Re: Mersenne: Teams and AOL
- Original Message - From: "Russel Brooks" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2001 4:27 AM Subject: Re: Mersenne: Teams and AOL > My primary objective is to get their pcs running Prime95; stat > credit is a minor secondary concern. Or any other distributed computing project. An idling computer is like a running tap. > Cheers... Russ Daran _ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
Re: Mersenne: CNET coverage of M39: Very good
- Original Message - From: "Jeff Woods" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2001 6:44 PM Subject: Mersenne: CNET coverage of M39: Very good > ...His > system was part of a 210,000-machine quasi-supercomputer stretched across > the globe. [...] > The Mersenne prime search is moving in that direction. Each day, its > network of computers does work that would take a single 90MHz Pentium > computer 200 years to accomplish... 200 X 365 = 73000 p90 days/day So what are the other 137,000 faster than P90 machines doing? Regards Daran _ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
RE: Mersenne: Speed of RAM
Questions like this are fine. :) We talk about stuff like this from time to time. F'rinstance, I have some Compaq servers where the video goes totally haywire when Prime95 is running on them (only at 1024x768... works fine at 800x600). Turns out the built in graphics stuff is a bit too close to the processors, so there's a bit of interference going on. I would suspect the same behaviour in your case. Do you notice the sound coming from the built in speaker? Or is it somewhere else? Capacitors have a neat trick of making high pitched noises like you described, though the type found on motherboards are usually a bit too small for such shenanigans, but you never know. Slowing down the bus speed must have eliminated whatever resonance was going on. As for whether your results will be okay or not, there are a few built in checks in George's algorithm, so most hardware related things are generally caught (correct George?) and it is able to revert to the last time it saved the temp file in such cases. You can take a look in your results.txt file to see if there are any unusual errors in there. No real way to tell what your lockup problems are. If it only happened when you did certain things (mouse movements or something), then maybe you have some issues with the hardware related to the PS/2 interface... just a wild guess based on what you've said. Aaron > -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:mersenne-invalid- > [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Philip Whittington > Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2001 8:57 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Mersenne: Speed of RAM > > Hello All, > > I'm sorry to trouble GIMPSers with what might be more of a computer > question. I > am using an Athon Thunderbird 1.3GHz and 256 MB of 133 MHz (DDR) Ram. > > My computer has always emitted a high pitched squeaking noise when > processes > like GIMPS start, and also when I do things like use the scroll wheel of > my > mouse etc. Recently the computer started hanging randomly on certain tasks > (not > GIMPS). After having taken the RAM down to 100MHz the high pitched squeak > and > the hanging has stopped. > > 1) Will the hanging have any impact on the credibility of what PRIME95 > finds - > I am around 86% through a L-L Test? > > 2) Can anyone shed light on whether it is my ram at fault or something on > the > motherboard? (sorry, I realise this is not really GIMPS related) > > Thank you, > > Philip Whittington _ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
Mersenne: Speed of RAM
Hello All, I'm sorry to trouble GIMPSers with what might be more of a computer question. I am using an Athon Thunderbird 1.3GHz and 256 MB of 133 MHz (DDR) Ram. My computer has always emitted a high pitched squeaking noise when processes like GIMPS start, and also when I do things like use the scroll wheel of my mouse etc. Recently the computer started hanging randomly on certain tasks (not GIMPS). After having taken the RAM down to 100MHz the high pitched squeak and the hanging has stopped. 1) Will the hanging have any impact on the credibility of what PRIME95 finds - I am around 86% through a L-L Test? 2) Can anyone shed light on whether it is my ram at fault or something on the motherboard? (sorry, I realise this is not really GIMPS related) Thank you, Philip Whittington _ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
Re: Mersenne: Moving an assignment
Mary, I haven't done this myself, but give it a try. 1. Exit your client. 2. Copy your prime95 directory to your recipient's hard drive in a directory called prime95_tmp. 3. Edit that temporary directory's worktodo.ini and take out the exponents you do not want to transfer (leave the ones you do want to transfer). 4. Exit their primary client. 4. Start their "temporary" client from that directory. 5. Have them go to the Test Menu/User Information screen and change your info to theirs. 6. Have them Stop and then Start the client - I would expect that the info change would then get transmitted. 7. Exit their "temporary" client. 8. Edit their primary worktodo.ini to add the worktodo entries of their "temporary" client. 9. Also copy any p and q files corresponding to those transferred exponents, if any. 10. Start their primary server. Hopefully the are now running okay. 11. Edit your primary worktodo.ini and remove those transferred exponent work items. 12. Start you primary client. 13. If everything is okay, remove your p and q files corresponding to those transferred exponents, if any. 14. Remove both temporary directories. You said by hook or by crook. Simple . Carleton Garrison wwwteamprimeribcom - Original Message - From: "Mary Conner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2001 3:07 PM Subject: RE: Mersenne: Moving an assignment [...] > If George didn't do it, then > there's got to be a way for me to move an exponent, by hook or by crook. > > Mary Conner _ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
RE: Mersenne: Moving an assignment
On Wed, 12 Dec 2001, Aaron Blosser wrote: > I think we settled on the term "poached" long ago. > > There's really nothing stopping anyone from working on any exponent they > want. If they communicate with Primenet and it reports that an exponent > is assigned to someone else, the software will remove that exponent from > your worktodo list. This is true, although I would hope that the PrimeNet server does not "cooperate" in "poaching". I know all about the expiration period and whatnot, and that someone who was assigned an exponent previously might have it expire and then still complete it. I noted in an earlier message that I'd gotten an expired exponent for a doublecheck and wondered what would happen if we both started checking in work on this exponent. Well, before my computer could start work on it, the previous holder checked it in completed, and Prime95 removed it from my queue. So that part works. But I'm still back to trying to figure out how to move an exponent from one machine to another. Perhaps a little background is in order. I've been talking with one of the math teachers at my daughter's school about doing some work with distributed computing. I printed out some documentation from some projects and took it in to him, including sample pages from the PrimeNet status reports. He's considering working it in after Christmas break, but he said the example work units the students would work on would have to be short. I could set Prime95 up with a small dummy exponent, but I'd rather see them working on something real (and so they could see themselves on the PrimeNet reports), so I decided to try capturing a small doublecheck exponent that was expiring that they could polish off in a week. I planned to set my computer not to update while their computer was masquerading as mine for the week. I know trying to grab expiring exponents is hit or miss, but since they are recycled at 6am GMT (10pm here), I figured I'd have a good shot at getting a few, hopefully to get one that was truly abandoned. I was following several candidates on the assignment report when one of them changed accounts without having expired. It still had a few days to go until expiry, and when it changed accounts, the original date assigned remained the same, as well as the run time, so this was not an expired exponent being reassigned. So I figured that there must be a way to give an exponent from one machine to another (and even one account to another) and have PrimeNet know about it and not squawk. That would simplify things and allow the kids to run their own account with their school's name or something. This exponent is not an isolated example. I have a printout of the first page of the Assigned Exponents report from Dec 7th. I compared it with the Assigned Exponents report from a few minutes ago, and three exponents off that first page have moved from their old accounts (three different accounts) to this other person's account (same account for all three). Their assignment dates have remained the same, and the run times were not reset. I don't know if George manually moved these exponents, but I do know at least one was being regularly updated every few days, and another had over 3 weeks to go until expiring. If George didn't do it, then there's got to be a way for me to move an exponent, by hook or by crook. Mary Conner _ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
Mersenne: Entropia site down?
http://www.entropia.com/ips doesn't work. I get this: The page cannot be found The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. HTTP 404 - File not found Internet Information Services --- However, the www.entropia.com main page works fine. It has been like this for several days now. Anyone else see this? _ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
Mersenne: CNET coverage of M39: Very good
Fairly decent and accurate coverage on news.com (CNet) at the following link. Apologies for the HTML that is embedded in the text pasted in below. If your mail software can't read the HTML, follow the link to the original site. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-8159590.html?tag=tp_pr Distributed computing strikes gold By Stephen Shankland Staff Writer, CNET News.com December 13, 2001, 4:00 a.m. PT A 20-year-old in Owen Sound, Canada, has found the world's largest known prime number using a mere desktop computer. But he didn't work alone: His system was part of a 210,000-machine quasi-supercomputer stretched across the globe. Using a computer with an 800MHz chip from Advanced Micro Devices, Michael Cameron found the prime number on Nov. 14, according to Entropia. The San Diego company sells software to enable "distributed computing," which harnesses the unused processing abilities of computers scattered across the Internet. Although the arrival of profit motive has transformed distributed computing, its roots remain in academic pursuits such finding optimal Golomb rulers or alien radio signals. Cameron's computer found the number, but he shares credit with others: George Woltman, who founded the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) and wrote the search software, and Entropia founder Scott Korowski, who created the network system called PrimeNet that governs the 210,000 computers that are part of the effort. Prime numbers, once a mathematical curiosity but now crucial to encrypted communications, are numbers greater than one that are divisible only by one and the number itself. Cameron was participating in a project to search for a particular type of prime number called a Mersenne prime. The number that Cameron discovered--2 to the 13,466,917th power minus 1--has 4,053,946 digits. In order to cram his discovery onto a 29-inch-by-40-inch poster sold by Perfectly Scientific, the number is printed in a tiny 1.37-point font and read with a magnifying glass. Mersenne primes are named after Marin Mersenne, a French monk born in 1588 who investigated a particular type of prime number: 2 to the power of "p" minus one, in which "p" is an ordinary prime number. Mersenne primes are much rarer than ordinary primes. The GIMPS effort, exhaustively searching for possible candidates since 1996, has been responsible for discovering the five most recent examples. Altogether, 39 have been discovered so far. Cameron's computer took 42 days to verify that the number was a Mersenne prime. After that, researchers using a workstation took three weeks to confirm the work. Prime numbers are needed for encrypted communications such as a Web browser's Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology that makes it harder to sniff out credit card numbers or other private information. But those systems typically use primes that are merely 300 or so digits, said Stanford University mathematician Dan Boneh. "The large Mersenne primes are not very useful," Boneh said, though finding one will grant a person 15 minutes of fame. Mathematical hobbyists have provided online versions of Cameron's number written out in decimal form or in words. Searching for Mersenne primes is computationally intense, but it is a problem that's known as "embarrassingly parallel," which means it can easily be broken down into independent parts that separate computers tackle. Many supercomputer problems take another form, requiring high-speed communication between separate computers or requiring that a problem be solved one step at a time with little opportunity for sharing among many systems. Parallel computing tasks aren't merely academic. Sun Microsystems and Intel use distributed computing software to help design microprocessors, and companies such as Entropia, Turbolinux, Platform Computing, Parabon Computation and United Devices have software that can be used for work in genetics, pharmaceuticals or financial services. Typically, this software is used within a single corporation rather than on strangers' computers across the Internet. The concept of distributed computing is closely related to "grid" computing, which unites computers and storage systems into a single pool of resources. The National Science Foundation is among those interested in the concept, devoting $53 million to one grid. Entropia, IBM, Sun, Platform Computing and others are working with the open-source Globus Project to define standards and software for controlling grids. Ultimately, researchers envision a future in which all computers are linked into a single mammoth resource that can be tapped when needed. The Mersenne prime search is moving in that direction. Each day, its network of computers does work that would take a single 90MHz Pentium computer 200 years to accomplish. On average, the network of computers performs 2.4 trillion calculations per second. The most popular model in the prime number hunt is a
