>>As someone else said, in the time it takes to find a giga-digit prime, why
>>not throw a couple hundred bucks into a money market account or some other
>>interest bearing fund...in the time it'd take to find a prime that big,
>>you'd have already received that much in interest. :-)
>Yes. I hope I live long enough to see a billion-digit prime. There's a
good chance of it.
I hope so too (heck, I hope I just live a long life...seeing a giga-digit
prime would be a bonus).
I suppose it depends on whether Moore's Law can continue to hold true. I'm
not so sure that we can keep doubling speeds of processors every 18 months
as predicted...it's already taken them quite a while to go from 300MHz
machines to 550MHz machines for Wintel processors...and that's just barely
in 18 months (close enough to doubling I s'pose). It's getting harder to
eke out extra MHz without really dropping the die size alot more than what
they're dealing with. But I suppose it won't be long before .15/.12/.10
micron die sizes are ready for mass producing.
Aaron
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