><<1) What is the approximate P-90 computing time to test for primality
>for a 1, 10, 100 million (& 1 trillion!) digit Mersenne Primes?>>
>Generally, a billion comes after 100 million, but I can't remember how the
>British and other countries work with billions. And I don't think that many
>people run P90s now for GIMPS.... I hope.
Why not? A P90 adds 1 P90 CPU year per year (give or take). Not everyone
can afford a PIII/550.
><<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?>>
>Moore's Law. Computers double in power approximately every 18 months. Has
>worked for over a decade. Will _probably_ work for at least the next 5 years
>and even up until 2020. At or around 2020, transistors hit the .01 micron
>quantum limit, and "conventional" computing reaches its peak. Then, we break
>out the Pentium XIV Quantum Computers, and proceed merrily on our way. :-)
By that time (hopefully) the Intel architecture will be dead. I *really*
hope that mass market computers in 2020 are not backwards compatable to the
8086, as that would be truly stupid (after all, my computer isn't backwards
compatable to Multivac). In fact my computer would probably be much better
off if it weren't backwards compatable to the 8086. Imagine how fast a
version of George's program would be if everyone used ULTRASparc or MIPS
or whatnot instead of the Intel...
-Lucas
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