I find it amusing that you do think a 550mhz too slow. When I started the test
in september I had just upgraded my duel processor 350mhz pentium II to a state
of the art duel pentium 550mhz pentium III 9 months later it's classified as
inadequate. I can't wait to see what will be considered slow 9 months from now.
1gig? I wish I had this slow 2 x 550 back in 1994 when those awesome new pentium
60's came out and blew away our 486's (by the way I may be off with Year). For
some of us that have 5 or 6 older computers sucking down electricity in the name
of science, it is a big thing to hook them up to dial in. Since there are
plenty of 10 million digit numbers to test I and it is known that it will take
close to a year to test them arrangements should be made to extend the time of
re-assignments of numbers that large. I have been part of gimps for almost 3
years. But its attitudes like this that make me want to save the 20-30 a month
in electricity and just shut them down....But I realize that every cpu cycle
does advance the cause. I may be silly but I get excited when I look in and see
that the sustained throughput is over 1100 gigaflops, and that there are close
to 28,000 computers working on this project. In order to keep a state of the art
computer working on this project one would need to buy a new computer every 3
months.
Thanks L. Murray
P.S. after having those 10 million digits 9 months on my individual page it now
looks naked and lonely
"Brian J. Beesley" wrote:
> On 18 Jun 00, at 21:25, Larry Murray wrote:
>
> > I thought had occurred to me with this prize that is being offered. what
> > happens if you work on a number for 6 months and then it is re-assigned to
> > a person with a faster computer and their computer finishes the
> > computation first and it is found to be a prime. Who is entitled to the
> > Prize? Does that mean if you have A slower 550mhz computer don't bother
> > testing a 10 million number? If you do make sure you always check in
> > because it can be taken from you? On the same subject what-if you're the
> > person the number is reassigned to and you work on a number for 6
> > months to find that it was a reassignment and it was found to be
> > prime...I think with the longer testing time of the 10 million digit
> > numbers the time between reassignment of those numbers should be much
> > longer. I personally have been running 3 ten million digit numbers on
> > Pentium 550's since September of 1999 and hardly
> > ever even bother with the computers that are running them I have strictly
> > devoted them to the mersenne project...ANYWAY ITS SOMETHING TO THINK
> > ABOUT--TAKE CARE ALL
>
> You have to check in occasionally to keep the assignment. This is
> entirely reasonable since some people are bound to "default" without
> bothering to return the assignment.
>
> If it's too inconvenient to connect the actual systems to allow them
> to check in, you can use the PrimeNet Manual Testing page to check
> assignments in manually in order to prevent them from expiring. Since
> you can "extend" an assignment for up to 120 days (plus the 60 day
> grace period) you should only need to do this two or three times
> during the run.
>
> If you run assignments which aren't given to you by PrimeNet, or
> continue to work on assignments which have been reallocated due to
> your failure to check them in occasionally, I don't think you should
> be entitled to a share of any prize. However it looks as though,
> according to the EFF rules (which I haven't looked at for a while),
> the first discovery reported to EFF takes precedence.
>
> Since the expected return on testing numbers in the 10 million digit
> range is of the order of 40 cents / PIII-550 year, I doubt too many
> people are participating simply because of the existence of the prize
> ... ?
>
> Also, note that it's entirely possible that the EFF prize will be won
> by someone working on non-Mersenne numbers using entirely different
> software and/or hardware.
>
> BTW for QA reasons I am already working on a double-check of a 10
> million digit number before the first test is completed. I will make
> damn sure that the "official" owner of the assignment reports the
> final result, abandons or allows the assignment to expire before I
> report the result myself. (And the "official" owner knew this before
> I started!)
>
> Personally, and bearing in mind that there are a lot of much smaller
> exponents which still require testing, I consider a standard PC
> running a PIII-550 to be inadequate for running 10 million digit
> exponents. I'm using an Athlon 650, which is about 35% faster, and I
> have a system (self-)built for reliability rather than down to a
> price. However, GOOD LUCK to all those who do chance their arm!
>
> Regards
> Brian Beesley
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