RIP DCTF.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by airsquirrels

Let's convince the various crypto-currency folks to mine for primes...

Profit...

[Dubslow]

Originally Posted by airsquirrels

Well, I guess we should get around to developing TFing ASICs for dedicated bit depth ranges :)

Let's convince the various crypto-currency folks to mine for primes...

There's primecoin for that

[airsquirrels]

47M is closed.

Working forward towards 50 and the last of the candidates at 70 bit.

[Mark Rose]

Exponents between 58M and 105M with an active or completed LL test are now DCTF'ed to an appropriate level for a GTX 580.

As mentioned in the other thread, I'm now looking for any skipped TF work, for exponents from 34.8M to 105M with no factors.

[flagrantflowers]

Is continuing this project a good idea? I think that the point has been raised that a number of older cards stop being efficient at higher bits.

If this gets finished off, will we have a number of cards poorly allocated? Would it make more sense to shift some of this power to other areas and preserve this so people can efficiently use their older cards?

People are always free to do what they will, but I think the topic deserves some discussion.

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by flagrantflowers

Is continuing this project a good idea? I think that the point has been raised that a number of older cards stop being efficient at higher bits.

This is true, but there is enough work for everybody for the next 10 years or more, factoring higher exponents to the current bitlevels (in that time we will have better hardware anyhow, but that is a different story). But for your (general you) peace of mind, it is not like some hardware will have nothing to do after DCTF is finished. There is a lot of work to do "in front of the LL front", for example. Factoring everything in this table to 72-73 bits or so will still need a lot of time and resources... As participation shifts toward other projects too, due to the things diversifies in the "distributed computing world", we may not see it done during our life time...

[airsquirrels]

Everyone is entitled to different views, interests and opinions. To me this sounds like going around town breaking windows to keep the glassiers employeed.

The goal is to find more primes, the best way to do that is to have everyone searching for primes or eliminating not-primes. Right now there are a lot of various workloads and efficiency questions that mean efforts are divided across many fronts. My hope is by finishing off DCTF (and maybe even catching DC up a bit) those efforts will move towards LL tests and we will find another prime faster.

In an ideal world I would just say we shouldn't do DCTF until just in time, especially since hardware keeps getting faster and by the time the DC front actually catches up it would take significantly less power/electricity/time to check those ranges. Unfortunately people disagree and put lots of resources into DCTF. My response is 'ok, if we're going to do this then let's just put the power towards it and get it done so we can all get back to the real work.' Plus everyone likes to experience completing a task and celebrating that milestone. I agree with an earlier post that GPU72 makes celebrating achievable milestones much more exciting than mersenne.org.

My personal view is DC itself is not an efficient use of resources, and the current DC process will not scale up to bigger and bigger exponents. We will need incremental DC alongside Ll or other ways to increase our confidence in LL results without just doing the work twice or too many resources will be wasted.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by flagrantflowers

Is continuing this project a good idea? I think that the point has been raised that a number of older cards stop being efficient at higher bits.

It's not older cards so much as different classes of cards. AMD's GPUs tend to fall off at higher bit levels compared to NVidia's GPUs, for example. And then within the NVidia offerings, each "Compute version" affects the "optimal TF'ing level". See James' excellent analysis here.

And while I agree that completing DCTF'ing doesn't really make sense at the moment (we're YEARS ahead of the DC'ing waves) some want to do this, and I'm just a facilitator. I'm hopeful that when the DCTF'ing is completed most of the resources will then move to LLTF'ing (or GPUP-1'ing, DC'ing or LL'ing).

Keep in mind that when DCTF is completed, cards which are more efficient at lower bit levels still have LLTF 71 to 72 work available; I'll ensure some of that continues to be available (in the higher ranges) for just such cards.

Doing LLTF'ing "to release" (read: to 75 bits at the moment) is the most important, but all other work needs to be done as well, and is useful and helpful.

[petrw1]

YAY

[Mark Rose]

Originally Posted by petrw1

YAY

It's tempting to poach those 8 remaining assignments below 73 bits lol

[airsquirrels]

They belong to bdot. They are expected soon