GIMPS Future
 

I thought I'd start a thread about the direction and future of GIMPS. Just ideas and thoughts on what people want to see happen and any suggestions to that end.

One thing I've thought would be nifty would be to automate the process of factoring 'small' M-numbers with ECM or P-1. Right now, the system is to pick something, work on it, and e-mail the results to George. I imagine that it would be something of a time saver both for George and for the participants if this kind of work could be rolled into the Primenet server.

Other than that, I think it would be a good idea to standardize the primenet protocols so someone could build clients around Mlucas or Glucas for non-x86 platforms so they could get assignments and send results automatically.

I don't mean to impugn any of the hard work that George and others have put into the software (especially since I have done nothing to contribute). Basically, I think some added convenience could help us expand the user base and get us to 79.3M that much more quickly :) .

[quote="apocalypse"]One thing I've thought would be nifty would be to automate the process of factoring 'small' M-numbers with ECM or P-1. Right now, the system is to pick something, work on it, and e-mail the results to George. I imagine that it would be something of a time saver both for George and for the participants if this kind of work could be rolled into the Primenet server.[quote]

To some extent this already exists in the form of the ECMNET client/server approach. The master server is generally loaded with numbers from one of the Cunningham tables and Mersenne numbers are merely a special case of these. Right now the server is loaded with the 3+ table (i.e. numbers of the form 3^n+1) but the 2- table is loaded from time to time.

Anyone interested in investigating ECMNET clients should go to Paul Zimmermann's ECMNET page at [url]http://www.loria.fr/~zimmerma/records/ecmnet.html [/url]in the first instance and then perhaps contacting me if more assistance is required.


Paul