Factorial primes
 

Is it possible for GIMPS to check a factorial prime (n!+/-1) or can it only test Mersenne primes?

[QUOTE=Unregistered;271458]Is it possible for GIMPS to check a factorial prime (n!+/-1) or can it only test Mersenne primes?[/QUOTE]

GIMPS is the name of the project. Clearly it's [i]possible[/i] for GIMPS to do a lot of things. What it actually does do is limited to Mersenne and Fermat numbers. There are no plans that I know of to expand its activities. Many GIMPS participants have other interests as well.

Perhaps you meant to ask if the GIMPS client programs - prime95 and mprime, can check factorial primes. The answer is no, although the source code is freely available, and the math library in particular could be usefully used to create a program that could check these forms.

[QUOTE=Unregistered;271458]Is it possible for GIMPS to check a factorial prime (n!+/-1) or can it only test Mersenne primes?[/QUOTE]

PrimeGrid already has a search for them using PFGW and PRPNet. Note that PFGW is built on gwnum, the same FFT library behind Prime95.