Which is the fastest algorithm to find prime numbe

Question

Which is the fastest algorithm to find out prime numbers using C++? I have used sieve's algorithm but I still want it to be faster!

Answer 1

#include<stdio.h>
main()
{
    long long unsigned x,y,b,z,e,r,c;
    scanf("%llu",&x);
    if(x<2)return 0;
    scanf("%llu",&y);
    if(y<x)return 0;
    if(x==2)printf("|2");
    if(x%2==0)x+=1;
    if(y%2==0)y-=1;
    for(b=x;b<=y;b+=2)
    {
        z=b;e=0;
        for(c=2;c*c<=z;c++)
        {
            if(z%c==0)e++;
            if(e>0)z=3;
        }
        if(e==0)
        {
            printf("|%llu",z);
            r+=1;
        }
    }
    printf("|\n%llu outputs...\n",r);
    scanf("%llu",&r);
}    

Answer 2

I will let you decide if it's the fastest or not.

using System;
namespace PrimeNumbers
{

public static class Program
{
    static int primesCount = 0;


    public static void Main()
    {
        DateTime startingTime = DateTime.Now;

        RangePrime(1,1000000);   

        DateTime endingTime = DateTime.Now;

        TimeSpan span = endingTime - startingTime;

        Console.WriteLine("span = {0}", span.TotalSeconds);

    }


    public static void RangePrime(int start, int end)
    {
        for (int i = start; i != end+1; i++)
        {
            bool isPrime = IsPrime(i);
            if(isPrime)
            {
                primesCount++;
                Console.WriteLine("number = {0}", i);
            }
        }
        Console.WriteLine("primes count = {0}",primesCount);
    }



    public static bool IsPrime(int ToCheck)
    {

        if (ToCheck == 2) return true;
        if (ToCheck < 2) return false;


        if (IsOdd(ToCheck))
        {
            for (int i = 3; i <= (ToCheck / 3); i += 2)
            {
                if (ToCheck % i == 0) return false;
            }
            return true;
        }
        else return false; // even numbers(excluding 2) are composite
    }

    public static bool IsOdd(int ToCheck)
    {
        return ((ToCheck % 2 != 0) ? true : false);
    }
}
}

It takes approximately 82 seconds to find and print prime numbers within a range of 1 to 1,000,000, on my Core 2 Duo laptop with a 2.40 GHz processor. And it found 78,498 prime numbers.

Answer 3

#include<iostream>
using namespace std;

void main()
{
    int num,i,j,prime;
    cout<<"Enter the upper limit :";
    cin>>num;

    cout<<"Prime numbers till "<<num<<" are :2, ";

    for(i=3;i<=num;i++)
    {
        prime=1;
        for(j=2;j<i;j++)
        {
            if(i%j==0)
            {
                prime=0;
                break;
            }
        }

        if(prime==1)
            cout<<i<<", ";

    }
}

Answer 4

Is your problem to decide whether a particular number is prime? Then you need a primality test (easy). Or do you need all primes up to a given number? In that case prime sieves are good (easy, but require memory). Or do you need the prime factors of a number? This would require factorization (difficult for large numbers if you really want the most efficient methods). How large are the numbers you are looking at? 16 bits? 32 bits? bigger?

One clever and efficient way is to pre-compute tables of primes and keep them in a file using a bit-level encoding. The file is considered one long bit vector whereas bit n represents integer n. If n is prime, its bit is set to one and to zero otherwise. Lookup is very fast (you compute the byte offset and a bit mask) and does not require loading the file in memory.

Answer 5

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int set [1000000];

int main (){

    for (int i=0; i<1000000; i++){
        set [i] = 0;
    }
    int set_size= 1000;
    set [set_size];
    set [0] = 2;
    set [1] = 3;
    int Ps = 0;
    int last = 2;

    cout << 2 << " " << 3 << " ";

    for (int n=1; n<10000; n++){
        int t = 0;
        Ps = (n%2)+1+(3*n);
        for (int i=0; i==i; i++){
            if (set [i] == 0) break;
            if (Ps%set[i]==0){
                t=1;
                break;
            }
        }
        if (t==0){
            cout << Ps << " ";
            set [last] = Ps;
            last++;
        }
    }
    //cout << last << endl;


    cout << endl;

    system ("pause");
    return 0;
}

Answer 6

I always use this method for calculating primes numbers following with the sieve algorithm.

void primelist()
 {
   for(int i = 4; i < pr; i += 2) mark[ i ] = false;
   for(int i = 3; i < pr; i += 2) mark[ i ] = true; mark[ 2 ] = true;
   for(int i = 3, sq = sqrt( pr ); i < sq; i += 2)
       if(mark[ i ])
          for(int j = i << 1; j < pr; j += i) mark[ j ] = false;
  prime[ 0 ] = 2; ind = 1;
  for(int i = 3; i < pr; i += 2)
    if(mark[ i ]) ind++; printf("%d\n", ind);
 }