> No doubt you've all heard about the paradox of Man's first
> interstellar voyage.
> If we were to build and launch a spaceship today that would take us to the
> nearest star in, say, 100 years, then a better spaceship launched
> later would
> arrive sooner provided our technology advanced fast enough during
> that time.
>
> When will we reach the crossover point in GIMPS, where it's
> better to wait for
> a faster computer, than to start an LL test today? If we assume
> that Moore's
> Law holds (computing speed doubles every 18 months), then it
> would seem that
> the crossover point would be when an LL test takes 3 years (18*2
> months) on
> current hardware.
>
> Anybody willing to hazard a guess as to when we'll reach that point?
It doesn't really matter when we reach that point, IMO.
We can start testing bigger numbers on existing machines and then simply
transfer that over to our new, faster machines when they become available.
It doesn't really compare to the spaceship analogy, unless this guy built
his own faster spaceship along the way and then finished up in that one
instead.
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