OK - I'm not a math guru, and am new to the list. I can't find a
recent archive so I hope this isn't a repeated question. Perhaps
there is someone out there that could help me get some answers to the
following basic questions & ideas. Feel free to send me email
directly. Thanks!
My questions:
1) What is the approximate P-90 computing time to test for primality
for a 1, 10, 100 million (& 1 trillion!) digit Mersenne Primes?
2) What are the approximate N's that correspond to the beginnings of
these areas?
3) Assuming the continued (exponential?) growth of GIMPS, when will
GIMPS begin to assign work in each of these areas?
Why I'm asking:
I suspect that the ranges for N that GIMPS is searching are far from
the next eligible EFF prize for 10 million digit primes. I was
wondering if anyone knows what the smallest N is that gives a 10
million digit prime might be. (I have no way to calculate it myself.)
Of course I understand that there is a higher purpose to GIMPS than
the money - and that it would be better to "fill in the tables" of N
than just skip to the area that would yield prize money.
I further suspect (perhaps someone agrees?) that GIMPS will run out of
steam when it starts reaching the values of N that might yield 10
million digit Mersenne primes... This is because the average home PC
will no longer be able to complete a primality test in a reasonable
amount of time. People might be silly enough to sign out 1000 or
10,000 days worth of work to check a large N, but it's unlikely that
any results would ever be completed or returned to GIMPS.
Or perhaps there are future plans to sub-divide work for large N's?
Or perhaps people feel that home computers will catch up in power with
the added work of larger N's and won't be a problem in future years?
I'd be curious to hear anyone's thoughts on this.
-Kevin
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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