Harpertown

Intel officially announces availability of its new "Penryn" chips.
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/01/07/intel_announces_16_new_45nm_cpus_at_ces/1
Apple has already incorporated several server versions, including quad-cores, into the Mac Pro line.

Eric Landquist

[picture from Wikipedia - copyright Just H, creative commons license]

Here is a link to Eric Landquist's paper on the NFS:
http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~landquis/nfsieve.pdf
Quote from the above:
"At least one author [17] believes that there
are faster methods out there. It’s my life-long dream to find one. I also
hope to see the Red Sox win a World Series."
Well, the Red Sox have won _two_ World Series since the paper was published (2002) - though personally I am an Astros fan! :)

Frequency of Posts 2

Having made it to the New Year ( :) ), I expect the frequency of my posts to drop off somewhat, as I'm now running out of useful things to say...

M2008

To celebrate New Year 2008, for the past few days I have been factorizing M2008.
Here are the results:
ibu:~/math james$ time java superfac9
f2^2008-1

[29392145799020915820360529950148658790971333173470597132227654062739616291644680034730482849702560509912216694758079047000246245398094216484503842717866321546017277221199943680176327461949451487085805309456252478664093558693475421170513158666359386616551679118889574095089825179039567782281258040824405166424107240700021377434209148110825999078639302784109824695476896212613634081852488010690884578129204889342821483040517575643751434792922414912394467695078935531662069192598956042024980981047457429185377388949433859975257289323374605954282310600673952044911495373010647749329399156163119321894151520255]
wanless...
brutep: 3
wanless...
brutep: 5
wanless...
brutep: 17
brute...
brutep: 503
wanless...
ecm...
aprtcle: 54217
ecm...
aprtcle: 238451
ecm...
aprtcle: 178230287214063289511
ecm...
aprtcle: 61676882198695257501367
ecm...
aprtcle: 12070396178249893039969681
aprtcle:
5058345723951854688505665428846313806490903121677364358901199128608233
wanless...
brute...
aprtcle: 5021
ecm...
ecm...
aprtcle: 1972386557777
aprtcle: 1912621
ecm...
aprtcle: 57762875981
ecm...
aprtcle: 38508212572597
ecm...
aprtcle: 45063180240128066017730357
siqs...
aprtcle: 15992518154179475674328213556857438690614816129
aprtcle: 86245368961389419078481015822433
aprtcle:
10084786891164868903044000461741193511166162933699139834764709537603304010587634094053631800618313958847949862753441381884114308571221779233867837717363364521350181435128687986278658451823408133532192171438161388219841827075198840055685217831601941566655243743704980863680404547437764128787958275830001
duration: 40323 seconds

Arjen Bot

Also there is Arjen Bot's page of factorizations of 2^n+1
http://www.euronet.nl/users/bota/medium-p-odd.txt

Home Primes Search

Let me introduce another factorization project, the Home Primes Search:
http://www.mersennewiki.org/index.php/Home_Prime
http://www.mersennewiki.org/index.php/Home_Primes_Search

NFSNET

Here is a link to the NFSNET project, a distributed attack on Cunningham Project targets using the Number Field Sieve:
http://www.nfsnet.org/