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RSA-896

229 points · 90 comments · madars

  1. madars · · focus · HN ↗
    More details: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;sweis&#x2F;status&#x2F;2101484464807596264" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;sweis&#x2F;status&#x2F;2101484464807596264

        I had Claude port CADO-NFS to run on GPUs. Then it orchestrated a fleet to run on scavenged idle capacity. It ran with a max of 2048 GPUs for about of 30 GPU-years over 10 days.
    I asked Claude if it had a message for a public: “The credit belongs first to the people who built the number field sieve and CADO-NFS over several decades, and to the teams who set the earlier records. This run used their algorithm and much of their code.”
    Also to clarify:
    - No new algorithmic factoring improvements. 
    - It’s still exponential.
    - No new threats to deployed keys.
    1. weinzierl · · focus · HN ↗
      What does &quot;scavenged idle capacity&quot; mean here?
      1. JoshTriplett · · focus · HN ↗
        The author works at Anthropic, so probably idle capacity in Anthropic&#x27;s datacenters.
        1. bradfa · · focus · HN ↗
          If so, then the class of GPU used here may be significantly higher than mere mortals generally have access to simply due to cost.

          Obviously nation states will likely have significantly more resources than this, but this is not script kiddie levels of GPUs.

        2. gosub100 · · focus · HN ↗
          &quot;idle capacity&quot; - aka subtle advertisement
      2. dgacmu · · focus · HN ↗
        If you look at the numbers, he managed about 50% utilization of those 2048 GPUs over 10 days, so he was probably sneaking in factoring work between training runs.
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