Mersenne Digest Thursday, March 16 2000 Volume 01 : Number 706 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 07:52:05 -0000 From: "Brian J. Beesley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mersenne: NTPRIME and it's priority... On 13 Mar 00, at 19:16, Aaron Blosser wrote: > According to Carmer a computer programmed to give standard > priority can use up to 90 percent of the computers capacity if no other > program is running." > > Well, I always thought that was a curious statement. Yeah. With a sane OS a process which demands CPU should get something pretty darn close to 100%, irrespective of its priority, provided that no other processes demand CPU at the same or a higher priority. After all, the CPU clock keeps running & it has to execute something - even if it's just a time-wasting loop (aka "null process"). > Would it be at all useful to have the program launch itself as priority 1, > and then elevate the priority of the "management" thread to 9 afterwards, > so that a cursory examination like the one done by the buffoons at US WEST > would be more indicative of the real priority of the program? Maybe. But nothing except relevant training can stop ignorant buffoons from engaging in behaviour typical for their kind. > > Moral of the story, US WEST bad... NTPRIME good. :-) > Err - I'd prefer to say "US WEST stupid, NTPRIME smart" Regards Brian Beesley _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 21:22:11 +0100 (CET) From: Henrik Olsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mersenne: NTPRIME and it's priority... On Mon, 13 Mar 2000, Aaron Blosser wrote: > Moral of the story, US WEST bad... NTPRIME good. :-) Actually, moral is "Installing software without explicit permission bad." At least you didn't try to hide its presence as I had a user do with the Seti@home client, which he'd renamed so it showed up in the process list as an apparently legal process, and crontab'ed so it only ran during nights. I was overridden by management on both suing for breach of contract, and reporting the incident to the police, apparently they felt the application he was installing was too important. - -- Henrik Olsen, Dawn Solutions I/S URL=http://www.iaeste.dk/~henrik/ Animal behaviour is best described by the four F's. Feed, Fight, Flee and Reproduce. _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 21:02:18 -0500 From: George Woltman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mersenne: NTPRIME and it's priority... Hi, At 07:16 PM 3/13/00 -0700, Aaron Blosser wrote: >and noticed that NTPRIME.EXE >shows a priority of 8 (normal), but has 2 threads. > >I further did a 'pslist -x ntprime' and it shows that there is one thread >running at priority 9, which I would assume is the "management" thread >(writing save files, etc), but there is another thread running at priority 1 >which is actually the thread using all the CPU time (as indicated by the >"user time" column). All the higher priority thread does is "listen" for stop service and system shutdown messages. When one of these messages arrives, it raises the priority of the other thread so that it can finish its iteration, write its save file, and stop. Regards, George _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 19:48:40 -0700 From: "Aaron Blosser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Mersenne: NTPRIME and it's priority... >> Moral of the story, US WEST bad... NTPRIME good. :-) >Actually, moral is "Installing software without explicit permission bad." Hehe...no comment. >At least you didn't try to hide its presence as I had a user do with the >Seti@home client, which he'd renamed so it showed up in the process list >as an apparently legal process, and crontab'ed so it only ran during >nights. No, sure didn't try to hid my involvement...my name and email address were right there in the INI file. :) No doubts in anyone's mind whodunnit. I like to think that if I really *wanted* to be clever, I could hide it quite well...but I guess I underestimated the reaction of US WEST. I figured someone might run across it, running on so many machines, but I built those machines...I made the master image for them all and used to be in charge of doing the updates on them (and they called me a "hacker"...sheesh). I guess I was used to getting away with making changes to their configuration that were necessary...I just assumed it would be no big deal, but whoops! >I was overridden by management on both suing for breach of contract, and >reporting the incident to the police, apparently they felt the >application he was installing was too important. They felt Seti@Home was too important? Sheesh...well, takes all kinds. I wish US WEST would have considered the contribution they could be making towards number theory and distributed computing, but they were more concerned about the possibility of this program crashing their machines... Anyone who has ever worked for US WEST could attest that NTPRIME was probably the most well behaved piece of software on those machines... :-) Aaron _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 19:50:18 -0700 From: "Aaron Blosser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Mersenne: NTPRIME and it's priority... >>I further did a 'pslist -x ntprime' and it shows that there is one thread >>running at priority 9, which I would assume is the "management" thread >>(writing save files, etc), but there is another thread running at priority 1 >>which is actually the thread using all the CPU time (as indicated by the >>"user time" column). >All the higher priority thread does is "listen" for stop service and system >shutdown messages. When one of these messages arrives, it raises the >priority of the other thread so that it can finish its iteration, write its >save file, and stop. I figured it handled that, as well as writing save files and that sort of thing. Maybe you should let the FBI know. :-) Aaron _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 19:19:54 -0800 From: Spike Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: (no subject) Aaron Blosser wrote: ...I happened to be viewing a list of processes on my NT machine today (using the fabulous PSLIST from www.sysinternals.com) and noticed that NTPRIME.EXE shows a priority of 8 (normal), but has 2 threads... With a modern desktop confuser the idle processes use ~98% of the CPU, even with three or four Microsloth apps running. In NT, hit control alt delete, then task manager and see what is using up the processor. This is a good demonstration for your big company IT manager. Show her that the machines are idle. spike _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 05:09:15 +0100 (CET) From: Henrik Olsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Mersenne: NTPRIME and it's priority... On Tue, 14 Mar 2000, Aaron Blosser wrote: > >> Moral of the story, US WEST bad... NTPRIME good. :-) > >Actually, moral is "Installing software without explicit permission bad." > > Hehe...no comment. > <snip> > >I was overridden by management on both suing for breach of contract, and > >reporting the incident to the police, apparently they felt the > >application he was installing was too important. > > They felt Seti@Home was too important? Sheesh...well, takes all kinds. I No, not Seti@Home. The application he'd been contracted to do that got him the access in the first place and which he hid the Seti client as a legal part of. > wish US WEST would have considered the contribution they could be making > towards number theory and distributed computing, but they were more concerned > about the possibility of this program crashing their machines... Anyone who > has ever worked for US WEST could attest that NTPRIME was probably the most > well behaved piece of software on those machines... :-) :) > > Aaron - -- Henrik Olsen, Dawn Solutions I/S URL=http://www.iaeste.dk/~henrik/ Somewhere almost out of hearing, children were at play. It was always a pleasant, lulling sound. Always provided, of course, you couldn't hear the actual words. Terry Pratchett, Hogfather _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 04:45:46 -0800 From: Stefan Struiker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: But Does It Do Windoze? Good Grief Linux -- 76 Million Transistors... PixelFusion Verifies 76 Million-Transistor Chip Using Mentor Graphics Deep Submicron Tools BRISTOL, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 15, 2000--Mentor Graphics Corp. today announced that PixelFusion, Ltd., has adopted and successfully deployed a comprehensive set of deep submicron (DSM) Mentor Graphics tools to design and verify the computer industry's most complex general-purpose chip design to date -- the FUZION 150 About FUZION 150 PixelFusion's FUZION 150 is a 0.25 micron, single-chip, massively parallel SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) processor with 24 megabits of on-chip embedded DRAM. This ultra high-performance chip delivers more than 1.5 trillion operations or 3 billion floating-point operations per second, along with 600 gigabytes per second of on-chip memory bandwidth. As a programmable, general-purpose computing device, the FUZION 150 offers maximum performance, features and flexibility to markets ranging from graphics and video to network processing.PixelFusion's breakthrough FUZION architecture is bringing supercomputer-like performance to today's high-end computing. About PixelFusion PixelFusion, a fabless semiconductor company, has developed FUZION, a breakthrough chip architecture that the company will use to achieve performanceleadership and create a sustainable business through several generations of silicon processes. The company was founded in 1997 by leaders in massively parallel computing and high-performance graphics. PixelFusion's headquarters and R&D facilities are located in Bristol, England, with a sales and marketing operation in Silicon Valley and an R&D center in North Carolina. For additional information, contact PixelFusion in the UK at +44 (0) 1454 878740, email , or visit http://www.pixelfusion.com Anybody got a P95 mole in Bristol? Stefanovic _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 16:11:53 +0000 From: Yvan Dutil <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: Y2k Goal reach!? It looks like the Y2K goal has been finaly reached. Those where the last below 5200000 for the first check. 4558069 61 0x063CCC220A5205__ 09-Mar-00 23:47 SW wood 4558097 61 0xC280498C95E27E__ 09-Mar-00 23:47 SW wood However, I think my 10 millions goal for 2001 will be unreachable. Yvan Dutil _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ End of Mersenne Digest V1 #706 ******************************
