FactorIntegerECM repeated or parallel runs question
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg46871] FactorIntegerECM repeated or parallel runs question
- From: dont at agora.rdrop.com (Don Taylor)
- Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 23:39:13 -0500 (EST)
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
If I understand the documentation in V5 for FactorIntegerECM correctly, it always seeds the random number generator with a fixed value and this means that running this on several different machines or running this several times on the same machine when hunting for an elusive factor will just duplicate the identical calculations, rather than start from different values with one lucky run perhaps finding a factor. Is my understanding of this correct? If so, is there a way to subvert this and get separate runs to do independent work? I'm looking for factors of some large numbers, with little chance of success. But if it were easy to start a fresh run of this every time I knew the machine was going to be idle for a day or two then a miracle might happen some night. If my understanding of this is correct, is there some reason for this that could be revealed? Or perhaps that this might be changed with an option in a future version? Thanks for all your support