New features in Version 30.19 of mprime --------------------------------------- 1) Edwards ECM curves. Given a reasonable amount of memory, Edwards ECM curves are roughly 10% faster than Montgomery ECM curves used in all earlier prime95 versions. 2) Added support for running ECM stage 2 given a resume file from GMP-ECM. Especially useful when GMP-ECM uses a GPU to run ECM stage 1. Syntax for worktodo entries are: ECMSTAGE2=k,b,n,c,filename[,B2-or-zero][,skip_curves][,num_curves][,"known-factors"] ECMSTAGE2N=filename[,B2-or-zero][,skip_curves][,num_curves][,"known-factors"] 3) New timestamp options in undoc.txt. 4) Manual communication menu choice will also start proof uploads. 5) From the Test/Primenet... dialog box, turning on Use Primenet will bring up the Test/Worker Windows... dialog box to allow changing work preferences prior to contacting the PrimeNet server. 6) The P-1 and ECM stage 2 vs. stage 1 runtime estimate used for optimal B2 calculations is now compared to the actual so that future estimates will hopefully more accurate. 7) Advanced/Test now creates a PRP worktodo.txt entry for large exponents. New features in Version 30.18 of mprime --------------------------------------- 1) Faster generic mod. This is more useful for programs like PFGW than prime95. New features in Version 30.16 - 30.17 of mprime ----------------------------------------------- 1) Smaller executable. Many SSE2 FFTs optimized for CPUs made before 2010 were removed. These CPUs will still be able to run all FFT sizes, but 30.15 might have a more efficient implementation available. New features in Version 30.11 - 30.15 of mprime ----------------------------------------------- 1) Settings are no longer stored in local.txt. Settings are automatically moved to prime.txt. In addition, settings within prime.txt are now organized into several sections for enhanced readability. New features in Version 30.9 - 30.10 of mprime ---------------------------------------------- 1) ECM stage 2 using fast polynomial multiplication similar to the GMP-ECM program. If lots of memory is available for stage 2 this implementation will be substantially faster. 2) Proof files start uploading within a minute of sending a PRP result to the server. Previously it could take up to an hour for proof uploading to begin. 3) Worktodo.add files are now processed without stopping all workers. 4) Settings from local.txt have been moved to prime.txt. Settings in prime.txt grouped for clarity. New features in Version 30.8 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) P-1 stage 2 using fast polynomial multiplication similar to the GMP-ECM program. If lots of memory is available for stage 2 this implementation will be substantially faster. New features in Version 30.7 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Better prime pairing in stage 2 of ECM/P-1/P+1. This usually results in slightly better stage 2 timings or less memory used. Save file formats changed - upgrading to 30.7 while ECM/P-1/P+1 work is in stage 2 will result in stage 2 being restarted from scratch. 2) P-1 converted to use P+1 style stage 2. From the users perspective there is no difference. Internally a modular inverse is required at stage 2 init, but there is one multiplication saved for every D-block processed. For all common P-1 cases, this is a little faster. 3) ECM/P-1/P+1 no longer use a bit map for prime pairs. Instead a compressed pairing map is created to save memory. For large B2 values this also results in fewer calls to generate pairing maps. It also makes stage 2 save files smaller. 4) Some minor changes in AVX-512 FFT crossovers. ECM/P-1/P+1 all changed to rollback to the last save file and switch to a larger FFT size should an excessive roundoff error be encountered. 5) Support for asymmetric processor architectures such as Intel's Alder Lake. 6) Torture test dialog now asks for number of cores to test along with a "Use hyperthreading" checkbox. Previously, the dialog box asked for total number of torture threads to execute. 7) Versions 30.4/30.5/30.6 were underestimating the cost of P-1 stage 2 relative to P-1 stage 1. Expect this version to use lower stage 2 bounds in P-1. New features in Version 30.6 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) P+1 factoring. A worktodo.txt entry looks like this: Pplus1=k,b,n,c,B1,B2,nth_run[,how_far_factored][,"known_factors"] Unlike P-1, the fact that factors of Mersenne numbers is 1 mod 2p is of no value. Thus, P-1 is vastly more effective at finding factors. A P+1 run is about as valuable as running one ECM curve. P+1 stage 1 is 50% slower than P-1 stage 1 but several times faster than ECM stage 1. P+1 stage 2 is a little faster than P-1 stage 2 which in turn is a little faster than ECM stage 2. Unlike P-1, P+1 has only a 50% chance of finding a factor if factor+1 is B1/B2 smooth. Thus, it makes sense to do 1 or 2 (maybe 3) runs. That is what the nth_run argument is for. There are two special starting values for P+1 that have a slightly higher chance of finding a factor. These special starting values correspond to nth_run=1 and nth_run=2. Like P-1, if how_far_factored is specified, prime95 will ignore B2 and calculate the best B2 value for the given B1. 2) Faster ECM stage 1 when factoring exponents near the limit of an FFT size. 3) Gwnum library new functions give a programmer more tools to reduce normalized adds. A tutorial.txt file (download the prime95 sources) is now available to help a programmer use the gwnum library. New features in Version 30.4/30.5 of mprime ------------------------------------------- 1) Faster P-1 stage 2. 2) Faster ECM stage 1 and stage 2. 3) Gwnum library overhauled. Many functions deprecated. Replaced by more powerful gwmul3. New functions that compute (a+b)*c and (a-b)*c with less memory accesses. Faster conversion to and from binary. 4) ECM and P-1 can find the best B2 value for the amount of memory prime95 is allowed to use. For ECM, this happens when the worktodo.txt line sets B2=100*B1 which is the default assignment from the PrimeNet server. For P-1, the best B2 is chosen when the worktodo.txt line specifies the trial factoring depth. For example, "Pminus1=1,2,20000003,-1,500000,0,70" chooses the best B2 bound for B1=500000 given that M20000003 has been trial factored to 2^70. New features in Version 30.1/30.2/30.3 of mprime ------------------------------------------------ 1) PRP proofs. This allows GIMPS to double-check a PRP test at less than 1% of the cost of a full PRP test! PRP proofs require lots of temporary disk space. See readme.txt for details. PRP proofs require uploading a large proof file. See readme.txt for details. PRP proof verifications require downloading a modest verification file. See readme.txt for details. 2) Proofs automatically uploaded to server in 30.2. 3) First time LL, World-record LL, 100M-digit LL work preference is deprecated. 4) New resource limits menu choice. Consult readme.txt before making changes to these settings. Some options previously in Test/Worker Windows and Options/CPU are moved to the resources menu choice. 5) LL-DC and PRP-DC combined into a single work preference. 6) Warning raised if temporary disk space is less than 1.5GB -- you may not get first time prime tests. 7) Thanks to Mihai Preda, the P-1 probability calculator has been improved. This change results in a lower optimal B1 value and higher optimal B2 value. New features in Version 29.8 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Support added for AVX-512 FFTs. 2) FMA3 FFTs now have slightly higher FFT crossover points. Soft crossovers are no longer used by default. See undoc.txt. 3) Mprime now creates a pid file. 4) Torture test dialog box options now based on cache sizes. Options for performing a weaker torture test are available. Torture tests that use all RAM are now more stressful. In-place vs. not in-place memory accesses now displayed on screen. On machines with more than 5GB of memory, blend defaults to all but 3GB of RAM. 5) Add & subtract operations for AVX-512 FFTs are now multithreaded. This should improve performance for P-1 and ECM when using multiple threads. 6) Benchmark results are now written to results.bench.txt. 7) JSON results are now available for all work performed. JSON results are written to results.json.txt. 8) PRP tests with Gerbicz error checking are more immune to hardware errors. New features in Version 29.4 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) GIMPS has a new sub-project -- finding (probable) prime Mersenne cofactors. This sub-project has two parts: 1) Running PRP tests, and 2) Finding additional factors. To support this new sub-project there are three new work preferences: PRP on Mersenne cofactors, PRP double-checking on Mersenne cofactors, ECM on Mersenne cofactors. 2) Like LL tests, PRP tests now support shift counts to aid in running double-checks. Shift counts are only supported for Mersenne numbers and Mersenne cofactors. 3) PRP tests now support a type of low overhead error checking that almost guarantees correct results even on flaky hardware. We call this Gerbicz error-checking after it was proposed by Robert Gerbicz at mersenneforum.org. This error-check only works for base-2 numbers. 4) Because PRP tests are highly reliable, we now offer the option to do PRP tests instead of Lucas-Lehmer primality tests. There are 4 new work preferences similar to LL work preferences: first-time PRP tests, world record PRP tests, PRP tests on 100 million digit numbers, and PRP double-checking. If you are looking for a 100 million digit prime, PRP testing is recommended rather than LL testing. 5) For non-base-2 PRP tests, there is a new option to run each iteration twice and rollback if a mismatch occurs. Useful only on flaky hardware due to the obvious high overhead. 6) Minor performance tweaks were made to stage 1 of P-1. Save files are incompatible in stage 1. Wait for your P-1 test to reach stage 2 before upgrading. New features in Version 29.3 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) A new error check for LL testing has been implemented. This error check, called a Jacobi error check, has a 50% chance of detecting hardware error(s) since the last time a Jacobi error check was performed. This error check takes roughly 30 seconds and is scheduled to run twice a day. The program now saves two additional intermediate files that have passed the Jacobi error check. This test requires use of the GMP (GNU multi-precision) library. 2) The GCD step in P-1 and ECM factoring is faster. New features in Version 29.2 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Throughput benchmarks of all FFT implementations are written to gwnum.txt. These benchmarks will then be used to pick the best FFT implementation to use. This can lead to minor performance improvements. 2) Benchmarks are run at 5AM (and every 21 hours after that) for any FFT sizes that will be needed within the next 7 days. Once enough benchmark data is accumulated, these automatic benchmarks no longer take place. 3) Default FFT implementations for Ryzen added. 4) A few new FFT sizes (up to 50M) are enabled for FMA3-capable CPUs. 5) ECM and P-1 on Fermat numbers will automatically add known Fermat factors to the worktodo.txt entries. New features in Version 29.1 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Faster trial factoring for machines that support FMA (Haswell and later). Multi-threaded trial factoring now supports more than one thread sieving for small primes. Several tuning parameters added - see undoc.txt. 2) The portable library, hwloc, for analyzing a machine's topology is now used. This replaces the buggy code mprime used to detect hyperthreading. It also eliminates the need for AffinityScramble2. Running a benchmark will output this topology information to results.txt. 3) AVX-512 trial factoring support added. 4) Dialog box for benchmarking added. 5) In the Test/Worker Windows dialog box you no longer choose how many threads each worker uses. Instead, you choose how many CPU cores each worker uses. There affinity options have been removed. There are two new options that will decide if each worker also uses hyperthreading. New features in Version 28.9 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Since GPUs are so much better at trial factoring than CPUs, benchmarking no longer times mprime's trial factoring by default. Two new benchmarking options are available: OnlyBenchThroughput and OnlyBenchMaxCPUs. See undoc.txt for details. 2) Slightly reduced the memory bandwidth requirements for several large FFTs. May lead to about a 1% speed increase for users testing 100 million digit numbers. 3) If running more than one worker, prime95 looks for any sin/cos data that it can share among the workers. Depending on the FFT sizes you are running, this could lead to a very slight reduction in needed memory bandwidth. 4) Method for choosing the best FFT implementation changed. In previous versions, the FFT implementation that resulted in the fastest single worker timing was used. In this version the FFT implementation that had the best throughput was selected. For FMA3 FFTs I used a 4-core Skylake to measure best throughput. For AVX FFTs I used a 4-core Sandy Bridge to measure best throughput. Not many FFTs were affected, but you may see a few percent variation in throughput with this version. 5) Improved AVX2 trial factoring in 64-bit executable. Trial factoring should still be done on a GPU. A GPU is over 10 times more efficient at trial factoring than a CPU!!! 6) Trial factoring now defines one "iteration" as processing 128KB of sieve, or 1M possible factors. In previous versions an iteration was defined as 16KB of sieve in 32-bit executables and 48KB in 64-bit executables. The trial factoring benchmark still times processing 16KB of sieve. 7) Trial factoring in 64-bit executables is now multi-threaded. 8) On initial install, the default settings for number of workers will be set to the number of cores / 4 with multithreading turned on. 9) The worker windows menu choice now enforces a minimum number of multi-threaded cores for some work types to ensure timely completion of assignments. Also, the worker windows menu choice no longer allows assigning work to hyperthreads (they are rarely beneficial in mprime). This behavior can be overridden with the ConfigureHyperthreads undoc.txt feature. New features in Version 28.6 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) The "days between sending new end dates" preference now accepts values between 0.125 and 7.0 (was between 1 and 7). This lets you contact the server as frequently as every three hours. This can be useful in conjunction with the server feature that sends an email to you if the computer is more than one hour late contacting the server. To turn on that server feature, go to the CPUs web page, and click on the CPU, there you can turn on a couple of email features. 2) AVX2 support for trial factoring. About a 50% speedup over the previous version. However, all trial factoring should still be done on a GPU. A GPU is over 10 times more efficient at trial factoring than a CPU!!! New features in Version 28.5 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Changed the output to the worker windows during LL and PRP tests. The new output includes the estimated time to complete the test. There are two new options described in undoc.txt: ClassicOutput and OutputRoundoff. 2) Added some new options described in undoc.txt: ScaleOutputFrequency, TitleOutputFrequency, and SilentVictoryPRP. 3) Benchmarking on hyperthreaded machines now times only the most common cases. Specifically, hyperthreading is used only in the one cpu and all cpu cases. 4) Benchmarking trial factoring is now off by default. Prime95 should not be used for trial factoring. GPUs are over 10 times more efficient at that task. 5) On multi-core machines, benchmarks are now run on multiple workers. This measures the effect of memory bandwidth during testing and helps you select the setup that gives you the most throughput. 6) There are many new options described in undoc.txt to customize the benchmarking process. 7) Maximum number of threads supported rasied from 64 to 512. New features in Version 28.4 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Reduced memory usage. This may make some single-thread benchmarks slower, but when running several workers on machines where memory is a bottleneck there should be a small performance increase. New features in Version 28.3 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Supports Intel's new for fused multiply add instruction introduced with the Haswell CPU. This results in faster FFTs. Note that performance on many Haswell systems is memory-bandwidth limited. This means that when running workers on all cores performance gains will be small. 2) Some minor optimizations may give a very small performance boost for AVX CPUs. 3) All new test torture test data for AVX CPUs. The new data runs more interations, thus more time is spent torturing the CPU rather than initializing the FFT routines. 4) Information added to result lines containing "has a factor". This information may be used by the server's manual web page to give proper TF / P-1 / ECM cpu credit at a future date. New features in Version 27.9 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) None, only minor bug fixes. New features in Version 27.7 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) When an error occurs reading a save file it is renamed with a .bad extension. On rare occasions the file can be read successfully at a later time. New features in Version 27.6 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Multi-threaded tests might be a little bit faster especially when using a lot of threads. Of course, single-threaded usage still gives the best throughput. 2) FFT crossover points were adjusted. Many higher, a few lower. New features in Version 27.3 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) 64-bit optimizations for AVX-capable computers. Single core benchmarks on Intel Sandy Bridge computers should see a decent speed increase. However, running on 4 cores runs into main memory bandwidth bottleneck. Sandy Bridge-E CPUs with 4 memory channels should avoid this problem. New features in Version 27.1 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) 32-bit FFTs optimized for AVX-capable computers. Intel Sandy Bridge computers should see a 25% speed increase. New features in Version 26.6 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) For rare cases where the program cannot figure out the number of cores and hyperthreading, the NumPhysicalCores option may help. See undoc.txt. 2) Faster FFT implementations are now selected for Core 2 CPUs with 1MB L2 cache or less (marketed under the Celeron and Pentium label). 3) New, slightly higher, trial factoring breakeven points. New features in Version 26.5 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Minor bug fixes. 2) Starting in build 2, P-1 work will display the chance of finding a factor. The worktodo.txt line must include how_far_factored using the new syntax: Pminus1=k,b,n,c,B1,B2[,how_far_factored][,B2_start][,"factors"] 3) Starting with build 3, at startup the program tries to determine which hyperthreaded logical CPUs comprise one physical CPU. If this isn't working properly, see the AffinityScramble2 setting in undoc.txt. The previous version's AffinityScramble setting is no longer supported! New features in Version 26.4 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) The 64-bit version supports 64 threads (up from 32). 2) The FreeBSD version supports setting thread affinity. 3) Affinity can now be set using the menus. 4) ECM time estimates improved. ECM may be a smidge faster. New features in Version 26.3 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) A few crash bugs were fixed that affected only some CPU architectures and some FFT lengths. Other minor bugs were fixed. New features in Version 26.2 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Faster FFTs for most SSE2-capable CPU architectures. 2) More FFT lengths supported. 3) Some of the new, faster FFTs don't let us do as much error checking on each iteration. If you don't want to lose this error checking, look for "SUM(INPUTS) error checking" in undoc,txt. This will slow down your tests by about 2-5%. 4) When a possible hardware error occurs during a test, the error message would likely scroll off the screen unnoticed. Now, all future progress updates to the screen will be followed by a message containing a count of the errors that have occurred during the test. 5) Workers now stagger their starts. This improves timings for some CPUs and operating systems. See undoc.txt to control this feature. New features in Version 25.11 of mprime --------------------------------------- 1) PRP of k*b^n+c where b > 2 will be faster in many cases. 2) Zero-padded FFTs are about 3-4% faster. These FFTs are used in projects like SeventeenOrBust. 3) Mprime automatically sets the program to nice priority. Technically, this is not necessary since workers are set to the lowest possible priority. However, sysadmins might be alarmed to see a CPU intensive program not running at nice priority when executing a ps command (it takes a more complicated ps command to see that the CPU intensive threads are running at a lower priority). New features in Version 25.10 of mprime --------------------------------------- 1) A bug that caused pfactor save file names to begin with the letter p was fixed. It now uses m like all other P-1 efforts. Old save file names are automatically upgraded. 2) Mprime now recovers gracefully from more out-of-memory conditions when doing ECM or P-1. 3) We now do P-1 factoring one bit level before the trial factoring limit. The previous version started P-1 two bit levels before the trial factoring limit. New features in Version 25.9 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Performance increases for the 64-bit version by taking advantage of the eight extra SSE2 registers. The 32-bit version may also be a bit faster by taking advantage of the Core 2 architecture. The FFT code was originally optimized for the Pentium 4 where instructions like "movapd reg,reg" take 6 clocks and should be avoided, whereas on Core 2 the same instruction uses just 1 clock cycle and improves scheduling. The 32-bit version may be slightly faster or slower on the Pentium 4, but not enough to worry about. Preliminary benchmarks indicate: 32-bit Pentium 4: between 2% slower and 1% faster 32-bit Core 2: between 2% and 6% faster 64-bit Pentium 4: between 2% and 4% faster 64-bit Core 2: between 10% and 13% faster 64-bit Core i7: between 7% and 12% faster 64-bit Phenom: between 10% and 13% faster AMD64: between 1% slower and 1% faster 2) Intermediate save files were overhauled. Trial factoring, P-1, and ECM now support multiple save files. The backup save file uses a .bu extension. While a new save file is being written a .write extension is used and renamed when successfully written (thus, briefly there are 3 save files). NOTE #1: LL save files no longer use an initial letter of q and r. The program will automatically use these obsolete files if necessary and delete them when no longer needed. NOTE #2: ECM and P-1 save files on k*2^n+1 no longer use file names beginning with d and l. The -An command line argument no longer appends an extension to save file names. NOTE #3: The client now supports keeping three save files. 3) Miscellaneous minor bug fixes. New features in Version 25.8 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Bug fixed in smart affinity on hyperthreaded CPUs. 2) Off-by-one-bit bug fixed in the benchmarking of trial factoring. 3) Fixed bug in laptop battery detection. 4) In rare case an infinite loop could occur when the computer ID in the spool file did not match the current computer ID. 5) The "days between checkin" value now has a range of 1 to 7 days. In version 24, the range was 1 to 60 days with a default of 28 days. 6) A bug where some low memory situations on a multi-core machine resulted in one or more workers sat idle has been fixed. 7) A crash bug doing 61 and 62 bit trial factoring on Pentium CPUs that do not support the CMOV instruction was fixed. On these same CPUs a bug was fixed when factors smaller than 2^60 was found. New features in Version 25.7 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Time= in ini files no longer supported. A during/else syntax can be used instead for some ini file options. 2) PauseWhileRunning enhanced to pause any number of workers. 3) LowMemWhileRunning added. 4) Ability to stop and start individual workers added. 5) DayMemory and NightMemory in local.txt replaced with a single Memory setting. 6) Memory can be set for each worker. 7) Scheme to distribute available memory among workers needing a lot of memory has been completely revamped. 8) MaxHighMemWorkers replaces delayStage2Workers option. 9) The executable now defaults to talking to the PrimeNet v5 server. To use the executable with the old v4 server, add "UseV4=1" to the top of prime.txt. New features in Version 25.5 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Multiple LL tests can be run within a single mprime instance. There is no longer a need to run multiple instances of mprime on multi-cpu machines. 2) Uses a new version of the Primenet server. Features include user IDs that are different than team IDs. New work types. Ability to set some client options using web-based forms. 3) Communication with the server runs in a separate thread. 4) The CURL library is used for communication with the server. Hopefully this will support a wider variety of client networking configurations. 5) Supports using multiple logical or physical CPUs on a single LL test. Except for some hyperthreaded CPUs and only on some FFT sizes, this is not recommended as you will get more throughput by giving each CPU its own number to test. 6) ECM and P-1 now support B1 and B2 values above 4.29 billion. ECM now pays attention to the memory settings in the Options/CPU menu choice. 7) Several files have been renamed so that they are not changed by Windows save/restore. Prime.ini is now prime.txt. Local.ini is now local.txt. Worktodo.ini is now worktodo.txt. The primenet.ini file has been deleted - it is now a section within the prime.txt file. 8) It is now legal to put comment lines in the prime.txt, local.txt, and worktodo.txt files. 9) In older versions, editing the worktodo.ini file while mprime was running sometimes had the desired effect. That is no longer the case. You can create a worktodo.add file to add work to a running mprime. 10) WARNINGS: Previous versions of mprime will not be able to read save files generated by this version. This version will not be able to continue from P-1 save files generated by the previous version in the middle of stage 2. This version cannot read a prime.spl file generated by a previous version. 11) Program can now do PRP tests of (k*b^n+c)/f. Add a line worktodo.txt that looks like this: PRP=k,b,n,c[,how_far_factored,tests_saved][,known_factors] The optional how_far_factored (in bits) and tests_saved values are used to determine if P-1 factoring prior to the PRP test would be beneficial. The optional known_factors list is a quoted comma separated list of known factors of k*b^n+c. 12) The program no longer does a one-hour self-test before testing an exponent with a new FFT length. 13) The torture test dialog box lets you choose how many CPUs or cores you want to torture test. 14) The benchmark times both single-threaded and multi-threaded FFTs. 15) The -B command line argument is no longer supported. New features in Version 24.15 of mprime --------------------------------------- 1) To limit mprime's impact on computer responsiveness on a hyperthreaded machine the program now pauses for 30 seconds if two successive iterations take 40% longer than a typical iteration. You can adjust this feature using the HyperthreadingBackoff setting described in undoc.txt. New features in Version 24.14 of mprime --------------------------------------- 1) A bug that caused the torture test to hang on 256K FFTs on SSE2 machines with 128K of L2 cache was fixed. New features in Version 24.13 of mprime --------------------------------------- 1) Celeron D (256K L2 cache) and Willamette (also 256K L2 cache) now have different implementations for several FFT sizes. This results in an improvement of several percent for the Celeron D. 2) A bug that caused some machines to generate "Error 2252" when communicating with the server was fixed. 3) SSE2 trial factoring code had a bug when factoring very large exponents. New features in Version 24.12 of mprime --------------------------------------- 1) For SSE2 machines the larger FFTs have been changed to more effectively use a wide variety of L2 cache sizes. The previous version was optimized for a 256KB L2 cache only. Depending on your CPU and FFT size, you could see an improvement of several percent. 2) As a side "benefit" even larger FFT sizes are now supported. This allows testing of exponents up to 596 million. Not recommended. 3) The factoring breakeven points have been recalculated using my 2 GHz P4. This version of prime95 will do less trial factoring. 4) Since server database crashes cause spurious error 3 messages, mprime will now ignore error 3 messages from the server for 72 hours. This should workaround the problem whereby a result is reported but no CPU credit is given and the reservation is not cleared. 5) Fixed crash bug trial factoring exponents above 286 million. New features in Version 24.11 of mprime --------------------------------------- 1) Faster FFTs for AMD64 using prefetchw in both 32-bit and 64-bit mode. You can expect about a 15% speed improvement. 2) Prime95 now detects support for 3DNow! instructions. See undoc.txt for overriding this detection with CpuSupports3DNow=n in local.ini. 3) Factoring entries in worktodo.ini now accept exponents up to 2 billion. 4) Added timeouts to PrimeNet communications in hopes of avoiding rare hangs when contacting the PrimeNet server. 5) Fixed rare bug where P-1's GCD could miss a factor. 6) Added trial factoring to the benchmark. 7) Processor affinity is now supported. 8) Fixed bug in ECM when using zero-padded FFTs. 9) SSE2 macros optimized for an additional 1-3% improvement on P4 and AMD64 CPUs. New features in Version 24.9 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Fixed mis-detection of some P3 and Celeron CPUs. New features in Version 24.6 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Athlon users should see a 20% to 30% speed increase. 2) Pentium, Pentium II, Pentium III users should see dramatically WORSE performance. Run version 23 instead. 3) P-1 and ECM now support numbers of the form k*b^n+c. This cannot be done from the menus. Add these entries to worktodo.ini: Pminus1=k,b,n,c,B1,B2 ECM2=k,b,n,c,B1,B2,curves_to_do[,specific_sigma] New features in Version 23.9 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Fixed mprime crash bug that arose when Fedora users upgraded to kernel 2.6.8-1.520. New features in Version 23.8 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) A communication bug, Primenet Error 1, was fixed in the case where proxy software inserted the text "NetAnts: MaxConnection=1" in the HTML response from the Primenet server. 2) The program will now try both full and a relative URL in trying to contact the PrimeNet server. Some rare setups only work with full URLs and some only work with relative URLs. The small downside is there might be an increase in network traffic when the server is down. If this is a concern you can use the UseFullURL option described in undoc.txt. New features in Version 23.6 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Several changes have been made to the torture test. a) Machines faster than 1 GHz will use new test data that runs a lot more iterations. This will reduce time spent in initialization code, hopefully increasing stress on the CPU. b) The torture test stops after 100 ILLEGAL SUMOUT errors. New features in Version 23.5 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Four changes have been made after GIMPS' first false positive report in 7 1/2 years of operation. a) The program now returns the number of errors that occurred when the result is prime. A non-zero value will make us more suspect of the reported prime. b) The save files will not be deleted. The user can then email these to me and we can rerun the last 30 minutes of the LL test. It is hard to imagine a second false positive report in this mini LL run. c) The shift counter is now checked every iteration. If this variable AND the FFT data was corrupted, then and endless loop of LL iterations generating zero is possible - resulting in a false prime report. d) Every iteration the FFT data is checked to see if the data has been zeroed. e) The is-this-a-prime check now makes sure the FFT data is not NaN. NaN stands for not a number and means the data is corrupt. The previous version checked for zero and my C compiler returns TRUE for the test NaN == 0.0! 2) I restored the old behavior sending relative URLs. Some users had trouble with this feature introduced in 23.4. So, UseFullURL=0 is now the default. 3) Some prefetching improvements were made for the Athlon, Pentium 3, and Celeron 2 processors. You can expect speed improvements between 3% and 10% for most FFT sizes. Warning: the new code is slower for Durons and Celeron's with small L2 caches for FFT sizes 1024K and above. New features in Version 23.4 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Further performance improvements in the SSE2 FFT code. I've tried to do more work while data is in the L1 data cache. 2) The program should now work with a "redirected proxy server". This was done by sending full URLs in Primenet requests. While I don't anticipate any problems, the old relative URL functionality can be had by setting UseFullURL=0 in primenet.ini. 3) A bug in the assembly language add and subtract routines was fixed. The bug could affect ECM on exponents just below MAXIMUM_EXPONENT_FOR_FFTLEN - FFTLEN/2. New features in Version 23.3 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Further performance improvements in the SSE2 code for FFTs larger than 640K. You should see about a 4% improvement in LL tests on a P4. However, FFTs between 40K and 512K might be a tiny bit slower. 2) Stage 2 of P-1 factoring has been recoded for more speed. WARNING: when continuing from a save file created in stage 2 by a previous mprime version, this version will restart stage 2 from the beginning. ALSO: the stage 2 P-1 save file format has changed - in dual boot scenarios you must upgrade mprime and prime95 at the same time. 3) Some prefetching improvements were made for the Athlon, Pentium 3, and Celeron 2 processors. You can expect speed improvements between 3% and 10% for most FFT sizes. New features in Version 23.2 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Further performance improvements in the SSE2 code. You can expect about a 5% improvement in LL tests on a P4. New features in Version 23.1 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Big SSE2 FFTs now take the L2 cache size into account. P4 Celeron (128KB L2 cache) is faster for FFTs between 512K and 2M. P4 Northwood (512KB L2 cache) is faster for FFTs larger than 1M. 2) Benchmark no longer times 256K and 320K FFTs, but does time 2048K FFT. 3) Support for torture testing FFT sizes from 1280K to 4096K added. 4) A 900 MHz P-III is now required to get first time LL tests by default. 5) Slightly faster SSE2 FFTs for lengths of 5*2^N and 7*2^N (e.g. 640K, 896K). New features in Version 22.13 of mprime --------------------------------------- 1) A P-1 and ECM QA suite was implemented. A bug in ECM for exponents below 172,700 and near the limit of an FFT size and using SSE2 code was fixed. New features in Version 22.12 of mprime --------------------------------------- 1) A bug was fixed that caused some factors to be missed in stage 2 of P-1 when the available memory did not let the program allocate 12 temporary variables. If testing a number in the 16 millions using an FFT size of 768K, then each temporary takes 768K * 8 bytes or 6MB. If your memory setting was less than 72MB (6MB * 12 temporaries) then you were affected by the bug. Actual the program allocates some fixed tables so anything less than about 75MB triggered the bug. 2) The command line argument -s prints the current status and exits. New features in Version 22.11 of mprime --------------------------------------- 1) A bug that caused factors to be missed in the last stage of P-1 and ECM factoring was fixed. The bug was introduced in executables built after Sept. 28, 2002. New features in Version 22.10 of mprime --------------------------------------- 1) When running a double-check assignment the preferred trial factoring depth is reduced one bit. This is done because finding a factor will save one LL test instead of the usual two LL tests. New features in Version 22.9 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Error rate for a clean run is now estimated at 1.8% raising your chances of finding a Mersenne prime while double-checking. 2) You can now pause mprime when another program starts running. See the PauseWhileRunning option in undoc.txt. 3) A bug in unscrambling the proxy server password in primenet.ini was fixed. New features in Version 22.8 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Soft FFT crossovers have been implemented. If you test an exponent that is within 0.2% of the old hard FFT crossover point, then 1000 test iterations are run to determine if the smaller or larger FFT is appropriate for the exponent. Although not recommended, you can adjust prime95's behavior to be more aggressive using the SoftCrossover and SoftCrossoverAdjust features discussed in undoc.txt. 2) To better stress main memory, the torture test will now use up to the amount of memory specified in the Options/CPU dialog box. 3) Iterations with roundoff checking are a little faster for non-SSE2 CPUs. New features in Version 22.7 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Trial factoring above 2^64 on a P4 now uses the SSE2 instructions. This is more than four times as fast as the previous version. 2) Old Advanced/Factoring save files are not compatible with this version. They are named p0000000 and should be deleted. This should not be a problem as no one should be using this obsolete and unsupported feature. 3) Four more x87 FFT crossover changes as suggested by Brian Beesley's research. New features in Version 22.6 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) To reduce spurious error reports on x86 LL tests near the crossover points, the program now allows roundoff errors less than 0.40625 rather than less than 0.4. New features in Version 22.5 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) A bug in P4 roundoff error recovery was fixed. Bug was present in version 22 executables dated between May 22 and June 18. New features in Version 22.4 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) A little more tweaking of the FFT crossovers. 2) A GCD hang bug was fixed in case where there were a large number of entries in the lowm.txt file. Another GCD bug affecting ECM on F18 was fixed. New features in Version 22.3 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Given more data, the roundoff error checking is now done on every iteration for exponents within 0.5% of the maximum that can be tested by the current FFT length. If a roundoff error above 0.4 occurs, then the iteration is now repeated without any change to the shift count. It now takes a roundoff error greater than 0.6 to corrupt the results. 2) Many of the FFT ranges have changed. Version 21 was too aggressive in choosing FFT sizes for the P4. The new handling of roundoff errors above 0.4 lets us be more aggressive with the non-P4 code. 3) Result lines are now WYn rather than WXn. 4) A crash bug affecting P-1 and ECM using the 2^N+1 option for large N was fixed. 5) A rare memory corruption and possible crash bug in the GCD code was fixed. 6) The -t command line argument will run the torture test. 7) To reduce wild fluctuations in the RollingAverage, it will be updated roughly twice per day. New features in Version 22.2 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Factoring assignments go to machines slower than a 233 MHz Pentium. Double-checks are assigned machines slower than a 500 MHz P-III. 2) The speed of the GCD has been improved. 3) Some of the P4 FFT ranges have changed. Version 21 was too aggressive in choosing FFT sizes for the P4. 4) Roundoff error checking is now done on every iteration for exponents within 2% of the maximum that can be tested by the current FFT length. See undoc.txt for ways to disable this new feature. 5) The previous version would get into an infinite loop if a repeatable roundoff error larger than 0.48 was discovered. Now if a repeatable roundoff error greater than 0.45 is found, then the iteration is repeated after shifting the FFT data. New features in Version 22.1 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Some bugs in error handling when communicating with the server have been fixed. 2) "Basic" Proxy server authentication is supported. 3) The program now uses a high resolution timer rather than the RDTSC instruction to time events. This should help the program display accurate timings on laptops with SpeedStep or desktops that can hibernate. You can force the program to use the old RDTSC timing method with the RdtscTiming option described in undoc.txt. 4) The program uses a updated algorithm to automatically detect CPU type and speed. The Options/CPU dialog box no longer let's you set this information. Instead, the Options/CPU dialog displays the detected CPU type and speed. This new feature helps prevent incorrect settings when users upgrade or try several overclocking speeds. If the new algorithm fails, you can override the settings as described in undoc.txt. 5) Benchmark now writes the program version, timing methodology, cpu type and speed, L1 and L2 cache information to results.txt. Refuse to benchmark if rdtsctiming is 10. New features in Version 21.4 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Exiting the Torture Test now prints out how long it ran. 2) P4 error checking was relaxed slightly to reduce false alarms. New features in Version 21.3 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) The program will now skip the P-1 factoring stage if another user has already performed this step. 2) The Advanced/Quit GIMPS menu choice now lets you quit after current work completes or quit immediately. 3) A bug was fixed in the error recovery code. After getting a "Disregard last error" message, the user was treated to a new error on every iteration. The end result was incorrect. The bug only affected the error recovery of the new P4 FFT introduced in the beta version 21.2. New features in Version 21.2 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) The program now uses the SSE2 instructions introduced on the Pentium 4 CPU. This version is about 3 times faster than the previous version on a P4. 2) The program now uses the prefetch instructions on the Celeron 2, Pentium 3, and all Athlon CPUs. This results in about a 20% performance boost on these machines. 3) The default crossover between double-check assignments and first-time tests has been increased to a 400 MHz PII. 4) The program used to do factoring and P-1 testing on new exponents before completing LL tests on older exponents. This was confusing to many. The program now processes the worktodo.ini file in sequential order. See undoc.txt on how to restore the old behavior. 5) Error messages such as ILLEGAL SUMOUT, SUMINP != SUMOUT, etc. are no longer sent to the server since the final result contains a count of how many errors occurred during the LL test. 6) Some of the FFT crossover points have changed slightly. 7) Test/Status now outputs the day of the week each work item will complete. 8) Interim output lines have changed - hopefully, so they are more useful especially to newbies. By default, output lines no longer contain the clocks count. Lines now contain a timestamp. Benchmark timings are now output in milliseconds. These defaults can be changed using options in undoc.txt. 9) A new welcome screen for new users will encourage stress testers to use the program without reserving exponents. 10) There is now a menu choice that lets you unreserve a specific exponent. This is for knowledgable users only. You might do this if the server assigned a small exponent and you'd rather be testing larger ones. Or the prime95 you set up on another machine had a hard drive failure. 11) The self-test menu choice was deleted - use the torture test instead. 12) A benchmark menu choice has been added. 13) The torture test code now includes more FFT lengths including smaller ones that run completely in the L2 cache which may increase CPU temperatures. Each FFT size is tested for 15 minutes by default. There are now several options in the undoc.txt for fine tuning the torture test's behavior. New features in Version 20.4 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) If stage 2 of P-1 was postponed because of insufficient memory, the program did not restart stage 2 when nighttime started. This bug was fixed. 2) The -B switch, now properly documented in readme.txt, takes an optional parameter for the number of mprime instances to run in background. 3) The undocumented RouteRequired INI setting was added. 4) By default, PII-300's and faster get first-time LL tests, P-90 and faster get double-checking work, and all slower machines get factoring work. New features in Version 20.3 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Another fairly uncommon ECM bug was fixed. The bug caused "Factor does not divide N!" errors. 2) A couple of minor bugs in computing the optimal P-1 bounds to use prior to a Lucas-Lehmer test were fixed. The program now does a better job at estimating the memory required in P-1 stage 2. Finally, although P-1 stage 2 working set size is unchanged, the program allocates less memory in stage 2. 3) Mprime no longer searches for a smaller factor when trial factoring discovers a factor. The reasons are two-fold. 1) Version 19 had a bug where stopping and restarting the program bypassed the search for smaller factors. Thus, my database may already be missing smaller factors. 2) As we factor larger exponents to a deeper depth it may no longer be a quick job to determine if there are smaller factors. Note, that version 20 will still look for smaller factors if you are looking for factors below 2^60 with the undocumented FactorOverride option. 4) The undocumented AMPM feature controls how times are formatted in the Options/CPU dialog box. New features in Version 20.2 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) If P-1 stage 1 completed and there was not enough memory to start stage 2 immediately, then an incorrect save file was generated. This bug was introduced in version 20.1. Upon restart of the P-1 factoring job a crash or other unpredictable behavior was possible. This bug was fixed and this version has special code to properly read these incorrect save files. 2) P-1 will restart any time the memory settings change. This is done so that the optimal P-1 bounds can be computed with the new memory settings. 3) A bug in ECM testing was fixed. New features in Version 20.1 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) The program now does some P-1 factoring prior to running first time and double-checking Lucas-Lehmer tests. This will increase overall GIMPS throughput. If you install version 20 in the middle of an LL test the program will run the P-1 step if the LL test is less than 50% complete. 2) The Options/CPU dialog box now asks how much memory the program can use during the P-1 factoring. See the "Setting Available Memory" section in the readme.txt file. 3) Stage 1 of P-1 factoring is now faster. 4) The GCD used in P-1 and ECM factoring is now faster. 5) The Test/Manual Operation menu choice has been deleted. 6) The memory options in P-1 and ECM dialog boxes have been deleted. 7) The "send new completion dates" checkbox was moved from the Test/Primenet dialog box to the Advanced/Manual Communication dialog box. 8) A bug in estimating time remaining for a factoring job was fixed. 9) The Advanced/Quit GIMPS menu option now defaults to NO. 10) ECM and P-1 are now consistent with Lucas-Lehmer testing in the use of the "Iterations between screen outputs" setting. An iteration is defined as the time it takes to do a squaring. If you are doing ECM on small exponents you will probably want to increase this setting. 11) Timings in P-1 are no longer cumulative. There is a new feature in undoc.txt for those that prefer cumulative timings. 12) The FactorOverride undocumented feature (not for use with PrimeNet) now supports factoring to a deeper level than prime95 would ordinarily factor. 13) Resuming an LL test now outputs a line to the screen, 14) Advanced/Factor menu choice was deleted. 15) A -B switch was added to run mprime in the background. New features in Version 19.1 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) A new undocumented feature, Stage1GCD, lets you speed up P-1 tests on large exponents - see undoc.txt for details. 2) K6 CPUs now default to the Pentium code path instead of the Pentium Pro code path. This is faster on the K6. 3) A bug that caused negative elapsed time on 486 and Cyrix CPUs has been fixed. 4) The rolling average formula was adjusted to work better on machines that are not on 24 hours a day. 5) You can now put EntropiaIP=207.104.25.155 in primenet.ini to work around error 2250 problems when using the statically linked mprime on older Linux versions. 6) An alignment bug that caused factoring to be slower than the Windows program was fixed. New features in Version 19.0 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Faster - in some cases as much as 10% faster!. The FFTs were recoded for improved memory and TLB efficiency. Furthermore, optimizations specific to the Pentium Pro and later processors were added. 2) New FFT lengths. The program can now test exponents as large as 79.3 million. Also, smaller FFT lengths are supported for use in ECM and P-1 factoring. 3) More conservative FFT breakpoints. This could actually result in some exponents being slower to test in this version. However, the chance of a fatal rounding error has been reduced. 4) P-1 factoring has been added. Although it is not very practical for large exponents because of a slow GCD routine, it can be used to find new factors of exponents below a million or so. 5) ECM can now run on large exponents. Once again, the slow GCD routine might make this impractical for large exponents. 6) ECM and P-1 factoring now support save files. Very handy on lengthy runs. The count of completed ECM curves is maintained in the save file instead of the worktodo.ini file. 7) ECM and P-1 factoring lets you specify the amount of memory to use. More memory can improve execution speed slightly. 8) A bug in guessing the CPU speed on initial install has been fixed. 9) Error checking has been improved slightly. 10) Factoring is now "layered". That is, prime95 now factors to 2^50, then 2^51, 2^52, and so forth up to the appropriate limit. The factoring output lines have been changed to show percent complete in the current "layer". 11) A bug in running two or more self or torture tests in the same directory has been fixed 12) Trial factoring above 2^64 is now supported. 13) More trial factoring is now done to take into account the cost of double-checking. 14) By default, the percent complete value is now displayed to 2 decimal places. You can change this by setting PercentPrecision in prime.ini to a value between 0 and 6. 15) An option to get only 10,000,000 digit numbers to run primality tests on has been added to the Test/Primenet dialog box. See http://www.mersenne.org/prize.htm for rules on claiming the EFF award for finding a 10,000,000 digit prime. 16) The User Information dialog box allows you to request newsletters and form a team user ID where the team members cannot alter the team name. 17) A bug in the reporting of error counts in the results.txt file has been fixed. 18) The server can now broadcast important messages to the mprime client. 19) Mprime now tries to prevent two copies of mprime from running simultaneously. Although not foolproof, it should greatly reduce the chances of corrupting the intermediate files. Note, multi-processor systems are not affected due to using the -An switch or running in different directories. 20) The -c option allows you to run mprime, have it communicate with the PrimeNet server, and then exit. 21) A computer ID will be generated for computers that do not have one. If you want to assign your own computer ID, please try to make each computer ID using the same user ID unique. New features in Version 18.1 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Bug fixed in Lucas-Lehmer testing of exponents above 4194304. 2) Added code so that server can distinguish between a v17 and v18 client. New features in Version 17.1 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) You can now fine tune your control of the program by adding Time= lines to your prime.ini file - see the readme.txt file. 2) ECM factoring for 2^N+1 is now available. 3) By default, ECM factoring stops if a factor is found for exponents above 5825 and continues (if the cofactor is composite) for exponents below 5825. You can override this behavior by setting ContinueECM=0 or 1 in prime.ini. New features in Version 17.0 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Mprime can now be used to double-check its own results. 2) Machines less powerful than a P133 will default to double-checking assignments. 3) The total number of errors that occur during the Lucas-Lehmer test are now output in results.txt. New features in Version 16.4 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Lucas-Lehmer testing output now shows percent complete. 2) ECM factoring is available for small exponents. See http://www.mersenne.org/ecm.htm for a list of exponents that need factoring. 3) A bug that prevented 486 & Cyrix machines from factoring above 2^62 has been fixed. 4) The LockUserInfo feature no longer sends user info every time prime95 starts up. 5) Test/Status now shows expected completion dates. New features in Version 16.3 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Mprime can now test exponents up to 20.5 million. 2) Mprime can now find factors up to 2^64. 3) The program now reports to the PrimeNet server new completion dates every 28 days (actually user adjustable from 1 to 60 days). This will improve the reclaiming of exponents that are not being actively tested. 4) The program now reports the current iteration number to the server for more informative status reports. 5) Intermediate files are now less likely to fail. If an error occurs during the writing of an intermediate file, the program continues on trying to write the intermediate file every 10 minutes. 6) A bug in the rolling average code has been fixed. Mprime now modifies the rolling average when factoring too. 7) The prime.log file is now limited in size to 256K bytes. 8) The user information dialog box now has a checkbox to tell the server not to send email. 9) Setting LockUserInfo=1 in prime.ini will make the user information dialog box inaccessible. This setting is also sent to the server so that no member of a team can accidentally transfer the credit for work previously performed by the team. New features in Version 15.4 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Mprime can now contact a central server to get exponents to test, report results, and change your email address. No database is required! The old manual reservation system is still supported. 2) The command line interface is replaced by a series of menus and questions to control your preferences. These menus are similar to the menus in the Windows executable. All preferences are now stored in local INI files that are compatible with the Windows program. This should make mprime easier to use, especially for those users running both operating systems. 3) The Pentium factoring code (up to 60 bit factors) is about 4.5% faster. 4) The CPU menu now has an entry for the AMD K6 and an entry for how many hours per day you expect to be running the program. 5) Mprime will no longer let you select Pentium Pro or Pentium CPU type unless your CPU supports the process-specific instructions. 6) You can now change how often prime95 saves intermediate files to disk. 7) You can now select one save file or two. 8) -A switch added. This allows you to run multiple copies of prime95 from the same directory. This is useful on multi-processor machines. 9) Mprime now changes its working directory to the same directory that mprime is located. This makes it easier to launch mprime from startup scripts. If you must run mprime from a different directory than the rest of the files, then use the new -W switch. 10) The time estimate in the Status menu choice now takes into account the time you've invested in the current Lucas-Lehmer test. It also takes into account how many hours per day you are running the program. It also adjusts its time estimate if your computer seems to be running faster or slower than expected. 11) Timestamps in the results.txt file. 12) The results file is now named results.txt, not results. New features in Version 14.4 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) The Pentium Pro factoring code is nearly twice as fast compared to the previous version. New features in Version 14.2 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) Corrected floating point round-off bugs in the factoring code that affected testing factors larger than 2^59. 2) The Pentium factoring code is 5-10% faster. 3) When an error is detected the program now waits 5 minutes before restarting from the last save file. 4) The detection of corrupt save files has improved. New features in Version 14.1 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) The Pentium factoring code is 5% faster. New features in Version 14.0 of mprime -------------------------------------- 1) The program can now check exponents up to 5.26 million! To test these big exponents, you will need a new database and great patience. 2) The per-iteration error checking code has been improved. It will detect more errors and automatically restart from the previous save file. 3) The -c option now has a number for Cyrix machines. There is no Cyrix-specific code. This change does provide better estimates in status option. 4) There is a machine torture test option which runs a continuous Self Test. This is great for "burning in" a new machine. 5) The time estimates in status option have been changed slightly. Hopefully, the new estimates are a little more accurate. 6) The self test option now takes nine hours. New features in Version 13.3.2 of mprime ---------------------------------------- 1) It's smaller. Mprime is no longer linked with the static C runtime library. The staticly linked version is still available for a.out Linux systems. 2) Improved error checking should detect more hardware problems with fewer false alarms. New features in Version 13.1.2 of mprime ---------------------------------------- 1) Faster! Support for non-power-of-2 FFT lengths has been added. 2) The -I switch has been added. This switch prints a status line to the results file every N iterations. For example, -I50000 will print a line to the results file after Lucas-Lehmer iteration 50000, 100000, etc. 3) The program now creates two backup files in case one is corrupted during a system crash. New features in Version 1.3 of mprime ------------------------------------- 1) A minor bug in the status report code is fixed. 2) The -L and -P switches have been implemented, but not tested. The -L switch takes a floating point number as an argument. If the load as reported in /proc/loadavg rises above this threshold, then the program pauses for as many seconds as specified by the -P switch. This allows you to free up mprime's memory for other tasks to use during high load conditions. New features in Version 1.2 of mprime ------------------------------------- 1) A minor bug in the Pentium factoring code has been fixed. New features in Version 1.1 of mprime ------------------------------------- 1) Factoring is now 6% faster due to a 16 pass process rather than a 2 pass process. New features in Version 1.0 of mprime ------------------------------------- 1) Initial release - all features are new!