As things progress, I'm kind of confused mathematically, and perhaps I don't understand the number sieve..

Given that we now know that P74 * P202 = 3,667- through mass distributive factoring, I'm faced with a "perhaps silly question".

Once we knew P74 (long ago), and, once we knew P202, (less long ago), why wasn't the number sieve checking P202 against all of the previous P# to sieve out 3,667- before we even attempted 3,667- ?

By all means, please don't consider this a complaint. I'm not considering staying or leaving. I'm not questioning the validity of the project. I'm not making some judgement about productivity vs wasting time. The benefits that my machines get from being busy with this project outweigh any of these topics, and I'm not trying to open wounds or start a flame war. I suspect that I'm missing something obvious involving what "P#" means or 3,667- means, or that distributed calculation of such multiplications is some entirely different project requiring more horsepower than what we're doing in NFS. Maybe the number sieve isn't doing what I think it's doing.

It can't be this simple, right? Something obvious is in my blind spot, and I'd love to understand this better.

Thank you, when you stop screaming or laughing, please be gentle. :)
serker

Hi there.

You are confused but thank you for your questions.

The P stands for prime factor and the number stands for number of digits.

The P74 and P202 are unique and are two unknowns. For this case they are represented as below. If you see on the status page another P74 it is not the same as this one. Notation thing and to simplify the results page although you have the link to pastebin for the all post-processing phase.

Sat Mar 20 02:17:11 2021 p74 factor: 25359506465081394537400918368811516993503730623239065990152596258171619851
Sat Mar 20 02:17:11 2021 p202 factor: 1230272830905372645155936347582471802810001959890217331006615213107201195904714920966951311311387729777205064177180055078095657461958973281700356722080397000095160208423082302916300621936315289528078031

3,667- means (3^667 - 1)

If you have time read this thread: https://escatter11.fullerton.edu/nfs/forum_thread.php?id=549
Bear in mind we are only doing the "2. Sieving for Relations" stage on BOINC, the " 3. Combine Relations" is done on a cluster (we have a grant) and "1. Polynomial Selection" is done externally or by direct known polynomials.

More about the project here: https://homes.cerias.purdue.edu/~ssw/cun/
To be honest we need even more power than currently is deployed here but slowly we will progress on the Cunningham project...lol

THAT'S IT!!!

Thank you, I assumed the P74 was a specific prime, now it all makes sense. The link you provided was humbling. I thank you dearly, even for the immensity and insanity this provides. :)

After studying a PasteBin, I never thought to compare another job with P74 and compare the primes to notice a difference.

(what I'm aware I don't know) ^ (the more I learn) = (humility)

Thank you!!!

serker