This is all fine and dandy for factor candidates that fit in a CPU word. For factor candidates that don't fit in a CPU word, we have to switch to multi-precision math and we probably lose most chances to use the cycle-length vector optimization. When factor candidates don't fit into a CPU word, then the block base modulos are harder to calculate, as they're (maxint**(num_blocks-block_position)) % f
you understand, in GIMPS, we're dealing with numbers which are literally millions of bits long. In fact, the candidate that my office box (p4 3.8Ghz) is currently doing P-1 factoring on is 30,000,000 bits, or about 4 megabytes long.
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