ECM – Then and Now
Date
October 22, 2010
Speaker
Peter Montgomery
Affiliation
Microsoft Research
Overview
This presentation has two parts. The first half discusses the major factorization algorithms when ECM was discovered in 1985, stressing the similarities between ECM and P +- 1. The second half describes the recent discoveries of six large Mersenne factors using ECM on a network of PlayStations.
This is joint work with Joppe W. Bos, Thorsten Kleinjung, and Arjen K. Lenstra from EPFL.