On 30 Oct 2001, at 10:37, Lars Lindley wrote: > Are there plans for making mprime and prime95 capable of using 64bit > processors like IA64 and AMD Sledgehammer? > > I know that these processors are able to run 32 bit code but will > there be a 64bit optimized version of mprime/prime95?
IA64 may run IA32 code but I seem to remember this is far from optimal. Hammer (which AFAIK exists only as vapourware) is supposed to run IA32 code efficiently. What would we expect to gain from extended addressing, or 64 bit integer operations? Probably not much for LL testing ... that's using double-precision floating-point, which is already native 64+ bit hardware in IA32. Trial factoring would almost certainly speed up a fair bit with 64 bit integer hardware operations. There may be mileage in further optimization for Itanium (IA64) so as to take better advantage of the parallel execution paths than the current "scalar" code. However Itanium processors are still a frightening price; I can't see them becoming "consumer items" in the near future. Also, Glucas already works very well on Itanium systems! Regards Brian Beesley _________________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
