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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>It’s been a long time since I posted anything about GIMPS, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search. We have had some interesting milestones recently. A couple days ago, GIMPS exceeded 100 teraFLOPS for almost 12 hours. Sustained throughput these days tends to be around 75-ish TFLOPS, which is interesting because when I started GIMPS in 1998, throughput then was around 75-ish GFLOPS on a good day. So we have gained a prefix in 14 years. I recall when we broke 100 MFLOPS for the first time, and we were popping virtual Champaign corks and making extrapolations and predictions. Now we have about 20 times as many computers working on the problem and each one is about 50 times more powerful in ops per second.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>It has been a little over three years since the 47<sup>th</sup> known prime was discovered, after the mind-boggling cluster which is still driving people nuts (fortunately only the kind of people who get driven nuts by this kind of thing.)<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I found in my archives a poll that was made back in 2005: What is the highest speed GIMPS will ever attain?<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoListParagraph style='text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>A)<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'> </span></span><![endif]>Already reached its peak, <21 TFLOPS<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoListParagraph style='text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>B)<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'> </span></span><![endif]>Most growth is over, 21-30 TFLOPS<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoListParagraph style='text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>C)<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'> </span></span><![endif]>Still considerable growth ahead, 30-50 TFLOPS<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoListParagraph style='text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>D)<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'> </span></span><![endif]>Great things still to come, 50-100 TFLOPS<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoListParagraph style='text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>E)<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'> </span></span><![endif]>You haven’t seen anything yet, >100 TFLOPS<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>The poll results were A=0%, B=12%, C=10%, D=19% and E=59%<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>So now the Great-things-ers are currently right, but the Haven’t-seeners might justifiably interpret the recent results as vindicating their soaring optimism. I was one of the Haven’t-seeners.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>While we go on about technological change slowing, note that my own memories are still fresh of the time when a typical computer could do only a fiftieth of what the typical computer does today. The computers blew our minds back then. Huh. You young people don’t know how good life is today.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>spike<o:p></o:p></p></div></body></html>