Let's assume that the P4 is, as George estimates, capable of doing the
512K FFT at 0.04 iterations per second.
In this case, with some back-of-the-envelope calculations, I estimate
that a thousand P4s (which might well be on PrimeNet in a year, or a
little more - the P4 is approaching the status the Tbird was at a year
ago, when I bought my current P3-600) could have done the entire 512K
runlength in roughly 138 days, or under 5 months, even without the
rest of the machines now contributing.
Additionally, the P4 is only going to get faster in the next year or
two.
This frankly makes me wonder how much longer there will be a place in
GIMPS for slower machines. I'm not saying that's a bad thing - after
all, 486s and original pentiums were the workforce when GIMPS began,
and I wouldn't feel comfortable with the amount of opportunity for
error involved in using one for GIMPS now.
Any comments from the list?
Nathan
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