Instructions to install GMP-ECM:
0) you first need to install the GNU MP (GMP) library.
GNU MP is available from .
Remark: GNU MP is already installed in most Linux distributions.
However it is often an old version, moreover without processor-specific
optimizations. If you care about efficiency, be sure to install the
latest version of GNU MP (6.3.0 as of June 2024), and to compile it
for your particular processor.
Warning: make sure you have only one version of GMP installed on your
system at a given time. Frequently, after compiling GMP from source
and installing it without removing the distribution's GMP package,
later attempts to build software that uses GMP find the GMP header
file from the distribution's GMP package and the library from the
newly compiled GMP (or vice versa). GMP-ECM tries to detect this by
comparing the version number from header and library; if this test
fails, you should remove the obsolete GMP installation.
1) check your configuration with:
$ ./configure
The configure script accepts several options (see ./configure --help).
In particular you can specify the GMP installation directory with:
$ ./configure --with-gmp=
where /include contains the header file gmp.h, and /lib
contains the static or dynamic libraries (libgmp.a, libgmp.so, libgmp.lib).
To compile the GMP-ECM library as a shared library, use the
--enable-shared parameter for ./configure. Building a shared library is
disabled by default.
Note: the configure script will first search for a static GMP library, which
makes GMP-ECM more efficient. When only a dynamic library is available, make
sure to correctly set your dynamic libraries search path (LD_LIBRARY_PATH
on Unix systems), otherwise the configure script may fail.
Warning: it is recommended to use the same compiler and options as those
used to compile GMP, otherwise the compilation may fail, or you may get
poor performance. In the GMP build directory, simply type:
$ egrep -w '(CC|CFLAGS)' config.log
to see which compiler and options were used to build GMP. For example
on a Sparc v9 you may have to type:
$ ./configure CC=cc CFLAGS="-fast -fns=no -fsimple=1 -xarch=v9"
Note 2: On x86, x86-64, and 64 bit PowerPC systems, using GMP-ECM's
own modular multiplication code usually gives better performance than
the GMP-based functions. On these systems, configure enables it by
default. If the system is not identified correctly, you can enable
it by adding the command line parameter "--enable-asm-redc" to
configure. To disable it, add "--disable-asm-redc".
On 32-bit x86 systems that have SSE2 (e.g., Pentium 4, some Celeron,
some Sempron, Via C7), use of SSE2 instructions in stage 2 of P-1, P+1,
and ECM is enabled by default. You can enable it manually by adding the
command line parameter "--enable-sse2" and disable it by adding
"--disable-sse2" to ./configure. The SSE2 code is not used in 64-bit
builds, regardless of these parameters.
Note 3: If you want to use George Woltman's GWNUM library for speeding up
factoring, detailed instructions for building and linking to the gwnum.a
library may be found in the INSTALL-gwnum file.
2) compile the program with:
$ make
This will create the 'libecm.a' library, the 'libecm.so' shared
library if --enable-shared was used, the 'ecm' binary file,
the 'ecmfactor' binary file (sample use of libecm.a), and 'tune',
a tuning program.
3) to check that the program works correctly, type:
$ make check
This will run several tests for P+1, P-1, ECM. These tests take a few
minutes. It should normally end with the "TOTAL" count equal to the
"PASS" count, with the remaining counts all zero.
4) (optional) to tune GMP-ECM, simply type:
$ make ecm-params; make
See also README ("How to get the best of GMP-ECM?"). Note: if your machine
has not enough memory for the tune program, you can run it manually with
./tune -max_log2_len 16 for example (the default is 18).
5) (optional) you can then install the ecm binary and its man page:
$ make install
By default, installation will be done in /usr/local.
You can change with the --prefix option of configure at step 1:
$ ./configure --prefix=
The ecm binary will go in /bin,
its man page in /share/man/man1,
the ecm library in /lib,
and the corresponding header file in /include.
You can also do "make uninstall" to remove those files.
6) (optional) When using -param 0, it is now possible to speed up Stage 1
by 4 to 5 percent. This requires the user to generate a file, called
"Lchain_codes.dat", using a program (LucasChainGen) included with this
release. For details on how to build and run LucasChainGen, see the
README file in the LucasChainGenerator folder. Once the Lchain_codes.dat
file is available, and it is moved to the ecm run directory, ecm stage 1
with '-param 0' set will use the file to generate a Lucas chain for every
prime less than or equal to min( B1, file limit), and revert to use
'prac' if 'end-of-file' is reached.
============================================================================
To install GMP-ECM with support of NVIDIA Graphics Cards: see README.gpu
============================================================================
Known problems: see https://gitlab.inria.fr/zimmerma/ecm/-/issues
============================================================================
For OPAM users:
there is an OPAM package for GMP-ECM which is tested on MacOS (including Apple
silicon), many Linux variants and Windows (MinGW with cygwin build host).
See https://github.com/ocaml/opam-repository/pull/20105 (contributed by
Michael Soegtrop).
For Windows users:
Windows users have two options for building GMP-ECM: (a) the use of a
number of Unix on Windows environments, or (b) the use of Microsoft
Visual Studio C/C++ 2008. The former is described here while the latter
is described in the readme.txt file within the build.vc10 subdirectory.
(a) For Windows users with a Unix-like environment:
Before you can compile GMP-ECM, you will need a compiler. Several suitable
compilers are freely available, for example as part of MinGW, CygWin and
Microsoft's Services for Unix (SFU). We recommend MinGW as it is a smaller
download than the others and generates binaries that run on any Windows
system, even if they don't have MinGW installed themselves.
Step-by-step instructions, courtesy of Jes Hansen:
1) Download the current MinGW from
http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/MinGW-3.1.0-1.exe?download
and MSYS from http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/MSYS-1.0.10.exe?download
2) Create a folder, for example C:\GNU, and install MinGW (execute the
MinGW-3.1.0-1.exe file) into C:\GNU\MinGW
3) Install MSYS (execute the MSYS-1.0.10.exe file) into C:\GNU\msys
Now you get an icon on the desktop where you can start the MinSys. Do
this, because is creates your home folder. Then exit it again.
4) Download the latest version of GMP in .tar.gz format from
http://gmplib.org/ and place it in your newly created home folder.
The home folder is in C:\GNU\msys\home and has the same name as your
Windows login name.
5) Download GMP-ECM (if you do not have it already) from
https://gitlab.inria.fr/zimmerma/ecm and place it in your home folder
as well.
6) Start the MinSys up again from the desktop and type
tar -xvzf gmp-6.1.0.tar.gz
cd gmp-6.1.0
./configure
make install
cd ~
7) You are back in your home directory. Now type
tar -xvzf ecm-x.y.z.tar.gz
cd ecm-x.y.z
./configure --with-gmp=/usr/local
make
8) Four executables should have appeared. The main application is ecm.exe,
which can be run from the Windows command line.
============================================================================
In case of a problem, report it to us, with:
- the output of the config.log file
- the versions of GMP-ECM and GMP used (first output line), for example:
GMP-ECM x.y.z [configured with GMP u.v.w, --enable-asm-redc] [P+1]
- the detailed input enabling us to reproduce the problem, for example:
$ echo 328006342451 | ./ecm -pp1 -x0 5 120 7043
- the output you get.
Then send your bug report at .
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