processor and 1 dual-processor PPro 200 machines not doing
>anything, so they're now working on those exponents.
In case anybody else has some quad- or dual- PPro machines not doing anything,
they'd be most welcome here! :-)
- ---snip---
>as
>they say, "If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck, it
>probably _is_ a duck. But I won't be sure until I see it has webbed
>feet!"
Well, at some point, you'll have to trust something (like your CPU), or
somebody (the person who runs the double-checking at a Cray). You can't
possibly trial-factor that big a number by hand, and even if you did,
you could always make a mistake. (In theory, 47 could be composite, but
the words `extremely unlikely' don't even cover this possibility.)
>Sorry for being pedantic.
Can I please `join' this apology?
/* Steinar */
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Date: Sat, 12 Jun 1999 12:09:45 -0400
From: Jud McCranie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Poaching
At 03:56 PM 6/12/99 +0100, Brian J. Beesley wrote:
>
>You might get even more "bangs per buck" by using Celeron 400
>processors, though these will be less quick than PII-400
On Prime95, my C400 is 28% faster than my PII-300, so a Celeron stacks up
pretty well. So if a PII-400 is 33% faster than a PII-300 (which is probably
not quite true) then a C400 is only 4% slower than a PII-400. The actual
difference is probably less than that. Most things I've tested on the C400 vs.
PII-300 are 34-36% faster on the C400.
+----------------------------------------------+
| Jud "program first and think later" McCranie |
+----------------------------------------------+
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Date: Sat, 12 Jun 1999 12:41:46 -0700
From: "Terry S. Arnold" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Poaching
You also have take into account the fact that the memory bus on C400 is
running at 66 MHz white the same bus on the PII-400 is running at 100 MHz.
This does make a difference on Prime95 since it is also memory intensive.
At 09:09 AM 6/12/1999 , Jud McCranie wrote in flowing prose:
>At 03:56 PM 6/12/99 +0100, Brian J. Beesley wrote:
> >
> >You might get even more "bangs per buck" by using Celeron 400
> >processors, though these will be less quick than PII-400
>
>On Prime95, my C400 is 28% faster than my PII-300, so a Celeron stacks up
>pretty well. So if a PII-400 is 33% faster than a PII-300 (which is probably
>not quite true) then a C400 is only 4% slower than a PII-400. The actual
>difference is probably less than that. Most things I've tested on the
>C400 vs.
>PII-300 are 34-36% faster on the C400.
>
>+----------------------------------------------+
>| Jud "program first and think later" McCranie |
>+----------------------------------------------+
>
>
>________________________________________________________________
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Terry S. Arnold 2975 B Street San Diego, CA 92102 USA
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (619) 235-8181 (voice) (619) 235-0016 (fax)
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Date: Sat, 12 Jun 1999 16:40:47 -0400
From: Jud McCranie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Poaching
At 12:41 PM 6/12/99 -0700, Terry S. Arnold wrote:
>You also have take into account the fact that the memory bus on C400 is
>running at 66 MHz white the same bus on the PII-400 is running at 100 MHz.
That's right, but the PII-300 I was comparing it to also has 66 MHz memory.
There are also differences in the cache speed and sizes.
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Date: Sat, 12 Jun 1999 22:52:45 +0000 (GMT)
From: Henrik Olsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Poaching
On Sat, 12 Jun 1999, Terry S. Arnold wrote:
> You also have take into account the fact that the memory bus on C400 is
> running at 66 MHz white the same bus on the PII-400 is running at 100 MHz.
> This does make a difference on Prime95 since it is also memory intensive.
Yep, and the L2 cache for the PII-400 is running at 200MHz and at 400MHz
on the C400 making the speed comparison every more impossible:)
- --
Henrik Olsen, Dawn Solutions I/S URL=http://www.iaeste.dk/~henrik/
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
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Date: Sat, 12 Jun 1999 16:25:16 -0700
From: Martin Lehmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: Re: Mersenne Digest V1 #574
> Date: 11 Jun 99 20:35:58 MDT
> From: Paul Derbyshire <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: [Re: Inane Stuff (Was: Mersenne: M38, SETI, and other random
stuff )]
>
> Chris Nash <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > 10^12Hz... wow! Can you imagine the technical innovation needed to get a
> > machine where light only travels 0.3mm in a clock cycle? That's some
> > densely packed, erm, stuff... probably not silicon, the sort of thing
> > we probably can't conceive right now (electron obedience school?)...
>
> The technical term is "superconductor" and I can conceive it quite fine
:-)
One of the problems of incresing clock speed is obvious from Chris' post: if
light only travels .3mm during one clock cycle, how does one keep the clock
coherent across a much larger die?
As far as superconductors are concerned: don't count on it. They would
*only* solve the heat problem, since they have no resistivity below Tc.
Right now the problems with those susbstances are:
- -crystal growth: in most cases a single crystal larger than .5mm is
considered huge
- -they are "dirty": in many cases it is not quite clear what's actually in
the crystal (!)
- -nobody has demonstrated what we call "particle-hole-symmetry", i. e. that
you can make a given crystal both n-type and p-type, which is of course
essential for making transistors and circuits
- -there is no real consistent theory about high-temperature superconductivity
- -and of course, room temperature is far away: the record is around 135k with
some Mercury-compound (Hg-1223, I think), which is not entirely stable and
toxic on top of that....
I think that's enough physics for one day ;-)
Martin
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Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 11:38:48 +0200
From: Sturle Sunde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: status of exponents
>>Yes. I would get very pissed if someone snatched an exponent which I
>>already spent a year of work on, and am still working on, without even
>>telling me in advance.
> We are all in some danger of this happening because of non-GIMPS people
> working on Mersenne primes (with Crays, etc).
And exactly how do you think that justifies that a GIMPS-participant does
it knowingly? I still think this is bad behaviour, regardless of what a
non-GIMPS-person might do with his Cray.
This isn't a competition to finish all exponents in turn. This is a fun
project where everybody, including people with slow computers, should be
welcome to participate without having people making their one-year of
CPU-time turn into nothing by snatching their exponents. Go away and
make your own project for PIII's and Crays only, if you think they are
the only computers worthy of participating.
How would you feel if the exponent you took turned out to be a new
Mersenne prime?
- --
Sturle URL: http://www.stud.ifi.uio.no/~sturles/ Er det m}ndag i dag?
~~~~~~ MMF: http://www.alladvantage.com/go.asp?refid=BUP399 - St. URLe
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Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 13:12:01 +0200
From: "Lars Lindley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: Little test...sorry
Just testing my mail-rules...
Sorry for the waste of digest-bandwith... :)
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Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 09:08:23 -0400
From: Jud McCranie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: status of exponents
At 11:38 AM 6/13/99 +0200, Sturle Sunde wrote:
>
>And exactly how do you think that justifies that a GIMPS-participant does
>it knowingly?
I don't think it is justified, except for cases where they seem to have been
abandoned, or someone is purposefully holding up the project.
>This isn't a competition to finish all exponents in turn.
But the idea is to get a complete list of Mersenne primes (up to the limits of
our computation). One of the criticisms of previous projects is that they were
out for records. As soon as one machine found a record prime, the rest jumped
ahead to look for another record rather than checking all of the range. GIMPS
is supposed to avoid that problem. GIMPS is designed to check all numbers, and
even double check them.
> This is a fun project
It is also to be useful.
+----------------------------------------------+
| Jud "program first and think later" McCranie |
+----------------------------------------------+
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Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 09:20:19 -0400
From: Jud McCranie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: status of exponents
At 11:38 AM 6/13/99 +0200, Sturle Sunde wrote:
>And exactly how do you think that justifies that a GIMPS-participant does
>it knowingly?
I'd like to ask the following of readers of this list who have been working on
an exponent for more than 1 year, and have an expected completion date after
9/9/99.
1. What percentage of the computation has been completed?
2. What is the speed of the CPU?
3. How many hours per day is Prime95 actually running?
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Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 16:32:33 +0200
From: Sturle Sunde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: status of exponents
> Some time ago we went over this issue on this list. Since all exponents need
> to be checked twice anyway, it is possible to return a doublecheck on an
> number of which the 'original' result is not in yet. As long as it happens
> with a different CPU or different startingnumbers there is nothing at hand.
> Make sure though that not the same work is done twice, since it has not added
> value.
Great. Next time Primenet tells me "Error, this exponent is already
tested" on the exponent I reserved a few months ago, I should be very
happy and tell myself: "Great! Someone have tested the exponent for me,
and will get the credit if it was prime! I should just be happy and keep
testing to verify the nice guys result. The question, if the number was
prime or not have been answered by someone else, but why should I care
about that?"
And when the exponent is released again for double-checking and returned
before my test is finished, I should tell myself: "Good, I'm contributing
to the project by checking the exponent for the third time."
Nah.
Perhaps I should just start picking random numbers from the list of
current assignments, if I think that I can finish them first. As you say,
all exponents have to be tested twice anyway so it can't hurt. Rules are
made for wimps. Also I think that I should pretend to never have been a
part of GIMPS if I find a new Mersenne prime. Just ignoring the rules,
like you.
When a person tells the world which exponents he is testing, and
continously reports his progress, people could at least complain to him
before hijacking the exponents he has been testing for a year with the
dream of becoming a discoverer of the next Mersenne prime. Stealing the
exponent on purpose without even sending him an email is just plain wrong.
This way you encourage him to send false progress reports or results to
keep you away. "Heck, I send in this bogus result to keep people happy
while I continue to check if this is a Mersenne prime. It will always
take some time before someone double check it, so I would probably have
more than enough time to get the real result."
I, at least, would change to another project very quickly if the now very
well coordinated Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search is turned into an
anarchy were people are encouraged to cheat.
Btw.: I've double checked approximately 450 exponents to present, far
more than I've tested for the first time, and have 60 machines double
checking other peoples results as I write this. I think that I'm doing
my fair part of the less exciting double checking.
- --
Sturle URL: http://www.stud.ifi.uio.no/~sturles/ Er det m}ndag i dag?
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Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 08:25:48 -0700
From: "John R Pierce" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: status of exponents
> I'd like to ask the following of readers of this list who have been
working on
> an exponent for more than 1 year, and have an expected completion date
after
> 9/9/99.
my slowest machine, a old 430FX based pentium-100 which has been on GIMPS
since well before Primenet, is currently taking about 60 days per LL test.
It runs 24/7, its only other duties currently are 'print server' and 'fax
modem'. I may be converting it to a linux system to act as an internet
gateway at some point, presumably then I will save its work-in-progress and
set it up as with the linux version (or move its todo over to my new
p3-500).
btw, I disagree with the current policy of not letting slowish machines like
this do LL tests, this machine cranks out a exponent every 60 days, has been
an old faithful, I see no reason to retire it from the test, hence have not
updated it to the current software, its still running 16.x. I currently
have about 12 systems working total and have logged 27+ p90 years with IPS
(and another 4+ with pre-IPS GIMPS).
1 - pentium 100
2 - pentium 120
1 - pentium 150
1 - pentium 166
1 - pentium 200
2 - PentiumPro 200 (really 1 system w/ 2 cpus)
1 - Pentium-II 300
2 - Pentium-II 400
1 - Pentium-III 500+
[the 300 is actually a 266 at 75MHz for 300 core speed, and the 500+ is
actually a 450 currently being 'burned in' at 120Mhz (540MHz core)... no
prime95 errors at all to date]
- -jrp
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Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 09:32:26 -0600
From: "Aaron Blosser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: RE: Mersenne: status of exponents
> When a person tells the world which exponents he is testing, and
> continously reports his progress, people could at least complain to him
> before hijacking the exponents he has been testing for a year with the
> dream of becoming a discoverer of the next Mersenne prime. Stealing the
> exponent on purpose without even sending him an email is just plain wrong.
> This way you encourage him to send false progress reports or results to
> keep you away. "Heck, I send in this bogus result to keep people happy
> while I continue to check if this is a Mersenne prime. It will always
> take some time before someone double check it, so I would probably have
> more than enough time to get the real result."
If it makes you feel any better, I took the two posts from Yvan Dutil and
also went through the assignments list on Primenet and gathered about 14
exponents that I figured, quite reasonably, were abandoned.
Criteria I used were:
1) Original *quite* long time to complete
2) No check-ins for a period of at least 6 months.
You see, the real problem is that if I had a 486 that I wanted to use to LL
test a number in the 4M-5M range, and I specified that my machine is on 8
hours of the day, the expected completion date originally sent would in deed
be over a year in the future.
And since an exponent will only expire 60 days past the expected completion
date, these numbers which are almost entirely likely to be abandoned,
wouldn't show up in the Primenet "to be assigned" database for over a year
after the time it was checked out.
In some of those cases, the exponent, having been checked out nearly a year
ago, still had a year before it was expected to be done. And a good number
of those had NEVER had the progress updated since it was checked out.
I'm not out there just randomly grabbing numbers as you suggest.
Aaron
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Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 11:22:18 -0400
From: Jud McCranie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: status of exponents
At 04:32 PM 6/13/99 +0200, Sturle Sunde wrote:
>
>Great. Next time Primenet tells me "Error, this exponent is already
>tested" on the exponent I reserved a few months ago, I should be very
>happy and tell myself: "Great! Someone have tested the exponent for me,
>and will get the credit if it was prime!
I propose this as the honorable thing to do. First, you aren't likely to
discover a prime, but if you do discover one that some other GIMPS person is
working on, you should contact that person and share the credit.
+----------------------------------------------+
| Jud "program first and think later" McCranie |
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Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 12:25:09 -0400
From: Jud McCranie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: RE: Mersenne: status of exponents
At 09:32 AM 6/13/99 -0600, Aaron Blosser wrote:
>Criteria I used were:
>
>1) Original *quite* long time to complete
>2) No check-ins for a period of at least 6 months.
I thought that if no check-in was done in 60 days, the number was put back in
the pool.
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Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 10:47:06 -0600
From: "Aaron Blosser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: RE: Mersenne: status of exponents
> At 09:32 AM 6/13/99 -0600, Aaron Blosser wrote:
> >Criteria I used were:
> >
> >1) Original *quite* long time to complete
> >2) No check-ins for a period of at least 6 months.
>
> I thought that if no check-in was done in 60 days, the number was
> put back in
> the pool.
One would have thought so, but I guess not.
Here's a prime example:
4369949 60 475.6 223.8 283.8 22-May-98 13:13 23-Feb-98 02:21 dsh21
BamBam
Checked out 2/23/98, last checkin was 5/22/98 (over a year ago) with another
223.8 days to run, 283.8 days until it will expire.
Or this one:
4465127 60 472.3 311.8 371.8 26-Feb-98 09:23 koma
magek072
Checked out 2/26/98, *NEVER* checked in at all, over a YEAR until it will
expire.
There are quite a few like that, so I'm gonna play God and take care of 'em.
:-)
Here's one I just *love*:
4787599 61 376.0 662.0 722.0 02-Jun-98 16:42 andres
We could wait around 2 years to finally get around to testing this obviously
abandoned one, or I'll just do it now.
Aaron
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Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 19:14:34 +0200
From: Sturle Sunde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: status of exponents
> Here's a prime example:
> 4369949 60 475.6 223.8 283.8 22-May-98 13:13 23-Feb-98 02:21 dsh21
> BamBam
> Checked out 2/23/98, last checkin was 5/22/98 (over a year ago) with another
> 223.8 days to run, 283.8 days until it will expire.
The owner is "dsh21". Mail him and ask why.
> Or this one:
> 4465127 60 472.3 311.8 371.8 26-Feb-98 09:23 koma
> magek072
> Checked out 2/26/98, *NEVER* checked in at all, over a YEAR until it will
> expire.
The owner is "koma". Mail him and ask why.
> 4787599 61 376.0 662.0 722.0 02-Jun-98 16:42 andres
> We could wait around 2 years to finally get around to testing this obviously
> abandoned one, or I'll just do it now.
Why don't you mail "andres" and ask if it is abandoned first?
I have permission to use two machines myself, which are on the internet once
a year. They are fast enough, but someone always steals their exponents
before the year is over, so it is no use. I reserved exponents for them via
email to George a while, so that the machines didn't show up in Primenet's
logs, but I got tired of the manual work so the machines are idle now.
Remember that there are more wierd configurations out there than any one of
you will ever be able to imagine, and Primnet isn't nearly flexible enough
even for my simple use.
I don't think it is very difficult to send email, and I know you can do it,
so WHY NOT?
- --
Sturle URL: http://www.stud.ifi.uio.no/~sturles/ Er det m}ndag i dag?
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Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1999 03:22:51 +1000
From: Simon Burge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: status of exponents
"John R Pierce" wrote:
> btw, I disagree with the current policy of not letting slowish machines like
> this do LL tests, this machine cranks out a exponent every 60 days, has been
> an old faithful, I see no reason to retire it from the test, hence have not
> updated it to the current software, its still running 16.x. I currently
> have about 12 systems working total and have logged 27+ p90 years with IPS
> (and another 4+ with pre-IPS GIMPS).
Spare a thought for us non-intel folks. I've currently got 78 machines
chugging along purely double-testing these days. My last great chance
at discovering a new prime finished when it took over 5 months to test
3743321. In two and a half years with up to one hundred machines
working, I've managed 16.2 P90 years...
What a lot of people seem to have forgotten is that this _isn't_ a race
to the finish line (there is no finish line!), and that people are
meant to be having fun along the way. I'm still having my bit of fun -
once a day I check my logs to see if another number (or even two!) have
finished double checking, whereas once I used to count the number of
numbers that finished (on 17th March, 1997 there were 17 numbers that
finished). I've learnt a little math along the way (thanks Ernst!), and
done my small bit tweaking the speed of Will's mersenne1 program by a
few percent here and there.
I haven't saved the world, but I'm still having a good time, and to me
that's what GIMPS is all about. I'd hate to see that disappear...
Simon.
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Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 11:46:37 -0500
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mikus Grinbergs)
Subject: Re: Mersenne: status of exponents
This really bothers me. Who appointed us to be our brother's keepers?
What RIGHT do the people on this list have to keep asking questions
of those who do not meet the expectations of the questioners?
To those on this list who are pursuing why certain exponents are not
being completed "sooner" -- think about it -- WHAT DIFFERENCE WILL
IT MAKE in __your__ life when exponent so-and-so is completed ??
This project was supposed to be fun. It is becoming intrusive.
mikus
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Jud McCranie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> At 11:38 AM 6/13/99 +0200, Sturle Sunde wrote:
> >And exactly how do you think that justifies that a GIMPS-participant does
> >it knowingly?
>
> I'd like to ask the following of readers of this list who have been working on
> an exponent for more than 1 year, and have an expected completion date after
> 9/9/99.
>
> 1. What percentage of the computation has been completed?
>
> 2. What is the speed of the CPU?
>
> 3. How many hours per day is Prime95 actually running?
>
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Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 13:48:18 -0400
From: "Rick Pali" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: RE: Mersenne: status of exponents
From: Mikus Grinbergs
> What RIGHT do the people on this list have to
> keep asking questions of those who do not meet
> the expectations of the questioners?
I don't think there's *anything* at all wrong with asking questions. I
like the project and have been devoting CPU time to it since before
primenet. If someone told me that asking questions about the project or
the way it's run is inappropriate, I'd politely inform them that they
could go hang. If we're a part of this, then we can ask questions. It's as
simple as that. I've *never* seen George or Scott even hint that questions
weren't welcome...and I think that's just the way it should be.
> WHAT DIFFERENCE WILL IT MAKE in
> __your__ life when exponent so-and-so is completed ??
When it comes right down to it, it will make *very* little difference to
most of us when *any* exponent finishes. I guess that means we should all
quit, eh?
> This project was supposed to be fun. It is becoming intrusive.
Interesting...I've never seen a less intrusive project in my life.
Rick.
- -----
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.alienshore.com/
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Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 20:58:45 +0100
From: "Brian J. Beesley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: status of exponents
On 13 Jun 99, at 16:32, Sturle Sunde wrote:
> When a person tells the world which exponents he is testing, and
> continously reports his progress, people could at least complain to him
> before hijacking the exponents he has been testing for a year with the
> dream of becoming a discoverer of the next Mersenne prime. Stealing the
> exponent on purpose without even sending him an email is just plain wrong.
Hear hear.
> I, at least, would change to another project very quickly if the now very
> well coordinated Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search is turned into an
> anarchy were people are encouraged to cheat.
This is an excellent point, I think we ought to take notice. It's
certainly p*ss*d me off a bit with the Proth project to find that,
out of 4 primes I've discovered, 2 are "rediscoveries" of numbers
that other people have been working on without reserving ranges via
the perfectly satisfactory facilities provided. I'll be dumping Proth
& moving that P100 system to something else when the range I'm
working on at the moment finishes. Probably ECM.
Could I suggest that we do something to help those people with non-
internet connected machines (or possibly machines which have to run
LL testing clients which have no server support) to keep their
progress up to date. I have a Sun Sparc 2 which has been double
checking using MacLucasUNIX for a while now, it takes about 10 weeks
to run a test on an exponent around 2 million. The problem is, if I
use the manual testing pages, it expires after 60 days & gets
reallocated. I found a workaround, viz. to use a "dummy" setup on
another system running Prime95 to supply "dummy" progress reports,
but it's a bit messy and inconvenient.
I'd like to suggest:
(a) the expiry period for exponents allocated using the manual pages
is extended from 60 days - say to 120 days
(b) an extra form is added to the PrimeNet Manual Exponent page, so
that progress reports can be supplied manually on behalf of clients
which can't do it automatically. (Don't even need to give a
completion date really - just to say "I'm still alive" & keep the
exponent reserved for another "expiry period" - but should have an
optional field for estimated completion date, if known)
Obviously this is "second best" to providing everyone with PrimeNet-
aware clients (and permanent, free-to-use, _secure_ Internet
connections), but I don't see that as being a realistic target in the
short to medium term.
Regards
Brian Beesley
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Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 16:34:20 -0400
From: Jud McCranie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: status of exponents
At 11:46 AM 6/13/99 -0500, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:
>
>To those on this list who are pursuing why certain exponents are not
>being completed "sooner" -- think about it -- WHAT DIFFERENCE WILL
>IT MAKE in __your__ life when exponent so-and-so is completed ??
>
I write the exponents resulting in primes down in my book, and I don't want to
have to insert ones later. ;-)
+----------------------------------------------+
| Jud "program first and think later" McCranie |
+----------------------------------------------+
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Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 16:27:15 -0400
From: Jud McCranie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: status of exponents
At 04:32 PM 6/13/99 +0200, Sturle Sunde wrote:
>When a person tells the world which exponents he is testing, and
>continously reports his progress, people could at least complain to him
>before hijacking the exponents he has been testing for a year
Some people that are out of contact may be using the buggy version 17, and
their work is wasted.
+----------------------------------------------+
| Jud "program first and think later" McCranie |
+----------------------------------------------+
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Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 17:03:02 -0400
From: Jud McCranie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: the FAQ
>From the FAQ:
"Be sure to report your results in a timely manner or your exponents may be
reassigned to someone else for testing."
+----------------------------------------------+
| Jud "program first and think later" McCranie |
+----------------------------------------------+
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Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 18:23:23 -0400 (EDT)
From: lrwiman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: LL and factoring & quitting
It has been mentioned several times recently that factoring is all integer
work, and LL testing is nearly all floating point.
It is my understanding that on intel CPU's, these are done on separate parts of
the CPU. Would it increase net performance to do factoring and LL assignments
at the same time?
Also, I'm going to quit first time LL testing. Call me impatient, but I don't
want to wait until early July for my exponent to finish, thus I'm going to
switch to double-checking.
I'll be willing to send my p7334417 and worktodo.ini to anyone who's
interested. Yes, you can have credit for the 45% completion. Email me
privatly, and tell me what speed CPU you have. I'll give it to the one
with the fastest CPU.
- -Lucas Wiman
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Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 15:51:13 -0700
From: Spike Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: status of exponents
Simon Burge wrote:
> I haven't saved the world, but I'm still having a good time, and to me
> that's what GIMPS is all about. I'd hate to see that disappear...
Altho we all want to test fresh numbers, they *all* eventually need to be
double checked by self sacrificing souls. Bless you Simon. May your
descendants fill the earth. {8^D spike
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Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 19:34:09 EDT
From: Foghorn Leghorn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: LL and factoring & quitting
>It has been mentioned several times recently that factoring is all integer
>work, and LL testing is nearly all floating point.
If I recall correctly, doesn't the factoring code use floating point
routines on the faster CPUs?
>It is my understanding that on intel CPU's, these are done on separate
>parts of
>the CPU. Would it increase net performance to do factoring and LL
>assignments
>at the same time?
My guess would be no. Though George's code is beyond me, I've skimmed
through parts of it where his comments indicate that he's using the integer
unit to get something done while the FPU is busy. There probably isn't room
to squeeze in a separate line of computation.
>I'll be willing to send my p7334417 and worktodo.ini to anyone who's
>interested. Yes, you can have credit for the 45% completion. Email
This could raise issues with accuracy of transmisison. And you'd better make
sure that Primenet is capable of transferring the assignment properly.
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End of Mersenne Digest V1 #575
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