Re: Mersenne: 50% CPU?
I have a Pentium 4 processor and TM indicates an average usage of close to 100% CPU for Prime 95 - am I running 'multiple instances' without being aware of it? If so, how do I prevent this if it will degrade efficiency? Not all P4's have hyper threading & not all motherboards support it on top of that. So it requires a HT enabled CPU, HT enabled Motherboard, & HT supported OS for HT to function. From my experience HT is a nice feature since it gives Prime95 a chance to run even when other "not nice" programs are running that don't release the processor as often as they should even if it's not busy. The down side is with HT enabled Prime95 is more likely to interfere with certain performance sensitive applications. If you want to learn more about Prime95 & HT there has been several recent posts on the topic at http://www.mersenneforum.org/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=9 There is some evidence that running a LL (high usage of SSE2 floating point calculations) & TF (high usage of SSE2 integer calculations) may increase overall throughput. Shane
Re: Mersenne: Poaching and related issues...
> Increasing the difficulty for a poacher to _find_ a tempting target > would mean other participants could be less concerned about making > themselves into such a target, and just concentrate on doing the work > they considered most suitable within the rules. If the rules you are referring to include the possible new guidelines George proposes (which in a nut shell goes something like this -- snips taken from a couple of posts on the forum by George) "Consensus seems to be building around a sliding scale. It's 2 to 3 months for the smallest double-checks and first-time tests (to avoid holding up milestones), 6 months for recycled exponents, 12 months for an exponent at the leading edge. 2+ years for a 33M exponent. Give or take." "A leading edge first time test today is unlikely to hold up a milestone for maybe 2 years. I'm not advocating yanking a reservation just because you've had it one year. I think we are proposing reassignment if you take more than a year and some other criteria is met such as: a) You aren't making significant progress. b) You are holding up a milestone. c) Require the user to fill out a web form saying "I'm still working on it" " Then in fact, those guidelines are more stringent than ANY poaching methodology I've seen to date (including Malfoy's) other than some willy-nilly poacher who has no methodology at all (which I believe in most cases turn out to be a previous "owner" turning in the assignment from a expired owner 1 or 2 assignments ago). So in order to keep within these guidelines "suitable" types of work for a given machine would just so happen to avoid much of any chance of getting poached TODAY. Which brings to mind another part of Georges proposal which I don't see a easy *snip* for. The basic jest is that the new server would assign work to clients based upon this ideology, in other words the new server would be careful not to assigned a trailing edge exponent to historically "slow" computer. I whole heartily believe the best way to eliminate poaching is to minimize the reasons there are poachers to begin with rather than trying to make it more difficult to do. Even masking the exponents has a big loop hole in that it would take years to become effective even if implemented today. All that has to be done is to save a copy of status.txt today and you know a very very big chunk of the exponents that will fall in the trailing edge of the assignment list of many many years. After that it's a trivial matter of elimination to deduce which is which when masked. Shane _ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
RE: Mersenne: EFF and 10,000,000 digits
>I hope so too (heck, I hope I just live a long life...seeing a giga-digit >prime would be a bonus). > >I suppose it depends on whether Moore's Law can continue to hold true. I'm >not so sure that we can keep doubling speeds of processors every 18 months >as predicted...it's already taken them quite a while to go from 300MHz >machines to 550MHz machines for Wintel processors...and that's just barely >in 18 months (close enough to doubling I s'pose). It's getting harder to >eke out extra MHz without really dropping the die size alot more than what >they're dealing with. But I suppose it won't be long before .15/.12/.10 >micron die sizes are ready for mass producing. I have heard some insider news that Intel *could* hit the 1 GigaHertz mark by years end if they had a reason too (if AMD jumped out with a unexpected surprise). Once we start hitting the sweet spot in die size I am under the impression that they will start exploring the multiple processor route... Multiple processor systems are already becoming more mainstream. So I think we will be able to continue with MASSIVE performance increases over our lifetimes. This is assuming we stick with the Von Neumann architecture, new and EXCITING technologies (such as neural computing & massively parallel systems) are just over the horizon. These technologies and others offer us unimaginable new possibilities with their own unique strengths & weaknesses -- maybe when these new tools are out there we will find a new Algo. that better fits their strengths. My understanding of the purpose of rewards like the EFF is posting is to foster new and innovative ways to solve problems that almost seem impossible at the time. If asked 10 years ago who here would have thought we would be testing numbers as big as we have... George & Scott's vision of this very project is such an example of break through technology, which allows us to advance in the scientific frontier at break neck speeds. Whoohoo isn't this a exciting time to live!!! Shane Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
RE: Mersenne: I am curious
At 09:56 AM 5/15/99 +0200, Henrik Olsen wrote: >> Just out of interest, can I have someone demand I give them a share of the >> money / stop being in GIMPS if they really wanted to (not that I should >> think they would...) > >One thing most people seems to have forgotten when it comes to talk about >the money, is that according to the common scientific discovery rules >George Woltman and Scott Kurowski will be co-discoverers of all primes >found using mprime/prime95, and the client/server setup, so should >rightfully get a big part of the money. >From a legal stand point I think George & Scott may have "signed" away most of their rights to the money (not the discovery rights though) by advertising on their web page that participating in GIMPS could win you $50,000. It certainly seems to imply that from my read anyway... Of course on the strictly ethical side of things I think George & Scott deserve something for their troubles. Personally I feel that I would give a portion of the money back to GIMPS but then again that is easy to say when dealing with purely theoretical money ;-) I would think that > 95% of the people here are involved with GIMPS for non monetary reasons, I would go so far as to say noble reasons, (especially the founders of GIMPS who have put in so much time and effort over the years). Sadly even the most noble of pursuits are often spoiled by squabbling over the "brass ring". Shane Sanford Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
RE: Mersenne: LLL
Maybe there something wrong with the PrimeNet server? Earlier today I had some of my machines check in and it seemed a little wacky. Also, entropia.com seems to be pretty flacky especially the status pages. When I loaded my individual account report it went completely nuts and told me I had 1000's & 1000's of numbers check out (then I did a reload and it back to normal). Shane At 10:29 AM 5/13/99 -0600, Aaron Blosser wrote: >Perhaps Scott could contact this fellow and see whats up? > >I know when I had a bunch of machines checking out numbers, Scott emailed me >to be sure it wasn't just a bug or something. > >At any rate, it looks like all the LL exponents have been chewed up. >Moreover, judging by the estimated time to complete, these are not fast >machines... LLL would probably have been better off leaving the auto >assignment turned on because I'd guess it would have taken DoubleCheck >exponents. > >I hope this person knows what they're doing! Some of those numbers checked >out all had the same ComputerID...hmmm... > >Aaron Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
Mersenne: Iteration time?
Does anybody have a idea of what the iteration time for a PII 450a running Prime95 under Win 98 should be (LL test in the 683 range)? Shane Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
Re: Mersenne: preventive measures
A easy way with any OS that has some sort of easy batch file support (such as the flavors of Windows & from what I remember Unix). Have the Prime program download the files to the current directory (maybe a self executable zip file). Then execute the download. The download will unzip all the files including a batch file which when launched will replace the nessecary files with the new ones. The orginal prime program then would launch the batch file (maybe with a execution delay of 2 seconds) then close itself (and unload any .dlls if nessecary). The Batch file then takes over with the file updates, cleans up the mess, and then launches the new prime program before it closes. Shane At 09:01 PM 4/12/99 -0400, Pierre Abbat wrote: >How about this?: > >If mprime finds that it needs to update itself, it downloads the new files, >renames the old ones, renames the new ones, and quits at five 'til. One minute >past the hour, a cron job notices that mprime isn't running and restarts it. > >phma > >Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm > > Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
RE: Mersenne: preventive measures
>>> I would find a popup box a terrible nuisance, so I'd like an option >>> to turn it off or on, with default off. >> >>If it were an option, there should be a way for REALLY important alerts to >>get through, so that anyone running v17 would have been alerted about the >>bug even if normal alerting were turned off. Wouldn't you rather have some >>exceptions get through, with the decision about what qualifies as >>"exceptional" being made by George and/or Scott? > >No. I would not want it popping up on each of my computers, requiring >a mouse click on each; too tedious. Email is sufficient. >A popup for each instance on each multiple-cpu system is really a nuisance. > >Imagine if USWest had seen 2500 of those popups on the same day. >VIRUS!!! Lynch whoever's responsible!! I agree that a mouse click for every instance would create more problems than it would solved but I think the idea of some additional warning mechanism has some possible merit. There are a number of less intrusive options availible other than a message box which would REQUIRE user interaction. For example, have the Icon in the system tray change color and/or blink based upon the urgency of the update (some sort of code that George could set on the primenet server). And/or as reminder the next time Prime95 is unmaximized add a text message (or even a hyper-link to jump to the download page) in the window that displays the current iteration count . Shane Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
