On 11 Feb 2001, at 18:17, Jeramy Ross wrote:
> Nathan Russell wrote:
> *snip*
>
> > This frankly makes me wonder how much longer there will be a place in
> > GIMPS for slower machines. I'm not saying that's a bad thing - after
> > all, 486s and original pentiums were the workforce when GIMPS began,
> > and I wouldn't feel comfortable with the amount of opportunity for
> > error involved in using one for GIMPS now.
>
> This tends to be a thorn in some people's sides when I have tried to get
> them to run GIMPS on their machines. It would seem that some view the
> GIMPS project as an 'elite' minded group that requires the use of the more
> powerful PC's out there due to it's resource demanding nature. They don't
> want to dedicate several months to a project and as the size of the
> exponents
> grow their usefulness shrinks and eventually they will be deemed no longer
> useful for the project.
So what's new? That bleeding-edge P100 you bought five years ago is a
long way short of state-of-the-art now!
I would have thought that this is _positive_. Those people who are
lucky enough to have today's SoA systems, but do not need 100% of the
CPU power on a 24x7 basis, often feel priveleged to be able to
participate in a project which really can use the power - even if
they've no real interest in the underlying project per se. Sure, that
SoA system will look less impressive in a year or two's time - but,
then, it can move on to double-checking. Even if they give up after a
while, when the system becomes miserably underpowered by the
standards of that time, that's still useful input.
> This view has only been expressed by a few people that I have talked to,
> but it maybe an opinion that will grow as the month's pass on. One can see
> that the usefullness of the slower machines is limited as we march on
> through
> Primeland (If for no other reason other than it will take so long to
> complete a
> task with the slower machines).
> This undoubtedly will be a natural evolution of the project, but may
> leave a
> bitter taste in the mouths of those who are on slower machines. Who knows?
> I certainly don't know the impact of this on the project....good or bad..
Well - perhaps we need something to attract new users - a new search
area which would provide short runs with rapid feedback, or some
"useful" work which slower systems might complete before they make
their journey to the landfill site. With respect to the message I
forwarded earlier, perhaps hunting for primes of the form (2^p+1)/3
might be interesting, and with at least a conjectural link to
Mersenne numbers.
Regards
Brian Beesley
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