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Whats Newwhatsnew
Whats Newwhatsnew
exe
------------------------------------------1) Changed the output to the worker windows during LL and PRP tests. The new o
utput includes
the estimated time to complete the test. There are two new options describe
d in undoc.txt:
ClassicOutput and OutputRoundoff.
2) Added some new options described in undoc.txt: ScaleOutputFrequency, TitleOu
tputFrequency,
and SilentVictoryPRP.
3) Benchmarking on hyperthreaded machines now times only the most common cases.
Specifically,
hyperthreading is used only in the one cpu and all cpu cases.
4) Benchmarking trial factoring is now off by default. Prime95 should not be u
sed for trial
factoring. GPUs are about 100 times more efficient at that task.
5) On multi-core machines, benchmarks are now run on multiple workers. This me
asures the effect
of memory bandwidth during testing and helps you select the setup that gives
you the most throughput.
6) There are many new options described in undoc.txt to customize the benchmark
ing process.
7) In build 2, added a preference to bypass some of Mac OS X Mavericks' power s
aving features.
New features in Version 28.4 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) Reduced memory usage. This may make some single-thread benchmarks slower, b
ut when
running several workers on machines where memory is a bottleneck there shoul
d be a
small performance increase.
New features in Version 28.3 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) Supports Intel's new for fused multiply add instruction introduced with the
Haswell CPU.
This results in faster FFTs. Note that performance on many Haswell systems
is memory-bandwidth
limited. This means that when running workers on all cores performance gain
s will be small.
2) Some minor optimizations may give a very small performance boost for AVX CPU
s.
3) All new test torture test data for AVX CPUs. The new data runs more interat
ions, thus more time
is spent torturing the CPU rather than initializing the FFT routines.
4) Information added to result lines containing "has a factor". This informati
on may be used
by the server's manual web page to give proper TF / P-1 / ECM cpu credit at
a future date.
New features in Version 27.9 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) None, only minor bug fixes.
New features in Version 27.7 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) When an error occurs reading a save file it is renamed with a .bad extension
.
On rare occasions the file can be read successfully at a later time.
New features in Version 27.6 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) Multi-threaded tests might be a little bit faster especially when using a lo
t of threads.
Of course, single-threaded usage still gives the best throughput.
2) FFT crossover points were adjusted. Many higher, a few lower.
New features in Version 27.3 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) 64-bit optimizations for AVX-capable computers. Single core benchmarks on I
ntel Sandy
Bridge computers should see a decent speed increase. However, running on 4
cores
runs into main memory bandwidth bottleneck. Sandy Bridge-E CPUs with 4 memo
ry channels
should avoid this problem.
New features in Version 27.1 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) 32-bit FFTs optimized for AVX-capable computers. Intel Sandy Bridge compute
rs should
see a 25% speed increase.
New features in Version 26.6 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) For rare cases where the program cannot figure out the number of cores and h
yperthreading,
the NumPhysicalCores option may help. See undoc.txt.
2) Faster FFT implementations are now selected for Core 2 CPUs with 1MB L2 cach
e or less
(marketed under the Celeron and Pentium label).
3) New, slightly higher, trial factoring breakeven points.
New features in Version 26.5 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) Minor bug fixes.
2) Starting in build 2, P-1 work will display the chance of finding a factor.
The worktodo.txt line must include how_far_factored using the new syntax:
Pminus1=k,b,n,c,B1,B2[,how_far_factored][,B2_start][,"factors"]
3) Starting with build 3, at startup the program tries to determine which
hyperthreaded logical CPUs comprise one physical CPU. If this isn't working
1) A bug that caused the torture test to hang on 256K FFTs on SSE2 machines
with 128K of L2 cache was fixed.
New features in Version 24.13 of prime95.exe
-------------------------------------------1) Celeron D (256K L2 cache) and Willamette (also 256K L2 cache) now have
different implementations for several FFT sizes. This results in an
improvement of several percent for the Celeron D.
2) A bug that caused some machines to generate "Error 2252" when communicating
with the server was fixed.
3) SSE2 trial factoring code had a bug when factoring very large exponents.
New features in Version 24.12 of prime95.exe
-------------------------------------------1) For SSE2 machines the larger FFTs have been changed to more effectively
use a wide variety of L2 cache sizes. The previous version was optimized
for a 256KB L2 cache only. Depending on your CPU and FFT size, you could
see an improvement of several percent.
2) As a side "benefit" even larger FFT sizes are now supported. This allows
testing of exponents up to 596 million. Not recommended.
3) The factoring breakeven points have been recalculated using my 2 GHz P4.
This version of prime95 will do less trial factoring.
4) Since server database crashes cause spurious error 3 messages, prime95
will now ignore error 3 messages from the server for 72 hours. This should
workaround the problem whereby a result is reported but no CPU credit is
given and the reservation is not cleared.
5) Fixed crash bug trial factoring exponents above 286 million.
New features in Version 24.11 of prime95.exe
-------------------------------------------1) Faster FFTs for AMD64 using prefetchw in both 32-bit and 64-bit mode.
You can expect about a 15% speed improvement.
2) Prime95 now detects support for 3DNow! instructions. See undoc.txt
for overriding this detection with CpuSupports3DNow=n in local.ini.
3) Factoring entries in worktodo.ini now accept exponents up to 2 billion.
4) Improved checking for memory allocation errors during a torture test.
Better guessing of amount of memory to use in a blend test.
5) Added timeouts to PrimeNet communications in hopes of avoiding rare hangs
when contacting the PrimeNet server.
6) Fixed rare bug where P-1's GCD could miss a factor.
7) Added trial factoring to the benchmark.
8) Fixed bug in ECM when using zero-padded FFTs.
9) SSE2 macros optimized for an additional 1-3% improvement on P4 and AMD64
CPUs.
New features in Version 24.10 of prime95.exe
-------------------------------------------1) 64-bit version of prime95 available for 64-bit Windows.
New features in Version 24.9 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) Fixed crash when running on machines with "no-execute" protection.
2) Fixed mis-detection of some P3 and Celeron CPUs.
New features in Version 24.6 of prime95.exe
4) A 900 MHz P-III is now required to get first time LL tests by default.
5) Slightly faster SSE2 FFTs for lengths of 5*2^N and 7*2^N (e.g. 640K, 896K).
New features in Version 22.13 of prime95.exe
-------------------------------------------1) A P-1 and ECM QA suite was implemented. A bug in ECM for exponents
below 172,700 and near the limit of an FFT size and using SSE2 code
was fixed.
New features in Version 22.12 of prime95.exe
-------------------------------------------1) A bug was fixed that caused some factors to be missed in stage 2 of P-1
when the available memory did not let the program allocate 12 temporary
variables. If testing a number in the 16 millions using an FFT size of
768K, then each temporary takes 768K * 8 bytes or 6MB. If your memory
setting was less than 72MB (6MB * 12 temporaries) then you were affected
by the bug. Actual the program allocates some fixed tables so anything
less than about 75MB triggered the bug.
New features in Version 22.11 of prime95.exe
-------------------------------------------1) A bug that caused factors to be missed in the last stage of P-1 and ECM
factoring was fixed. The bug was introduced in executables built after
Sept. 28, 2002.
New features in Version 22.10 of prime95.exe
-------------------------------------------1) When running a double-check assignment the preferred trial factoring
depth is reduced one bit. This is done because finding a factor will
save one LL test instead of the usual two LL tests.
2) On a Windows NT/2000/XP system, if prime95 is run by a user without
administrator privileges then prime95 cannot install itself as a service.
Thus, the Start at Bootup option will set prime95 to run at login time
rather than bootup time.
3) A crash bug when selecting "Start at Bootup" on Windows NT3 and Windows NT4
systems was fixed.
4) Bug in starting more than one prime95 as NT services on multi-processor
machines was fixed.
New features in Version 22.9 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) Error rate for a clean run is now estimated at 1.8% raising your chances
of finding a Mersenne prime while double-checking.
2) You can now stop and continue testing from the system tray menu.
3) You can now pause prime95 when another program starts running. See the
PauseWhileRunning option in undoc.txt.
4) Fixed bug introduced in 22.8 where No Icon did not work if Start at Bootup
was also specified in Windows 98.
5) A bug in unscrambling the proxy server password in primenet.ini was fixed.
New features in Version 22.8 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) Soft FFT crossovers have been implemented. If you test an exponent that
is within 0.2% of the old hard FFT crossover point, then 1000 test
It now takes a roundoff error greater than 0.6 to corrupt the results.
2) Many of the FFT ranges have changed. Version 21 was too aggressive
in choosing FFT sizes for the P4. The new handling of roundoff
errors above 0.4 lets us be more aggressive with the non-P4 code.
3) Result lines are now WYn rather than WXn.
4) A crash bug affecting P-1 and ECM using the 2^N+1 option for large N was
fixed.
5) A rare memory corruption and possible crash bug in the GCD code was
fixed.
6) The -t command line argument will run the torture test.
7) To reduce wild fluctuations in the RollingAverage, it will be updated
roughly twice per day.
New features in Version 22.2 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) Factoring assignments go to machines slower than a 233 MHz Pentium.
Double-checks are assigned machines slower than a 500 MHz P-III.
2) The speed of the GCD has been improved.
3) Some of the P4 FFT ranges have changed. Version 21 was too aggresive
in choosing FFT sizes for the P4.
4) Roundoff error checking is now done on every iteration for exponents
within 2% of the maximum that can be tested by the current FFT length.
See undoc.txt for ways to disable this new feature.
5) The previous version would get into an infinite loop if a repeatable
roundoff error larger than 0.48 was discovered. Now if a repeatable
roundoff error greater than 0.45 is found, then the iteration is
repeated after shifting the FFT data.
New features in Version 22.1 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) Some bugs in error handling when communicating with the server have
been fixed.
2) Communicating with the server by RPC is no longer supported. The
HTTPNET.DLL and RPCNET.DLL have been deleted. Only "Basic" Proxy server
authentication is supported. Version 21 may have supported MS Proxy
Server 2.0's NTLM (NT Lan Manager) challenge/response authentication.
3) The program now uses a high resolution timer rather than the RDTSC
instruction to time events. This should help the program display accurate
timings on laptops with SpeedStep or desktops that can hibernate. You can
force the program to use the old RDTSC timing method with the RdtscTiming
option described in undoc.txt.
4) The program uses a updated algorithm to automatically detect CPU type and
speed. The Options/CPU dialog box no longer let's you set this
information. Instead, the Options/CPU dialog displays the detected
CPU type and speed. This new feature helps prevent incorrect settings
when users upgrade or try several overclocking speeds. If the new
algorithm fails, you can overide the settings as described in undoc.txt.
5) Benchmark now writes the program version, timing methodology, cpu type
and speed, L1 and L2 cache information to results.txt. It will refuse to
benchmark if rdtsctiming is 10.
New features in Version 21.4 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) Exiting the Torture Test now prints out how long it ran.
2) P4 error checking was relaxed slightly to reduce false alarms.
New features in Version 21.3 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) The program will now skip the P-1 factoring stage if another user has
already performed this step.
2) The Advanced/Quit GIMPS menu choice now lets you quit after current
work completes or quit immediately.
3) A bug was fixed in the error recovery code. After getting a "Disregard
last error" message, the user was treated to a new error on every
iteration. The end result was incorrect. The bug only affected the
error recovery of the new P4 FFT introduced in the beta version 21.2.
New features in Version 21.2 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) The program now uses the SSE2 instructions introduced on the Pentium 4 CPU.
This version is about 3 times faster than the previous version on a P4.
2) The program now uses the prefetch instructions on the Celeron 2, Pentium 3,
and all Athlon CPUs. This results in about a 20% performance boost on
these machines.
3) Process priority is now set to idle. Microsoft documentation says that
an idle thread priority overrides process priority. The program's
priority scheme has always worked well. However, several Win2K users
have reported that the program works better if the process priority is
also set to idle.
4) The program now delays calculations until 90 seconds after bootup. This
lets your machine boot up as fast as possible. This can be changed, see
undoc.txt.
5) The default crossover between double-check assignments and first-time
tests has been increased to a 400 MHz PII.
6) After 5 1/2 years, a help file now exists! It is HTML Help which may
have problems on older Windows machines. If so, try downloading
hhupd.exe from Microsoft's web site.
7) The program used to do factoring and P-1 testing on new exponents before
completing LL tests on older exponents. This was confusing to many.
The program now processes the worktodo.ini file in sequential order.
See undoc.txt on how to restore the old behavior.
8) Error messages such as ILLEGAL SUMOUT, SUMINP != SUMOUT, etc. are no
longer sent to the server since the final result contains a count of how
many errors occured during the LL test.
9) Some of the FFT crossover points have changed slightly.
10) Test/Status now outputs the day of the week each work item will complete.
11) Interim output lines have changed - hopefully, so they are more useful
especially to newbies. By default, output lines no longer contain the
clocks count. Lines now contain a timestamp. Benchmark timings are now
output in milliseconds. These defaults can be changed using options
in undoc.txt.
12) A new welcome screen for new users will encourage stress testers
to use the program without reserving exponents.
13) There is now a menu choice that lets you unreserve a specific exponent.
This is for knowledgable users only. You might do this if the server
assigned a small exponent and you'd rather be testing larger ones. Or
the prime95 you set up on another machine had a hard drive failure.
14) The Windows 9x Service menu choice has been replaced by the more general
Start at Bootup menu choice. This choice now sets registry entries to
autostart prime95 on any Windows machine. WARNING: Using this option
will delete any StartUp menu shortcuts so the registry entry and startup
menu do not both try to start prime95.
15) Prime95 will now ask for confirmation if you enter a CPU speed that
differs from the computed CPU speed by more than 4%.
16) The self-test menu choice was deleted - use the torture test instead.
fixed and this version has special code to properly read these
incorrect save files.
2) P-1 will restart any time the memory settings change. This is done
so that the optimal P-1 bounds can be computed with the new memory
settings.
3) A bug in ECM testing was fixed.
New features in Version 20.1 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) A bug in the new GCD code was fixed.
2) Timings in the P-1 stage are no longer cumulative. There is a new
feature in undoc.txt for those that prefer cumulative timings.
3) Messages are now output prior to beginning the lengthy GCD.
4) The FactorOverride undocumented feature (not for use with PrimeNet) now
supports factoring to a deeper level than prime95 would ordinarily factor.
5) A bug where the worktodo.ini entry was not removed if P-1 found a factor
was fixed.
6) If P-1 finds a factor it now deletes any Lucas-Lehmer intermediate files.
7) A crash bug when continuing from a P-1 stage 2 save files with
different available memory parameters was fixed.
8) Resuming an LL test now outputs a line to the screen,
9) The Test/Status display now correctly calculates the estimated completion
time for an LL test when P-1 factoring is in progress.
10) Advanced/Factor menu choice was deleted.
11) A bug in computing P-1 stage 2 percentage complete was fixed.
New features in Version 20.0 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) The program now does some P-1 factoring prior to running first time
and double-checking Lucas-Lehmer tests. This will increase overall
GIMPS throughput. If you install version 20 in the middle of an LL test
the program will run the P-1 step if the LL test is less than 50%
complete.
2) The Options/CPU dialog box now asks how much memory the program can
use during the P-1 factoring. See the "Setting Available Memory"
section in the readme.txt file.
3) Stage 1 of P-1 factoring is now faster.
4) The GCD used in P-1 and ECM factoring is now faster.
5) The Test/Manual Operation menu choice has been deleted.
6) The memory options in P-1 and ECM dialog boxes have been deleted.
7) The "send new completion dates" checkbox was moved from the Test/Primenet
dialog box to the Advanced/Manual Communication dialog box.
8) A bug in estimating time remaining for a factoring job was fixed.
9) AdvancedFactor now writes a line to the worktodo.ini - just like all
the other work types.
10) ECM and P-1 are now consistent with Lucas-Lehmer testing in the use
of the "Iterations between screen outputs" setting. An iteration is
defined as the time it takes to do a squaring. If you are doing ECM
on small exponents you will probably want to increase this setting.
New features in Version 19.2 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) A bug in factoring exponents above 35.79 million was fixed.
New features in Version 19.1 of prime95.exe
-------------------------------------------
22) The server can now broadcast important messages to the prime95 client.
Prime95 will blink the icon until prime95 is activated and then it will
display the message.
23) A computer ID will be generated for computers that do not have one. If
you want to assign your own computer ID, please try to make each
computer ID using the same user ID unique.
New features in Version 18.1 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) Added code so that server can distinguish between a v17 and v18 client.
2) Only v17 save files above 4194304 are deleted.
New features in Version 18.0 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) Bug fixed in Lucas-Lehmer testing of exponents above 4194304.
New features in Version 17.2 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) Faster 2^N+1 ECM factoring.
New features in Version 17.1 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) The -T command line switch has been deleted.
2) You can now fine tune your control of the program by adding Time=
lines to your prime.ini file - see the readme.txt file.
3) ECM factoring for 2^N+1 is now available.
4) By default, ECM factoring stops if a factor is found for exponents
above 5825 and continues (if the cofactor is composite) for exponents
below 5825. You can override this behavior by setting ContinueECM=0
or 1 in prime.ini.
New features in Version 17.0 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) Prime95 can now be used to double-check its own results.
2) Machines less powerful than a P133 will default to double-checking
assignments.
3) The total number of errors that occur during the Lucas-Lehmer test
are now output in results.txt.
New features in Version 16.5 of prime95.exe
------------------------------------------1) A new httpnet.dll can provide Scott Kurowski with debugging information.
Simply create a primenet.ini file with these lines:
[Debug]
PacketLog=1
Output file is pnHttp.txt.
2) The old network retry time has been replaced by two settings.
The modem retry time (default 2 minutes) controls how often prime95
polls your modem to see if you are connected to the Internet.
The network retry time (default 60 minutes) controls how long prime95
waits after a failed attempt to contact the server.
3) A timestamp and program version number is written to the prime.log file.
4) You can now switch between HTTP-based and RPC-based PrimeNet protocols
from the Test/Primenet dialog box.