"John R Pierce" wrote:
> btw, I disagree with the current policy of not letting slowish machines like
> this do LL tests, this machine cranks out a exponent every 60 days, has been
> an old faithful, I see no reason to retire it from the test, hence have not
> updated it to the current software, its still running 16.x. I currently
> have about 12 systems working total and have logged 27+ p90 years with IPS
> (and another 4+ with pre-IPS GIMPS).
Spare a thought for us non-intel folks. I've currently got 78 machines
chugging along purely double-testing these days. My last great chance
at discovering a new prime finished when it took over 5 months to test
3743321. In two and a half years with up to one hundred machines
working, I've managed 16.2 P90 years...
What a lot of people seem to have forgotten is that this _isn't_ a race
to the finish line (there is no finish line!), and that people are
meant to be having fun along the way. I'm still having my bit of fun -
once a day I check my logs to see if another number (or even two!) have
finished double checking, whereas once I used to count the number of
numbers that finished (on 17th March, 1997 there were 17 numbers that
finished). I've learnt a little math along the way (thanks Ernst!), and
done my small bit tweaking the speed of Will's mersenne1 program by a
few percent here and there.
I haven't saved the world, but I'm still having a good time, and to me
that's what GIMPS is all about. I'd hate to see that disappear...
Simon.
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