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- Path: sparky!uunet!stanford.edu!agate!ucbvax!WATSON.IBM.COM!jbs
- From: jbs@WATSON.IBM.COM
- Newsgroups: sci.crypt
- Subject: RSA-129 contest
- Message-ID: <9208202353.AA21728@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
- Date: 20 Aug 92 23:35:49 GMT
- Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
- Lines: 23
-
-
- I asked:
- :> How small do the coefficients have to be? I have been led to
- :>believe that the speed of the GNFS overall does not depend much on the
- :>efficiency of the search for a good polynomial. If this is the case it
- :>would seem to be unwise to devote a lot of effort to finding a good poly-
- :>nomial. What is the point of this contest?
- Robert D. Silverman replied:
- >This is NOT the case. The performance is VERY sensitive to the size
- >of the coefficients and it is worthwhile spending a significant amount
- >of time trying to find small coefficients.
- and also:
- >I estimate that to be competitive with the Quadratic sieve they need
- >to find coefficients of 'about' 14 digits. I am not sure it is
- >possible.
- Well, let us estimate how many numbers between 10**128 and
- 10**129 can be so represented. m will be about 10**23 (so that c5*
- m**5 is 10**129). There are about 10**23 choices for m, 10**14 for
- each of the ci. This gives 10**23*(10**14)**6 or 10**107 representa-
- tions. Hence the chance that a random number between 10**128 and
- 10**129 has such a representation is below 10**-20. It would appear
- to me that running ECM would be a better bet than this.
- James B. Shearer
-