GIMPS participation
 

Is it a fair assessment of the graph on the
Primenet statistics page to say that the number
or user accounts saturated in May 2004?

that Graph is not about the number of accounts associatet to GIMPS, but it is about the number of calculations *all* computers connected to GIMPS did at that time. As many users have more than 1 computer I don't think you can recalculate the number of accounts connected to GIMPS at that time. I don't know if there is a statistic about if.

S530113

[quote=MatWur-S530113;104419]that Graph is not about the number of accounts associatet to GIMPS, but it is about the number of calculations *all* computers connected to GIMPS did at that time. As many users have more than 1 computer I don't think you can recalculate the number of accounts connected to GIMPS at that time. I don't know if there is a statistic about if.

S530113[/quote]

The graph rises because of the increased computer power per user.
I am suggesting that the number of users has remained approximately constant since May 2004. You can't easily "recalculate" which is
why I asked the question. It will be on record somewhere.

[QUOTE=davieddy;104420]The graph rises because of the increased computer power per user.
I am suggesting that the number of users has remained approximately constant since May 2004.[/QUOTE]

That sounds plausible. We get short-term "spikes" whenever a new prime is announced, but now that the project is well-established, I expect -- without some way to make a whole lot of different kinds of hardware (e.g. video game boxes) - attractive for GIMPS use -- that we've settled on a fairly stable percentage of the wired world's population which likes this sort of thing and doesn't mind the slower pace (reletive to the various thrills-a-minute projects out there) of record-prime searching.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;104967]...we've settled on a fairly stable percentage of the wired world's population which likes this sort of thing and doesn't mind the slower pace (reletive to the various thrills-a-minute projects out there) of record-prime searching.[/QUOTE]
Please give a link to these thrill-a-minute projects you speak of. ;)

[QUOTE=jasong;104975]Please give a link to these thrill-a-minute projects you speak of. ;)[/QUOTE]

Anything where a "work unit" requires less than a month's crunching: seti@home, folding@home, any of the DES-cracking-style projects, ... I'm sure there are lots of others, but to be honest, I don't follow them very closely. Have a look here for more-current info:

[url]http://distributedcomputing.info[/url]