Apologies if you've seen this already on other lists. The rest of you may like to know that Paul Zimmermann and Alex Kruppa have released GMP-ECM V5.0 and the announcement appears below. In my experience as a beta tester, this release is a major improvement over its predecessors. It's now possible to use mprime/prime95 to run the first stage of ECM and then transfer over to GMP-ECM to run the second stage where it's possible to have *much* higher values of B2 than George's ECM allows.
Paul 8<---------------------------------------------------------------------->8 GMP-ECM 5.0 We are pleased to announce the release of GMP-ECM 5.0. It is available from: http://home.in.tum.de/~kruppa/ecm-5.0.tar.gz http://www.loria.fr/~zimmerma/free/ecm-5.0.tar.gz This is a major release, after version 4c which was released more than three years ago. The main changes with respect to version 4c are: (a) functionality: the program now implements also the P-1 and P+1 methods, with a common step 2 (use option -pm1 to call P-1, -pp1 for P+1). Options -save/-resume enable one to save the state at the end of step 1, and to continue it afterwards, or on a different computer. It is now possible to specify a range B2min-B2max for step 2. This enables one to perform a huge step 2 (for a given step 1) using several computers: the first one checks B1-B2, the second one B2-B3, ... Version 5.0 is upward compatible with version 4c, except the parameter 'sigma' is now an option: ecm4c b1 s b2 becomes ecm5 -sigma s b1 b2. (b) implementation: the code is split into several files to make the code easier to maintain and compile. In particular interfacing with another program is much easier. (c) efficiency: step 1 is slightly faster, thanks to a new modular multiplication layer. Step 2 is much faster, due to the use of improved polynomial arithmetic (now uses Toom-Cook 3 and Toom-Cook 4, instead of only Karatsuba in version 4c). No binaries are distributed so far, since version 5.0 is very easy to compile: it only requires to have the GNU MP library installed. Detailed instructions how to install and optimize the use of gmp-ecm are to be found in the INSTALL and README files. Many thanks to Jay Berg, Paul Leyland, Joe Leherbauer and Torbjorn Granlund, whose contribution was essential to improve this release. Alexander Kruppa Paul Zimmermann _________________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers