gmp integer size limitation
Torbjorn Granlund
tg at gmplib.org
Thu Apr 26 21:51:48 CEST 2012
Kate Minola <kate01123 at gmail.com> writes:
gmp seems to have a limitation on the size of a multiple-precision
integer. Is there anything that can be done to remove this
limitation? Or are there any plans to remove this limitation?
On 32-bit computers, the limit is imposed by the addressable memory.
On 64-bit computers the limit is what you have noticed, 2^37 bits or 16
Gibytes. Here the problem is that we use a 32-bit limb count in the
mpz_t. It will probably work to replace the size and alloc fields with
a 64-bit signed integer type, but that would break binary compatibility.
(And I am sure a few laces in the library will fail too, due to typing
errors.)
We have some plans of upping the bound to at least 2^50 bits using some
tricks to keep things compatibile and efficient. The idea to to replace
the current alloc field of mpz_t with a custom 16-bit float, and use the
freed 16 bits as extra high bits of the size field.
--
Torbjörn
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