On 31 Jul 2001, at 16:37, Christian Goetz wrote:
>
> 95+% done, connecting to prime.net -> GET NEW WORK !! -> start with
> new work !
No. You get new work when you have less than n days work queued up; n
is set in the Test/PrimeNet menu. The amount of work you have queued
up is checked every 65536 iterations. If you don't have a permanent
network connection and the program wants to talk to the server, there
will be a file "prime.spl" in the program's working directory.
If factoring is neccessary, that's done early just in case you find a
factor. In which case you'll have to fetch more work. If you left
factoring to the end & then find a factor, you have an empty queue &
are wasting time. With the existing scheme, you can defer contacting
the server again for a while (suppose it's temporarily down?) & get
on with completing the old work.
>
> After 5-7% the old workfile gets it's active flag back and will be
> completed.
No. When any factoring neccessary on the new assignment is completed.
Trial factoring done before P-1 if both are required. These days
trial factoring required as part of a DC or LL assignment is quite
rare.
>
> This situation is really b*llsh*t, imagine the new number is very
> high, it tooks 1 week to complete the 7% mark and complete the old
> nonprime.
Makes not a blind bit of difference to either your total throughput
or the project throughput, long term, if you _don't_ find a factor.
If you _do_ find a factor, as I explained above, it's better to find
it whilst you still have work queued up.
BTW there are documented ways of ensuring that you never do any
factoring work. But since it's desirable from the point of view of
the project as a whole to complete any factoring which the program
"wants" to do, find out how for yourself. If you downloaded the
program as part of the standard distribution, you have all the
information you need.
Regards
Brian Beesley
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