Hi,
>
> Furthermore, one could save the value of for instance the 10 000th
> iteration, and check if a later iteration gets the same value,
> if it does, one knows that the value will never get to 0 anymore.
This has been discussed - I seem to remember that the conclusion was that
because the chance of it happening is negligible, it's not worth the
computing time to check, or the memory to store the value of the sequence at
particular intervals. This is discussed in the FAQ (Question 2.3)
> If the value 2 keeps repeating one knows that one iteration had as
> result a 0, the value will always remain 2 after that. (unless 0 < m <
> 4)
>
I don't know if it is possible for this to happen before the p-1'th
iteration (I don't think it is). If it is then I assume it is already
checked for.
I'm not sure about you're first idea - I think it may suffer from the
problem of increasing the time of each iteration, therefore even though it
saves a bit of speed on each iteration it might not cause an overall speed
up.
Michael Bell.
_________________________________________________________________
Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
