On Fri, Jun 11, 1999 at 03:09:36PM -0700, Mersenne Digest wrote:
>Personally I will not run Prime95 on anything less then a P5-166, and
>I also will not run it on anything that does not have 32 MB or greater
>of RAM. Not that Prime95 is a resource hog, far from it, I just don't
>think it's worth my time to install it on anything slower then a 166,
>and I don't think it is fair to the user of the machine to run a
>program that requires 4 to 5 MB or RAM unless at least 32 MB is
>present. But far be it from me to judge how you run it, this is just
>my opinion.
I've gotten access to all my school's 486s (and a few Pentiums, and
even a Celeron). They're currently doing factoring work, and they're
in fact performing quite well. I can't see how a 486 could harm the
system (these machines all have 32 MB of RAM, if I recall correctly) :-)
The P60 I originally joined GIMPS with (back when P166 was a _real_
powerhouse) is still cracking, and has completed quite a few
exponents, although it needs a few months for each.
If everybody with less than a P166 (or whatever limit you set) would
stop running GIMPS, you would probably get a pretty hard setback in
CPU power. Eventually, most of these machines will be upgraded after
a while, so it's generally not a problem.
(No personal attack on you intended, these are my opinions, just as
what you say are your opinions.)
---snip---
>There's the good doc at: http://www.agner.org/assem/pentopt.htm which
>explains all this stuff better than I could ever hope to.
You gave me this link too; it gives a 404. :-) Time for a mirror?
---snip---
> mov al, 0
Would it be a big problem replacing this with eax, etc.? Generally, 16-bit
stuff isn't good for P6, although I can't see a direct partial stall in your
code.
---snip---
>It doesn't affect me personally in the slightest, other than wanting to see
>that line item on the GIMPS home page under "Milestones", that we know M37
>is truly M37 and not M38.
I was about to say `this will never happen', but then I remembered it actually
_has_ happened, although not with GIMPS.
>the progress in material ways like that
I think most of us evaluate the project in quite material ways: New primes,
CPU power, money (EFF prize(s)), etc. Simply that `the project is progressing'
isn't very much, or at least most people don't consider it that way. A
project will always be evaluated after its direct results.
---snip---
>I had 3 quad-processor and 1 dual-processor PPro 200 machines not doing
>anything, so they're now working on those exponents.
In case anybody else has some quad- or dual- PPro machines not doing anything,
they'd be most welcome here! :-)
---snip---
>as
>they say, "If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck, it
>probably _is_ a duck. But I won't be sure until I see it has webbed
>feet!"
Well, at some point, you'll have to trust something (like your CPU), or
somebody (the person who runs the double-checking at a Cray). You can't
possibly trial-factor that big a number by hand, and even if you did,
you could always make a mistake. (In theory, 47 could be composite, but
the words `extremely unlikely' don't even cover this possibility.)
>Sorry for being pedantic.
Can I please `join' this apology?
/* Steinar */
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