At 08:14 PM 3/20/2000 EST, you ("Nathan Russell"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>)wrote:
>
>Another potential issue that just occured to me:
>
>If someone has an exponent partially done under version 19.x or 18.x and
>upgrades and it finds a factor, will they get more credit for the factor
>than they lost for the partial LL run? This is something that might be a
>significant issue for those who are running P-100's and comperable machines,
>where it would be a loss of months rather than weeks. If this has already
>been thought through, I still feel that it would be good for the list to be
>aware of that fact.
>
>Best regards,
>Nathan
George has previously indicated that P-1 factoring is attempted, before
continuing on, if the LLtest in progress is less than 50% done, and
otherwise not. This is done as a total throughput optimization of GIMPS.
If the LLtest is more than 50% done, the LLtest continues.
But someone else may later P-1 factor the number and succeed in finding
the factor. Then all the time to LLtest is uncredited, as happens for all
LLtests,
whether prime95 V20, V14.1 or earlier, or some other program. (Watch
David Slowinski's cpu credit and number of exponents credited slowly
shrink, as
factoring gradually erodes his totals. Credit for dozens of my early tests
has
also been factored away.)
If the person with the LLtest in progress finds the factor, he gets the
factoring credit.
Ken
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