Integer Factorization Algorithms - Current State of The Art

Current State of The Art

See also: integer factorization records

The most difficult integers to factor in practice using existing algorithms are those that are products of two large primes of similar size, and for this reason these are the integers used in cryptographic applications. The largest such semiprime yet factored was RSA-768, a 768-bit number with 232 decimal digits, on December 12, 2009. This factorization was a collaboration of several research institutions, spanning two years and taking the equivalent of almost 2000 years of computing on a single-core 2.2 GHz AMD Opteron. Like all recent factorization records, this factorization was completed with a highly optimized implementation of the general number field sieve run on hundreds of machines.

Read more about this topic:  Integer Factorization Algorithms

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