Mersenne Digest Wednesday, June 2 1999 Volume 01 : Number 566
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 31 May 1999 13:14:33 -0500
From: "Robert Bozett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: Problem with Prime95
Hello, List.
I have a slight problem with Prime95. Since the upgrade to v18.01 I have
been receiving nothing but double checking assignments even though I request
only numbers for primality testing. I'm not complaining about double
checking, but I'm curious what's going on. Does it have something to do with
the bug in v17?
I've been running Prime95 for about a year now and have run nothing but the
primality test even with my old 486. I'm running a P2 300 now with adequate
memory.
Any suggestions or ideas?
Thanks!
Rob
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Date: Mon, 31 May 1999 22:14:47 +0100
From: Gordon Spence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: LL s/w for Sun Sparc
I am taking delivery of a Sun Ultra-10 Sparcstation on thursday
(333Mhz/512MB ram). I know nothing (yet!) about Unix so I am not in a
position to compile my own. Can anybody point me to a precompiled
executable for Solaris 7?
Thanks
Gordon Spence (finder of M2976221)
Gordon Spence, Nokia IP Telephony
Applications Engineer Grove House, Waltham Way,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] White Waltham, Maidenhead,
http://www.nokiaiptel.com/ Berkshire, SL6 3TN, UK.
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Date: Tue, 01 Jun 1999 21:26:59 -0400
From: George Woltman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: New Mersenne Prime found!! Not yet verified
Hi all!
The 38th Mersenne prime was *probably* discovered today. The exponent
is in the 6,000,000s (the prime is in the neighborhood of 2,000,000 digits).
The discoverer is a member of the top 200 contributors according to
http://www.mersenne.org/top.htm
As was agreed after the last prime was discovered, I'm announcing
the news to this mailing list immediately. When the prime is properly
verified and published, then I'll announce the exact exponent. This process
was agreed to as a compromise in keeping everyone informed, yet minimizing
any chance of the news prematurely leaking to the press.
And now the bad news. Since the EFF award requires publication
of the result in a refereed academic journal, the publication process
will take longer than normal. It could be a few months.
Tentative congratulations to all GIMPS members for their contribution
in this exciting discovery!!
Oh yeah, and special thanks to Scott Kurowski and entropia.com.
We wouldn't have found this prime without his tireless Primenet server work.
Now let's go find the 39th!
Best regards,
George
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Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1999 18:44:10 -0700 (PDT)
From: Bradford Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: Prime, UNVERIFIED
What's the stroy with this prime that Primenet says is unverified?
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Date: Tue, 01 Jun 1999 21:49:42 -0400
From: George Woltman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: New Mersenne Prime found!! Not yet verified
Hi all,
One more thing, thankfully this was not an exponent that was
originally tested by the buggy version 17.
Best regards,
George
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Date: Wed, 02 Jun 1999 07:20:31 +0200
From: Petri Holopainen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: New Mersenne Prime found!! Not yet verified
George Woltman wrote:
>
> The 38th Mersenne prime was *probably* discovered today. The exponent
> is in the 6,000,000s (the prime is in the neighborhood of 2,000,000 digits).
Wow! Finally, we've been waiting for this for months now!
Congratulations to George, Scott and the discoverer!
- -- Petri Holopainen
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Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 09:22:43 +0200
From: "Grieken, Paul van" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: FW: questions
> Dear reader,
>
> 1. Two days ago prime has finished the exponent. The last line in
> the log told me to send the results to Mr. Woltman.
> Until now my personal result is not yet updated. Why?
> 2. If I install prime on my mew computer, pentium III 450 MHz the
> self test will take 16 Hours. Is this normal for a 450MHz machine.
> 3. Can I ask for a new exponent if the old one has not yet been
> finished according to the reports, in real it has finished but that is
> not to be seen on the reports.
>
> Greetings from the netherlands,
>
> Paul van Grieken
> Alcatel Telecom Nederland
> afd: T-TAC NE
> Postbus 3292
> 2280GG rijswijk
> Nederland
>
> Phone: + 31 70 307 9353
> Fax: + 31 70 307 9476
> Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> Prive:
> Ruys de Beerenbrouckstraat 1
> 2613AS Delft
> Netherlands
>
> Marklin collector
>
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Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 09:30:02 +0200
From: "Grieken, Paul van" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: questions
> Dear reader,
>
> 1. Two days ago prime has finished the exponent. The last
> line in the log told me to send the results to Mr. Woltman.
> Until now my personal result is not yet updated. Why?
> 2. If I install prime on my mew computer, pentium III 450
> MHz the self test will take 16 Hours. Is this normal for a 450MHz
> machine.
> 3. Can I ask for a new exponent if the old one has not yet
> been finished according to the reports, in real it has finished but
> that is not to be seen on the reports.
>
> Greetings from the netherlands,
>
> Paul van Grieken
> Alcatel Telecom Nederland
> afd: T-TAC NE
> Postbus 3292
> 2280GG rijswijk
> Nederland
>
> Phone: + 31 70 307 9353
> Fax: + 31 70 307 9476
> Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> Prive:
> Ruys de Beerenbrouckstraat 1
> 2613AS Delft
> Netherlands
>
> Marklin collector
>
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Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 09:29:27 +0200
From: "Grieken, Paul van" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: speed question pentium III
> Members,
> Can one of you give me an answer on the following problem.
>
> But first congratulations with the discovered prime.
>
> Now I have a new pentium III 450MHz with windows 98 plus at home I
> wanted to run prime on it.
> The fastest iteration was in 0.21 sec.
> I turned the monitor off.
> The power management was set to:
> Computer never in standby
> Disk drived off in 10 min.
> Monitor off in 15 min.
> When I switched the monitor on the next day I saw that the iterations
> speed was dropped during the night to 1.2 sec.
>
> Why did this happen and how can I maintain the speed of 0.21 sec also
> during the night, with of course as less power as possible.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Paul van Grieken
> Alcatel Telecom Nederland
> afd: T-TAC NE
> Postbus 3292
> 2280GG rijswijk
> Nederland
>
> Phone: + 31 70 307 9353
> Fax: + 31 70 307 9476
> Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> Prive:
> Ruys de Beerenbrouckstraat 1
> 2613AS Delft
> Netherlands
>
> Marklin collector
>
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------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 10:03:15 GMT
From: "Brian J Beesley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: speed question pentium III
"Grieken, Paul van" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > Now I have a new pentium III 450MHz with windows 98 plus at
home I
> > wanted to run prime on it.
> > The fastest iteration was in 0.21 sec.
> > I turned the monitor off.
> > The power management was set to:
> > Computer never in standby
> > Disk drived off in 10 min.
> > Monitor off in 15 min.
> > When I switched the monitor on the next day I saw that the iterations
> > speed was dropped during the night to 1.2 sec.
> >
> > Why did this happen and how can I maintain the speed of 0.21 sec also
> > during the night, with of course as less power as possible.
Well, without examining your system setup I can't say for sure, but
it sounds like you have three different CPU modes: full power,
standby and sleep. In standby mode, the CPU will run at low
speed; in sleep mode, it will stop. It sounds as though the CPU
changed to standby mode.
Power management is confusing as it is set in two places: in the
system BIOS setup, and in the operating system. Different
systems have different methods for accessing the system BIOS
setup, something like pressing <F2> whilst the memory check is
running after switch-on or system reset. I don't run Windows 98
and therefore don't know exactly how to get at its power
management setup; in '95 use the "Power" option on the Control
Panel.
You have to let the CPU run full speed all the time in order for
Prime95 to run flat out. If the system clock is slowed in a power-
saving mode, then Prime95 will slow down. A speed drop of about
6x (from 0.2s to 1.2s) sounds about right.
Personally, on desktop systems, I do not allow the hard disk to
time out either. Starting the hard disk takes several seconds,
during which time the power draw is high, and the disk wears out if
the heads keep landing on the same zone when the disk spins
down. Modern hard disk drives have a low power consumption and
are designed to last decades in continuous use. They will almost
certainly fail sooner if used "intermittently". The story may be
different on portables when used on battery power, but I cannot see
any justification for allowing the disk drive on a desktop to time out.
If you're worried about pollution, CO2 emission etc., I could point
out that the environmental damage caused by producing one disk
drive is probably a lot greater than that caused by its consumption
of power during its lifetime.
Note that, by default, Prime95 writes save files every half hour. If
you set the disk drive timeout to 10 mins, you will save only 2/3 of
the miserly consumption, but you will get at least two disk drive
start/stop/temperature cycles per hour, which I would suggest
might cause rapid aging.
Allow monitors to go into standby modes, by all means, but I prefer
to physically switch them off. This reduces their "idle" power
consumption from approx. 7W to zero, and also greatly reduces
the risk of fire. Due to their construction and the requirement for
high tension to make the cathode ray tube operate, monitors (like
TV sets) are thousands of times more likely to start a fire than any
other part of a computer system, even whilst in standby mode.
Mind you, the risk is, at most, small.
Finally, give some consideration as to where the computer is sited.
If you put it somewhere that usually needs heating, then the
"waste" heat from an operating computer system can actually cut
your heating bill. Conversely, if you put it somehere that usually
needs cooling (air conditioning), the extra power cost is magnified
since the air con will have to work harder to dump the extra waste
heat.
Regards
Brian Beesley
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Date: Wed, 02 Jun 1999 08:02:37 -0400
From: Yvan Dutil <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: New Mersenne Prime found!! Not yet verified
At 09:26 PM 6/1/99 -0400, you wrote:
>Hi all!
>
> The 38th Mersenne prime was *probably* discovered today. The exponent
>is in the 6,000,000s (the prime is in the neighborhood of 2,000,000 digits).
>The discoverer is a member of the top 200 contributors according to
>http://www.mersenne.org/top.htm
Dammit, this is two weeks too late! Two weeks sooner and the ET will have
received
it in our message. If they detect this year edition and the next year they
will
be surprise by our progress in 9 months: new primes, better physical
constants,
new element (114) and better overall desing of the message!
Yvan Dutil
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Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 06:03:32 -0600
From: "Aaron Blosser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: New Prime...I wonder if the "islands" theorem will hold fast?
Once this new one is verified, it will be interesting to see if there is a
prime either just below or just above it, to see if this elusive and highly
unverified "island" theory sticks in this case or not.
There are still plenty of exponents to check below 6M, so there could very
possibly be another undiscovered prime *less* than the one being examined
right now, although the prize is awarded to the *first* megadigit prime
*found*, not the first one above 1M digits... :-) For that matter, there
are still a few double-checks left to prove that M3021377 is the 37th
Mersenne Prime, or that M2976221 is the 36th. For all we know, there's
another one lurking somewhere in the 2M range...
While the prize money would be nice, I for one would think it cool enough
just to find one, one reason I don't mind having even some fast machines
doing double-check work. I hope people aren't going to be discouraged just
because there's no big juicy carrot on a stick in front of them after
this...
Maybe it'd be good to reinstate the Primenet prize money for new primes,
after this EFF one is claimed...just to keep some people's interest? I plan
to keep on chugging regardless...I've been doing this for over 3 years now,
it's in my blood! :-)
Speaking of, I posted this earlier but never saw it show up on the mailing
list...was it too off-topic?
=======
- -------
=======
Subject: Did I break US WEST's network?
Hate to interrupt here, but I've been digesting something recently. There
have been a number of articles and various misinformation put out about me,
and I feel I need to take some of the authors to task, so I'll start by
putting this here (knowing that several of them subscribe to the list).
Here's a snippet from an article by Ivars Peterson in his Dec. 5, 1998
"Mathtrek":
http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc98/12_5_98/mathland.htm
"It turns out that Blosser wrote his own program for distributing the
search software throughout the U S West system. He made a mistake. As a
result, thousands of U S West computers tried to reach the PrimeNet server
at the same time, causing U S West's network to slow down. At the same
time, the computers failed to retrieve assignments to start calculating.
Gridlock."
""If this had been properly done, U S West might not have ever been
concerned at all," Kurowski insists. "We have a few hundred other
businesses supporting the research project without incident.""
I just wanted to take this opportunity to say, once and for all, that *I
did not* cause *any* problems on the US WEST network. This was an
allegation made by US WEST in total ignorance. The search warrant, for
those that have read it, states plainly that "on or about May 18, 1998"
they had noticed problems on their machines on the network on Phoenix,
mentioning slow response times, etc. As I have always said, this was NOT
unusual for US WEST and I can recall several instances in the past when
this happened, sans any involvement by myself.
Further, thanks to Scott Kurowski's excellent record keeping on the
Primenet database, it can be clearly seen that I did not even install the
NTPrime software onto ANY US WEST machines until May 20, 1998, a Wednesday.
This jibes with my recollections of the event. And furthermore, to drive
the point home even more, I did not install the software to machines in
Phoenix until Friday, May 22, 1998, a full *FOUR DAYS AFTER* they reported
problems down there.
Sorry for wasting bandwidth, but I want to emphasize quite clearly that
NTPrime was very well behaved, and, as I recently found out from a
conversation with a tech at US WEST who helped "find" the software (nice
guy really), they found the software *entirely* by accident. According to
him, US WEST is now in the process of *finally* removing the software from
all the machines. They had removed the service, but kept the files there
for whatever reason (evidence?) and, it being a year later, are finally
deleting it all.
Anyway, I thought this a relevant time to mention all this, it being close
enough to the 1 year anniversary of it all (tomorrow, the 27th is the
anniversary of them finding it anyway.
As always, you can find the search warrant at www.tipjar.com/blosser (best
version) or at www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Garage/7676.
It is interesting to note that every single one of the other allegations
made, such as me dialing in after I was terminated, have been proven false
(some were proven false even before the execution of the warrant, as it
turns out)!
Now if I could just convince the FBI to return all my stuff...sigh...I'd
sure like my PII-333 back. Fastest machine I have now is a P-233. Takes a
lot longer to run an LL test :-)
Aaron
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Date: Wed, 02 Jun 1999 05:42:31 -0700
From: Luke Welsh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: New Prime...I wonder if the "islands" theorem will hold fast?
At 06:03 AM 6/2/99 -0600, Aaron Blosser wrote:
>Once this new one is verified, it will be interesting to see if there is a
>prime either just below or just above it, to see if this elusive and highly
>unverified "island" theory sticks in this case or not.
TTBOMK, the theory was never formalized. Regardless, Peter Lawrence
Montgomery settled the issue:
http://www2.netdoor.com/~acurry/mersenne/archive2/0032.html
See also:
http://www2.netdoor.com/~acurry/mersenne/archive2/0035.html
http://www2.netdoor.com/~acurry/mersenne/archive2/0026.html
http://www2.netdoor.com/~acurry/mersenne/archive2/0023.html
[...]
>Speaking of, I posted this earlier but never saw it show up on the
>mailing list...was it too off-topic?
I did not see it and the list is not moderated. Did you post it from
your @home account?
- --Luke
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Date: Wed, 2 Jun 99 14:58:04 CES
From: "Cornelius Caesar" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: Re: New Mersenne Prime found!! Not yet verified
George Woltman wrote:
>The 38th Mersenne prime was *probably* discovered today. The exponent
>is in the 6,000,000s
Do any of you remember this post?
If no in-between number will be found this posting turns out to be
false (as I always suspected)...
> From: "Alan Simpson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Mersenne: can this be true?
> Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 04:38:36 PDT
>
> hi,
>
> this is going to sound like an urban myth, but at least from my
> understanding, it is not.
>
> A friend of mine is a computational number theorist and she knows some
> NSA-types quite well. She told me that they (I'm not sure who "they" is)
> have been doing some work on Mersenne primes. She is often telling me
> that they are so much more advanced than the "outside world" in
> basically every field of computational number theory (among other
> subjects).
>
> She told me that they have made some vague statements to her about how
> they (this "they" again) have found (at least) two new Mersenne primes.
> The exponent of one of them is supposed to be around 5,200,000 while the
> other one is around 18,000,000.
Cornelius Caesar
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Date: Wed, 02 Jun 1999 16:36:37 +0200
From: "Henk Stokhorst." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: FBI
Aaron Blosser wrote:
>
> Now if I could just convince the FBI to return all my stuff...sigh...I'd
> sure like my PII-333 back. Fastest machine I have now is a P-233. Takes a
> lot longer to run an LL test :-)
>
> Aaron
That guy that wrote the searchwarrant, he was so funny. I never forget that
phrase on how he figured out you were connected to that illustrious group of
hackers that secretly search for Mersenne primes: <quote>...when highlighted
words were "clicked" on in the "entropia.com" site, another screen showed a
second screes.</quote>
Well, at least he acknowledged : "My computer fraud-training consists of a two
week program sponsored by the FBI"
I wouldn't worry about your pc, instead worry about the safety of your country.
;-)
YotN,
Henk Stokhorst.
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Date: Wed, 02 Jun 1999 11:08:40 -0400
From: Yvan Dutil <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: New Mersenne Prime found!! Not yet verified
> And now the bad news. Since the EFF award requires publication
>of the result in a refereed academic journal, the publication process
>will take longer than normal. It could be a few months.
I sugest you send a letter to Nature or Science. The review process is
probably one of the shortest available and this discovery fit well with
the philosophy of those journals.
Yvan Dutil
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Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 17:11:57 +0100
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Mersenne: New Prime...I wonder if the "islands" theorem will hold fast?
On 2 Jun 99, at 6:03, Aaron Blosser wrote:
> Once this new one is verified, it will be interesting to see if there is a
> prime either just below or just above it, to see if this elusive and highly
> unverified "island" theory sticks in this case or not.
I thought "Noll's Island conjecture" related to there being particular
zones (exponents around k*q^n for some value k and for a value q
close to 2) where Mersenne primes were more likely to be found.
There might be 1, 2 or more Mersenne primes in a particular
"island", or an expected island might be missing (e.g. the gap
between 127 and 521), and there might be Mersenne primes in
unexpected places, but nevertheless some clustering is "predicted".
At the moment we don't know enough. If the purported new
Mersenne prime has an exponent close to 6 million, it fits the
conjecture rather well; if it's closer to 7 million, the fit is less good,
but it still adds weight. Conversely, the discovery of a Mersenne
prime with an exponent around 4.5 million, or around 9 million,
would do considerable damage to the statistical evidence for the
conjecture.
In fact, although the "smooth distribution" model is hard to
disprove, it would be actually be surprising if there weren't
"clusters" of some sort in the distribution - even if we can't explain
the underlying reasons. Although it doesn't seem to apply to
Mersenne numbers in particular, there is an interesting treatment of
"irregularities" in the distribution of prime numbers in chapter 3 of
"Prime Numbers and Computer Methods for Factorization" by Hans
Riesel (2nd ed) (Birkhauser, 1994) (ISBN 0-8176-3743-5, also
3-7643-3643-5), e.g. the numbers 21,817,283,854,511,250 + p for p
= 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53, 59 and 61 are, very
surprisingly, all prime!
>
> There are still plenty of exponents to check below 6M, so there could very
> possibly be another undiscovered prime *less* than the one being examined
> right now, although the prize is awarded to the *first* megadigit prime
> *found*, not the first one above 1M digits... :-) For that matter, there
> are still a few double-checks left to prove that M3021377 is the 37th
> Mersenne Prime, or that M2976221 is the 36th. For all we know, there's
> another one lurking somewhere in the 2M range...
True enough. Though double-checking is approaching the 3 million
range quite fast now.
>
> While the prize money would be nice, I for one would think it cool enough
> just to find one, one reason I don't mind having even some fast machines
> doing double-check work. I hope people aren't going to be discouraged just
> because there's no big juicy carrot on a stick in front of them after
> this...
Not me. Though maybe I'll switch one PII (of four) from primary
tests to double checking, and maybe start a second P100 running
Yves Gallot's proth program instead of double checks. (Actually I've
been running proth on one P100 for about 3 months now, and have
"discovered" two new prime numbers with >20,000 digits)
The point here is that there is no particular reason to suspect that
the underlying distribution of Mersenne primes should be any
different from those of numbers of the form k*2^n+1. But there are a
lot more Proth numbers in the "quickly testable" range than there
are Mersenne numbers, so we may be able to get the statistical
data neccessary to (dis)prove the theory more quickly from testing
Proth numbers than by sticking to Mersenne numbers.
Regards
Brian Beesley
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Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 19:13:34 +0100
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Mersenne: New Mersenne Prime found!! Not yet verified
On 1 Jun 99, at 21:26, George Woltman wrote:
> The 38th Mersenne prime was *probably* discovered today. The exponent
> is in the 6,000,000s (the prime is in the neighborhood of 2,000,000 digits).
> The discoverer is a member of the top 200 contributors according to
> http://www.mersenne.org/top.htm
Congratulations to the "unknown" discoverer, together with George
and Scott!
>
> As was agreed after the last prime was discovered, I'm announcing
> the news to this mailing list immediately. When the prime is properly
> verified and published, then I'll announce the exact exponent. This process
> was agreed to as a compromise in keeping everyone informed, yet minimizing
> any chance of the news prematurely leaking to the press.
>
Yes - this approach is entirely sensible - though I guess the
chance of a hardware or program error triggering a "false prime
alert" is _extremely_ small, the fact that there is a substantial sum
of money hanging on the result means that it is not impossible that
some "clever clogs" could have "forged" a PrimeNet message
block. Though I don't see what good it would do since independent
verification was always going to be required.
Please note, I'm most definitely NOT suggesting in any way that
the claim is bogus or fraudulent; I'm just trying to point out how
careful we need to be before formally announcing a result as
important as this.
> And now the bad news. Since the EFF award requires publication
> of the result in a refereed academic journal, the publication process
> will take longer than normal. It could be a few months.
I don't see any particular problem in this. Once we have
independent verification, there will be no doubt that the number
really _is_ prime, and the fact should be easy to get past a referee -
unlike, e.g., a purported proof of the Generalised Riemann
Hypothesis, which would require _very_ skilled and careful
refereeing!.
Presumably a statement of fact in a news column in, e.g., "Nature"
is sufficient, rather than a full-blown paper. For that, all that would
appear to be needed is the number, the names of the discovery
and verification teams, dates and possibly some brief details of the
hardware & software used.
George - is DS doing the verification run again - or is this also
"restricted information" at the moment?
Regards
Brian Beesley
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Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 18:19:39 -0400
From: "Ernst W. Mayer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: access to Alpha ev6 or MIPS R12K needed
Does anyone out there have one of the new Alpha ev6's (a.k.a. Alpha 21264)
or MIPS R12K's they might be willing to give me short-term access to? I'd
like to do some timings/tunings of my Lucas-Lehmer code on such a machine.
A Fortran-90 compiler is helpful but not necessary.
Thanks,
Ernst
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End of Mersenne Digest V1 #566
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