(in Italian please...)

Program download

If you want to participate, you have to download a program. Many version of "factorX" are available, even if there isn't an update version for each platform. If you are skilled on a platform that doesn't have an executable, and wish to help, just send me your executables and your work will be credited on this page. The following versions are available:

factor3_1 : it is the first version made available for public domain; rather slow.
factor3_2 : 25% faster than version 3.1. Actually there is an implementation for Windows and for UNIX BSD.
factor4 : about 275% faster than version 3.2. There is an implementation for Windows, MAC OSX and Linux.
factor5 : multi-threaded; with one thread is about 180% faster than the previous version.

	Windows	Linux	MAC OS X	BSD
Factor3_1	factor3_1 Win		factor3_1 OS X
Factor3_2	factor3_2 Win factor3_2 with SSE2			factor3_2 BSD
Factor4	factor4 Win factor4 with SSE2	factor4 AMD64	factor4 OSX 64 bit
Factor5	factor5 32 bit/64 bit/MSVC sources required Visual C++ 2008 DLLs	factor5 32 bit (Cygwin) factor5 64 bit

Credits and acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following people:
Andreas Pipp who gave me the idea and the first source code (written with Richard Crandall's GiantInt library);
Arjan Koek, who compiled a version under PowerPC and MAC OSX;
Andres Aitsen who contributed a version for BSD;
Dmitri Gribenko who worked on version 4.0 for Linux;
Xenon, Nick Fortino and Peter Nelson, who spotted bugs and showed tricks to improve efficiency;
Mark Rodenkirch who compiled a version for MAC G5 64 bit on OSX;
Daniele Forsi who developed a more elegant and user-friendly code;
Jeff Gilchrist who compiled a version for Windows in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavours and got rid of Cygwin/GMP environment hassles;
Patrizia Colombo, who gave me her patience and a powerful idea during development;

All the participants to Operation Billion Digits.

Installation

The program may work in "batch" version: you can prepare a list of exponents using a predefined format, and run the program automatically (as explained in the included readme file).

Note that the program now accepts the number of threads to be used from command line: 1, 2, 4, 8 or 16 simultaneous threads may be run.

Feel free to contact me for information related to the project, choice of candidates or program configuration.