Mersenne: Differences betwixt NTPrime and Prime95

2001-05-15 Thread Aaron Blosser

 Hmm... well, then again, I'm looking at the NTPrime.  I've only got one
 machine running Prime95, and it's been so long...
 
 I thought it had all the same options though, but I could just be
terribly
 mistaken.
 
 Running NTSetup (part of the NT service package), I show version
20.6.5...

 I have version 20.6.1 - and the web page reads that all versions were
 last updated June 15 2000.  Something odd is going on...

Turns out that Prime95 is indeed 20.6.1 and NTPrime shows up as 20.6.5.

And yes, NTSetup will show the option I mentioned above, but Prime95 only
has a checkmark for receiving occassional newsletters.  How interesting.

Well, clears up that mystery.

Aaron


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Re: Overriding assigned exponent type (was Re: Mersenne: Re: 26 exponents)

2001-05-15 Thread Steinar H. Gunderson

On Mon, May 14, 2001 at 02:00:02PM -0700, Aaron Blosser wrote:
I fear that many folks may not be aware of the list, or find
that subscribing seems too hard (odd as that may sound to us experts :)

Or perhaps being set back by the description of an in-depth discussion
about Mersenne primes... ;-) When people start throwing the maths
around, I feel like I should take more maths soon :-P

Anyhow, no critique, but perhaps this _isn't_ a mailing list for the
general user. I personally like it, but the average SETI@Home `convert'
might not. Perhaps we could have a general `users' list instead?

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Re: Overriding assigned exponent type (was Re: Mersenne: Re: 26 exponents)

2001-05-15 Thread Nathan Russell

On Mon, 14 May 2001 23:33:48 +0200, Steinar H. Gunderson wrote:

On Mon, May 14, 2001 at 02:00:02PM -0700, Aaron Blosser wrote:
I fear that many folks may not be aware of the list, or find
that subscribing seems too hard (odd as that may sound to us experts :)

Or perhaps being set back by the description of an in-depth discussion
about Mersenne primes... ;-) When people start throwing the maths
around, I feel like I should take more maths soon :-P

I'd tend to agree - the list is, at times, too in-depth for my
understanding, though it's lead me to do a fair amount of research on
my own.  There are still discussions about CPU architecture, as well
as off-topic discussions about systems adminstration, that I don't
pretend to follow, but I've found that I've learned a lot reading
through those discussions.  

As for a 'users' mailing list, I don't feel that that's necessary; if
'ordinary users' want to get on the list, they can simply read only
those threads that they understand and are interested in.  The list
isn't so high-volume as to make that in any way prohibitive.  

Nathan
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Mersenne: Yeti at Home

2001-05-15 Thread Kevin Edge

You may be interested (briefly) in a new distributed computing 
project that I have come across - Yeti at Home. Details at:

http://www.phobe.com/yeti/index.html

Kevin Edge
{:)}

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Re: Mersenne: games one can play with genuine composites

2001-05-15 Thread Paul Landon

If a prime Q | M_C
then Order(2,Q) | C ;but not 1
Order(2,Q) | Q-1
F:=GCD(C,Q-1) != 1

F will either be C or one of it's divisors.
If Order(2,Q)==C then it has almost zero information
to tell us anything about the factors of C.

If C has 2 factors P0  P1 then the product of factors
with Order == C is M_C/(M_P0.M_P1)
with Order == P1 is M_P1
 Order == P0 is M_P0
(For more than 2 factors of C, Pofwo(C) is recursively
defined as M_C / all the pofwos of the divisors of C).
I would expect the probability that a factor of M_C
has these orders to be a non-decreasing function of these
products.
An approximation for the probabilities could be just the
ratio of these products.
Sadly for composites such as M727 which guesses have as
having a small number of factors and it is known that the
smallest factor is bigger than a decent bound, F will
equal M727 nearly all the time, and rarely will a factor
be found. There is also the rare case where the order of
Q = M_C but F=M_C
The distribution of Mersenne Divisors is such that small
Q will tend to have a smaller order, and any Q=2M_C
will not have order M_C.
If you are only searching for factors of M_C of the form
KC+1 then these will always have F=M_C and tell us nothing
about the factors of C. The only factors of M_C that help
with factoring C are those not of the form KC+1.
Stating the obvious, M_C is exponentially bigger than
C and even a trial divison of M_C using exponentiation
will take longer than meaningful operations on C.
For example a division of M_M727 is not practical, but if
a factor of M_C is found it is worth doing one GCD.

So an approximate heuristic that anyone can better by not
using a geometric mean or using knowledge of the distribution
of Mersenne Divisors, is that for C having 2 factors, the
probability of Q | M_C helping with factoring C is approx:-

  M_P0 + M_P1
---
   M_C+ M_P0 + M_P1
-
M_P0.M_P1  or not a lot!

Cheers,
Paul Landon

ps. Every train driver knows that Scottish sheep have
a maximum of 7 colours :-)

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Mersenne Digest V1 #851

2001-05-15 Thread Mersenne Digest


Mersenne Digest  Monday, May 14 2001  Volume 01 : Number 851




--

Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 16:14:07 -0400
From: Joshua Zelinsky [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Re: 26 exponents

Nathan Russel wrote:
Are you suggesting that, every time George offers exponents to the
members of this mailing list, he should send out a newsletter to every
participant - guaranteeing hundreds or thousands of replies for him to
deal with?  I think there may be no good solution to this.
Have the e-mails go to an account linked to the server. It would take a 
little work, but the whole process could be automated.

Regards,
Joshua Zelinsky
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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--

Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 20:23:45 -
From: Brian J. Beesley [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Re: 26 exponents

On 14 May 2001, at 8:45, Nathan Russell wrote:

 First of all, as Jud notes, the 'elitism' is already there, in that different
 machines get treated differently in the assignments that they are given.

Sorry, I don't buy that. Every system has exactly the same chance of 
picking up any given assignment; it's a matter of the time at which 
you make the request. And you _can_ override the assignment type 
which would be the default for your system, if you wish to do so.
 
 Even readers of this list
 get opportunities to acquire exponents or prebeta-test software, etc., that
 are not available to the unwashed masses.

AFAIK everyone is entitled to subscribe to this list, whether they 
participate by running assignments or not.
 
 Additionally, GIMPS,
 unlike most other projects, has exponents taht are 'better' than
 others.

In the absence of completed tests, small exponents are more likely to 
be prime than larger ones, as well as taking less effort to test. 
However, note that a considerable number of users have voluntarily 
chosen to run 10 million digit range exponents, thus reducing the 
probability that they will discover a prime. The increased reward for 
being successful counterbalances the reduced chance of success.

There is also a theoretical difference between those exponents 
congruent to 1 modulo 4 and those congruent to 3 modulo 4. However I 
believe that this is due to the fact that one of these groups has a 
larger probability of having a small factor; thus this irregularity 
is removed by the time that LL testing begins.

 Secondly, if - when I ask the server to give me whatever kind of work makes
 most sense - it gives me something else, whether out of spurious concern for
 my feelings or for any other reason, then not only are the programmers
 betraying my trust in them, they are also indicating that they don't trust me
 to ask for what I want.  

I agree. Either you allow people to choose the type of work they 
want, or you tell people plainly that you will select for them the 
type of work you will ask them to do. Either works, but a mixture is 
inconsistent.
 
 Note that an exponent given out for triple-checking has a microscopic
 chance of being prime (something like two in one billion), since it
 must
 
 1. Be prime (once chance in 60,000-70,000) and
 2. Have been missed by both previous tests (1 in 100 for each).  

NO! Conditional probability: if we need a third LL test run, it is 
because at least one of the other two _must_ be in error. So the 
probability of finding a prime on the third LL test run is (about) 
one half the probability of finding a prime on the second LL test run 
- - irrespective of the error rate, provided it is small.
 
 People need to be informed about
 departures from documented practice.
 
 Are you suggesting that, every time George offers exponents to the
 members of this mailing list, he should send out a newsletter to every
 participant - guaranteeing hundreds or thousands of replies for him to
 deal with?  I think there may be no good solution to this.  

Clearly this is ridiculous. I don't have a problem with George 
offerring a few exponents selectively through this list, because 
the list does not have a closed membership. The only sane alternative 
is to wait for deadline critical assignments to complete in the 
normal way - something which some people have vociferously objected 
to.


Regards
Brian Beesley
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--

Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 20:23:45 -
From: Brian J. Beesley [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Pentium 

Re: Mersenne: Re: 26 exponents

2001-05-15 Thread Daran

-Original Message-
From: Nathan Russell [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Brian J. Beesley [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: 15 May 2001 03:26
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Re: 26 exponents

Agreed.  Membership to the list indicates a slightly-more-than-casual
interest in the project, specifically a willingness to sift through a
few dozen messages per month in order to learn more about the project.
That interest might well also be a sign of someone who is more likely
to faithfully complete 'special' assignments in a relatively timely
fashion.

I'm sure it is.  My intention wasn't to criticise the practice.  It just seems
absurd to me to worry about 'elitism' in the choice of actual exponent
assigned, which the user isn't going to be aware of anyway, and then to be
content with the 'elitism' in the 'most sense' choice of test type, or in the
additional opportunities afforded to list members.  I put 'elitism' into
quotes because I don't agree that it is elitism at all.

Nathan Russell

Daran G.


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Re: Mersenne: Re: 26 exponents

2001-05-15 Thread Daran

-Original Message-
From: Nathan Russell [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: 13 May 2001 02:58
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Re: 26 exponents

On Sat, 12 May 2001 18:21:17 -0400, Jud McCranie wrote:

There would still be a distinction drawn between 'new' and
'experienced' users, and I think drawing any such distinction would
make new users feel less valued - and quite possibly lead them to join
one of the other fairly large projects, all of which are completely,
or nearly completely, automated.

Why should there be any less automation if multiply expired exponents are only
awarded to fast machines with a track record of reliability?

Alternatively, since nobody seems to find it objectionable, why not take these
exponents off the primmest server, and offer them to list subscribers only?

Nathan

Daran G.


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Re: Mersenne: Re: 26 exponents

2001-05-15 Thread Daran

-Original Message-
From: Jud McCranie [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: 15 May 2001 04:34
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Re: 26 exponents

At 09:44 PM 5/14/2001 -0400, Nathan Russell wrote:

They would still be contributing towards milestones.  If there are
exponents below a milestone that never have been assigned, they would get
them.

Are there any exponents below #38 that have never been assigned?

[...]

But there could be one smaller than what now seems to be #38, because there
are exponents in that range that haven't had even 1 LL.

I'm not adept at the number theory, but presumably these are more likely to be
prime for no other reason than because they are relatively small, and the
density of Mersenne primes decreases with size.

| Jud McCranie   |

Daran G.


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Re: Mersenne: Re: 26 exponents

2001-05-15 Thread Daran

-Original Message-
From: Steve [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: 14 May 2001 07:59
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Re: 26 exponents

That _might_ be a good idea, except in the eventual situation where both
participants return results indicating their number is indeed prime. Whoever
had the slightly slower machine will not be very happy!

That gets my vote for understatement-of-the-year.  :-)


BTW what happens now when a first-time check, (or for that matter, if a
double-check) discovers a new prime.  Surely this is checked immediately on
the fastest machine available to the project, and not left to the vagaries of
random allocation?

Steve Harris

Daran G.


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Mersenne: GIMPS accelerator?

2001-05-15 Thread Daran

I know very little about computer architecture, so please feel free to shoot
me down if what follow is complete nonsense.

GIMPS clients use the spare capacity of the primary processing resource within
any computer:- the CPU(s).  But most modern PCs have another component capable
of performing rapid and sophisticated calculations:- the GPU on the graphics
accelerator.  Is there any way that the GPU can be programmed to perform GIMPS
processing when otherwise not in use?  If this could be done, then it would
have the effect of turning every client computer into an multi-processor
system.

Regards

Daran G.


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Re: Mersenne: missing exponents?

2001-05-15 Thread Daran

-Original Message-
From: Nathan Russell [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: 15 May 2001 03:25
Subject: Re: Mersenne: missing exponents?

I have version 20.6.1 - and the web page reads that all versions were
last updated June 15 2000.  Something odd is going on...

That's the version I'm running.  Has there been an update since last June that
I don't know about?

Nathan

Daran G.


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Re: Mersenne: GIMPS accelerator?

2001-05-15 Thread John R Pierce



 I know very little about computer architecture, so please feel free to
shoot
 me down if what follow is complete nonsense.

 GIMPS clients use the spare capacity of the primary processing resource
within
 any computer:- the CPU(s).  But most modern PCs have another component
capable
 of performing rapid and sophisticated calculations:- the GPU on the
graphics
 accelerator.  Is there any way that the GPU can be programmed to perform
GIMPS
 processing when otherwise not in use?  If this could be done, then it
would
 have the effect of turning every client computer into an multi-processor
 system.

Virtually all GPU's in use today are fixed function hard wired graphics
accelerators.  There's no way to use them for general purpose computational
use.   Also, there's no APIs, and each chip vendor has a radically different
architecture.

-jrp


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Re: Mersenne: Re: 26 exponents

2001-05-15 Thread Jud McCranie

At 04:34 PM 5/15/2001 +0100, Daran wrote:

Are there any exponents below #38 that have never been assigned?

Not as far as I know, but there are over 20 that haven't had the first LL 
test completed.  But they should have all been assigned at least 24 months 
ago.

++
| Jud McCranie   |
||
| former temporary part-time adjunct |
| instructor of a minor university   |
++


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Mersenne: P4 executable

2001-05-15 Thread George Woltman

Hi all,

I've uploaded a version that fixes 2 bugs in the new P4 prime95.

1)  Trial factoring was broken.  In switching to MASM 6.15, an assembler
bug caused the factoring code to blow up.
2)  I restored a FPU init instruction that I accidentally deleted.  This caused
the excessive round-off errors when running the old FFT code.

Again, *FOR P4 USERS ONLY* the fixed version is at
ftp://mersenne.org/gimps/p95v21a.zip

Have fun,
George

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Re: Mersenne: GIMPS accelerator?

2001-05-15 Thread James Escamilla


--- Daran [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 I know very little about computer architecture, so please feel free
 to shoot
 me down if what follow is complete nonsense.
 
 GIMPS clients use the spare capacity of the primary processing
 resource within
 any computer:- the CPU(s).  But most modern PCs have another
 component capable
 of performing rapid and sophisticated calculations:- the GPU on the
 graphics
 accelerator.  Is there any way that the GPU can be programmed to
 perform GIMPS
 processing when otherwise not in use?  If this could be done, then it
 would
 have the effect of turning every client computer into an
 multi-processor
 system.
 
 Regards
 
 Daran G.
 
 

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Mersenne: Re: 26 exponents

2001-05-15 Thread Steinar H. Gunderson

On Tue, May 15, 2001 at 04:48:19PM +0100, Daran wrote:
BTW what happens now when a first-time check, (or for that matter, if a
double-check) discovers a new prime.  Surely this is checked immediately on
the fastest machine available to the project, and not left to the vagaries of
random allocation?

It is run on a different architecture, with different software. The
three first were (as far as I know) tested on Crays, while the 4th (M38
(we think)) was tested on an Alpha machine with mlucas, as far as I
remember.

The idea is to completely eliminate any possibility of a persistent
program or hardware bug :-)

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Re: Mersenne: GIMPS accelerator?

2001-05-15 Thread Gareth Randall

Daran,

This is an interesting piece of lateral thinking that deserves to go further than I 
think it actually does.

Essentially, I'm not sure how the operations that a graphics card can provide, such as 
line drawing, texture overlaying, raytraced light effects etc, could be made to 
implement a LL test or FFT etc which would require things like bit tests, conditioning 
branches and loops etc.

Conceivably additions could be done by superimposing textures and reading back the 
resulting frame buffer, but these wouldn't be 64-bit precision additions! Maybe some 
form of matrix multiplication could be done by rotating textures before superimposing? 
However, I think the resulting calculation efficiency would be very poor, and may 
never achieve useful precision.

Also, any code would be very hardware specific, and may only work if the display was 
not displaying, say, a desktop.

However, if someone could implement it, it could provide the *ultimate* in Mersenne 
related screen savers! What you'd see on the screen would be the actual calculations 
themselves taking place before your eyes, and with no overheads for displaying it 
either!

Yours,

=== Gareth Randall ===


Daran wrote:
 
 I know very little about computer architecture, so please feel free to shoot
 me down if what follow is complete nonsense.
 
 GIMPS clients use the spare capacity of the primary processing resource within
 any computer:- the CPU(s).  But most modern PCs have another component capable
 of performing rapid and sophisticated calculations:- the GPU on the graphics
 accelerator.  Is there any way that the GPU can be programmed to perform GIMPS
 processing when otherwise not in use?  If this could be done, then it would
 have the effect of turning every client computer into an multi-processor
 system.

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Re: Mersenne: Re: 26 exponents

2001-05-15 Thread Brian J. Beesley

On 14 May 2001, at 21:56, Nathan Russell wrote:

 otherwise, you might
 have someone using a 486 suddenly realize that their computer was
 doing a first-time check that would take over a year, get frustrated,
 and give up.  

A first-time check on a 10M exponent would take _several_ years on a 
486!

Actually I think that there may be a perceptual problem with many new 
users in that they may give up as soon as they realize that a most 
sense assignment is going to take several weeks to complete. 
Unfortunately there seems to be no easy way to fix this!
 
 There is also a theoretical difference between those exponents 
 congruent to 1 modulo 4 and those congruent to 3 modulo 4. However I 
 believe that this is due to the fact that one of these groups has a 
 larger probability of having a small factor; thus this irregularity 
 is removed by the time that LL testing begins.
 
 I think I read something similiar.  Might it relate to whether the
 first potential factor itself is prime, specifically whether it is
 divisible by 3? I can't do the arithmetic in my head, but I have a
 hunch... 

Um. 2p+1 = 3 mod 4 irrespective of whether p = 1 mod 4 or p = 3 mod 4

However for large p there doesn't seem to be any link to 
divisibility of 2p+1 by 3, or any other small prime.

The obvious bias against 3 mod 4 exponents is that those which are 
Sophie-Germain primes are guaranteed to be divisible by 2p+1.

We can also examine 2kp+1 mod 8, which must be 1 or 7 if it is a 
candidate factor of M(p). 

When p = 1 mod 4, p = 1 mod 8 or p = 5 mod 8, so 2p = 2 mod 8, 
therefore:

2p+1 = 3 mod 8, so can't be a factor
4p+1 = 5 mod 8, so can't be a factor
6p+1 = 7 mod 8, so might be a factor
8p+1 = 1 mod 8, so might be a factor
...

so the values of k which checking are 3, 4, 7, 8, 11, 12, ...

When p = 3 mod 4, p = 3 mod 8 or p = 7 mod 8, so 2p = 6 mod 8, 
therefore

2p+1 = 7 mod 8, so might be a factor
4p+1 = 5 mod 8, so can't be a factor
6p+1 = 3 mod 8, so can't be a factor
8p+1 = 1 mod 8, so might be a factor
...

so the values of k which need checking are 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12, ...

The multiples of 4 are common to both series, but the other possible 
k values are smaller in the p = 3 mod 4 series than those in the 
p = 1 mod 4 series. And, other things being equal, smaller k values 
are in general more likely to be provide a factor than larger ones.

However, trial factoring to k  10^6 surely reduces the difference 
to a miniscule amount.

 Perhaps clicking the 'give me the work that makes the most sense' box
 should immediately set the appearance of the others to the work that
 will be chosen, rather than simply graying them out.  

Agreed.


Regards
Brian Beesley
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Re: Mersenne: GIMPS accelerator?

2001-05-15 Thread James Escamilla

We currently use the FPU (floating point unit) which most office
software doesn't use.  The GPU is hard coded for graphics and not
really useful for anything else.

--- Daran [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 I know very little about computer architecture, so please feel free
 to shoot
 me down if what follow is complete nonsense.
 
 GIMPS clients use the spare capacity of the primary processing
 resource within
 any computer:- the CPU(s).  But most modern PCs have another
 component capable
 of performing rapid and sophisticated calculations:- the GPU on the
 graphics
 accelerator.  Is there any way that the GPU can be programmed to
 perform GIMPS
 processing when otherwise not in use?  If this could be done, then it
 would
 have the effect of turning every client computer into an
 multi-processor
 system.
 
 Regards
 
 Daran G.
 
 

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Re: Overriding assigned exponent type (was Re: Mersenne: Re: 26 exponents)

2001-05-15 Thread Steinar H. Gunderson

On Tue, May 15, 2001 at 10:23:33PM -, Brian J. Beesley wrote:
If you understand _nothing_ discussed on a mailing list, there's no 
point in subscribing. Similarly if you understand _everything_. You 
can always delete the messages which you consider beyond your 
intellect, or beneath contempt. Personally I like the range we have 
at present.

Yes -- that is my opinion too. I skim quite a lot, though ;-)

Some of the deeper maths makes me go away  read up on the topic,  
occasionally I get a bit wiser as a result.

Hmmm, I think I've learned quite a bit of maths just be skimming :-)
It's surprising how much you can learn just by looking at a clueful
calculation, even if you don't really understand the maths behind it.
Now, just to print out my maths hand-in where one of the proofs utilizes
(simple!) modular arithmetic, which I've learned... here. :-) (We haven't
had it in school yet, but I suppose we will next year.)

(If anybody wants to know, it's `prove that n^3 - n has 24 as a factor,
for odd n' :-) )

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Mersenne: Primestats perl script updated, (bug fix).

2001-05-15 Thread Steve

Hi All

I've noticed that sometimes the topproducers table goes a bit 
strange, this causes the primestats script to output 2 Meg worth
of error messages, not good if you run it in a cron job, and then
the cron job backs up your inbox.  

So I've tracked the bug down and fixed it so now you only get 24
lines of error message when we have a problem with topproducers.shtml
rather than 2 Megs worth.

It's here: http://www.zeropps.uklinux.net/linstuff.html

-- 
Cheers
Steve  email mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

%HAV-A-NICEDAY Error not enough coffee  0 pps. 

web http://www.zeropps.uklinux.net/

or  http://start.at/zero-pps

  1:35am  up 103 days,  2:22,  2 users,  load average: 1.03, 1.08, 1.11
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Mersenne: SUMOUT errors

2001-05-15 Thread Nathan Russell

In the course of a single P-1 run, I've gotten 3 SUMOUT errors:

[Tue May 15 08:20:24 2001]
SUMOUT error occurred.
[Tue May 15 12:04:41 2001]
SUMOUT error occurred.
[Tue May 15 20:05:15 2001]
SUMOUT error occurred.

In the past fifteen months with GIMPS, I had gotten only two errors.
I can't help wondering if this could have something to do with a
corrupt Win98 swapfile, since all of the errors occured during Stage
2; however, I would think that that would have caused far more errors.
Additionally, I've only had one system 

I'll run a thorough Scandisk tonight.  I don't know if CPU overheating
might be a problem, since I just moved the machine home and it's about
70-75 Farenheit here during the day.  The machine 'sounds' exactly the
same, and since I have Asperger's Syndrome (a mild form of autism) I
tend to trust my sense of hearing implicitely.  That said, if there's
a hardware problem of some sort, I'd want to have it checked out very
promptly!  

The major changes in the past several days:

1. I am now using my modem rather than my ethernet card.
2. As said above, i'm home, and it's warmer (though the machine has
operated in an environment that was warmer still this past August).
Also, when I put my hand at the vent, it barely feels luke-warm - and
it felt hot to the point of being uncomfortable before.  
3. The machine was transported about 70 miles, and might have been
somehow jolted - but appears to work fine.  
4. All three errors occured during P-1 Stage 2, and I specifically
remember that the machine was swapping fairly heavily at the time of
the first and second errors (I had stopped back to check email).  I'll
reduce the allowed memory by 10 megs or so when this run is over.  
5. I was using my software modem at those times - but not at the time
of the third error, and I'd used it without trouble earlier this
weekend, but not during heavy swapping.  

Any insight would be appreciated.  I've never had stability problems
before.   I'll be more concerned if they continue when this P-1 run is
over, at about midnight.  

Regards,
Nathan
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Re: Mersenne: GIMPS accelerator?

2001-05-15 Thread Jason Stratos Papadopoulos



On Tue, 15 May 2001, Gareth Randall wrote:

 Also, any code would be very hardware specific, and may only work if
the display was not displaying, say, a desktop.
 
 However, if someone could implement it, it could provide the *ultimate*
in Mersenne related screen savers! What you'd see on the screen would be
the actual calculations themselves taking place before your eyes, and
with no overheads for displaying it either!


This question pops up every once in a while. A few years ago I looked
through a postscript manual wondering how difficult it would be to build a
postscript file that crunched RC5 keys when a printer tried to render it. 

The latest bleeding edge graphics cards are programmable to a limited
degree (am I thinking of the ATI Radeon here?) but not nearly programmable
enough, I'm sure. 

Heck, at least these ideas have a better chance than the guys who want to
crack the programming on kids' toys to make them crunch RC5 keys  :)

jasonp

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Re: Mersenne: GIMPS accelerator?

2001-05-15 Thread Russel Brooks

John R Pierce wrote:
 Virtually all GPU's in use today are fixed function hard wired graphics
 accelerators.  There's no way to use them for general purpose computational
 use.   Also, there's no APIs, and each chip vendor has a radically different
 architecture.

Too bad, the idea might also have given us an interesting screen
saver as a side effect!  :-)

Cheers... Russ

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Re: Mersenne: SUMOUT errors

2001-05-15 Thread Jeramy Ross

I don't really know how much help this will be since I don't know your exact
situation and am not a expert by any means, but here goes!

First, the software modem may be a culprit.  I have had problems with ones
of the HSP variety.  Most show up as 'HSP Micromodem56' or something very
similar on your system.  Most of these modems also use a chipset
manufactured by PCTel.  Fairly stable, but use a nice chunk of CPU time when
online, and I have received errors when I am checking email and/or surfing
the web while using this type of modem.  I have no hard evidence to tie this
modem to the errors, but all errors happened when I was using that modem or
soon after (I hooked up a external modem just to see if the same would
happen with it and I did not receive errors when using it).  I have no idea
if you have a modem similar to that one or not, but it may be the problem.

Also, the electrical environment may be vastly different.  I am assuming
that where you had your computer was at school, and it is now at home.  At
my home, I have problems with various utility problems, and have been told
by others that utility problems could cause such errors.  I invested in a
UPS with line conditioning to hopefully control some of those problems.
Maybe one of these two things could be your problem.. I wish you the best of
luck in finding and fixing the problem!

- Jeramy

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Re: Mersenne: GIMPS accelerator?

2001-05-15 Thread John R Pierce

 This question pops up every once in a while. A few years ago I looked
 through a postscript manual wondering how difficult it would be to build a
 postscript file that crunched RC5 keys when a printer tried to render it.

postscript is essentially forth, after all.  Trouble is, most postscript
interpreters are pretty damn slow.

 The latest bleeding edge graphics cards are programmable to a limited
 degree (am I thinking of the ATI Radeon here?) but not nearly programmable
 enough, I'm sure.

NVIDIA's chips are semi programmable too, but a big hurdle is lack of
documentation on the 3D rendering engine.  That stuff is trade secret.

I *do* suspect you could use the geometry engine (aka Transformation
Lighting and Projection) to do large numbers of fixed point 3x3
vector-matrix dot products with limited precision rather quickly.  The
question is, how useful would this be?  The pipeline is probably such that
you load one matrix and transform a large number of x,y,z vectors through
it at a rather high speed.  I'm not sure how useful this primitive would be
in doing FFT operations.

The newest Geforce3 chip also has both Pixel Shaders and Vertex Shaders
which are each a SIMD programmable vector processors.  The Pixel Shaders
operate on every pixel and generate the actual RGB pixels while the Vertex
Processors operate on the geometry and texture mapping coordinates of the 3D
mesh...   I don't know much about these, but pixels are only 8 bits per
component so the pixel processors can't be very wide.

I'm also not sure how fast you can get results OUT of the nvidia memory.
Typically, these cards have 32-64MB of very high speed dedicated DDR SDRAM,
but its optimized for the GPU to write into the memory, and the display
refresh engine to read from it, I don't know how fast results could be read
back into the host system

-jrp


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Re: Mersenne: GIMPS accelerator?

2001-05-15 Thread Ken Kriesel

Among others, I raised the question with George Woltman some time ago.
I trust his judgment that his time is better spent elsewhere.

However, I wonder if there might be some possibilities in trial factoring
there.
That would present the possibility of a factoring screensaver, and an FPU
LLtest, running together on what is nominally a uniprocessor.

Just speculation,


Ken

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Mersenne Digest V1 #852

2001-05-15 Thread Mersenne Digest


Mersenne Digest Tuesday, May 15 2001 Volume 01 : Number 852




--

Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 23:33:48 +0200
From: Steinar H. Gunderson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Overriding assigned exponent type (was Re: Mersenne: Re: 26 exponents)

On Mon, May 14, 2001 at 02:00:02PM -0700, Aaron Blosser wrote:
I fear that many folks may not be aware of the list, or find
that subscribing seems too hard (odd as that may sound to us experts :)

Or perhaps being set back by the description of an in-depth discussion
about Mersenne primes... ;-) When people start throwing the maths
around, I feel like I should take more maths soon :-P

Anyhow, no critique, but perhaps this _isn't_ a mailing list for the
general user. I personally like it, but the average SETI@Home `convert'
might not. Perhaps we could have a general `users' list instead?

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--

Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 10:43:00 -0400
From: Nathan Russell [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Overriding assigned exponent type (was Re: Mersenne: Re: 26 exponents)

On Mon, 14 May 2001 23:33:48 +0200, Steinar H. Gunderson wrote:

On Mon, May 14, 2001 at 02:00:02PM -0700, Aaron Blosser wrote:
I fear that many folks may not be aware of the list, or find
that subscribing seems too hard (odd as that may sound to us experts :)

Or perhaps being set back by the description of an in-depth discussion
about Mersenne primes... ;-) When people start throwing the maths
around, I feel like I should take more maths soon :-P

I'd tend to agree - the list is, at times, too in-depth for my
understanding, though it's lead me to do a fair amount of research on
my own.  There are still discussions about CPU architecture, as well
as off-topic discussions about systems adminstration, that I don't
pretend to follow, but I've found that I've learned a lot reading
through those discussions.  

As for a 'users' mailing list, I don't feel that that's necessary; if
'ordinary users' want to get on the list, they can simply read only
those threads that they understand and are interested in.  The list
isn't so high-volume as to make that in any way prohibitive.  

Nathan
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--

Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 16:48:14 +0100
From: Kevin Edge [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Mersenne: Yeti at Home

You may be interested (briefly) in a new distributed computing 
project that I have come across - Yeti at Home. Details at:

http://www.phobe.com/yeti/index.html

Kevin Edge
{:)}

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The opinions herein are my own and,
unless explicitly stated,
may not represent those of
Northgate Information Systems

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Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 18:12:39 +0200
From: Paul Landon [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Mersenne: games one can play with genuine composites

If a prime Q | M_C
then Order(2,Q) | C ;but not 1
Order(2,Q) | Q-1
F:=GCD(C,Q-1) != 1

F will either be C or one of it's divisors.
If Order(2,Q)==C then it has almost zero information
to tell us anything about the factors of C.

If C has 2 factors P0  P1 then the product of factors
with Order == C is M_C/(M_P0.M_P1)
with Order == P1 is M_P1
 Order == P0 is M_P0
(For more than 2 factors of C, Pofwo(C) is recursively
defined as M_C / all the pofwos of the divisors of C).
I would expect the probability that a factor of M_C
has these orders to be a non-decreasing function of these
products.
An approximation for the probabilities could be just the
ratio of these products.
Sadly for composites such as M727 which guesses have as
having a small number of factors and it is known that the
smallest factor is bigger than a decent bound, F will
equal M727 nearly all the time, and rarely will a factor
be found. There is also the rare case where the order of
Q = M_C but F=M_C
The distribution of Mersenne Divisors is such that small
Q will tend to have a smaller order, and any Q=2M_C
will not have order M_C.
If you are only searching for factors of M_C of the form
KC+1 then these will always have F=M_C and tell us nothing
about the factors of C. The only factors of M_C that help
with factoring C are those not of the form KC+1.
Stating the obvious, M_C