[Cryptography] GPU-accelerated integer factoring ??

[Henry Baker]

I recently got a new laptop with an nVidia MX550 GPU, and I was
playing around with the Gnu coreutils 'factor' program, and noticed
on the 'Task Monitor' that this 'factor' program fired up the GPU !!

I've done lots of Google searching, but I haven't been able to find
any mention of GPU accelerated factoring of *any* kind that was
already built into Linux software circa 2023, much less the 'factor'
program from Gnu coreutils.

I then downloaded the Gnu coreutils sources and built it from
scratch, and it made no mention of GPU's, and I ran the newly
built 'factor' and 'Task Monitor' says it was using only 1 CPU.

BTW, Gnu 'factor' seems to utilize 'GMP' by default, but 'GMP'
by itself doesn't seem to tap into the GPU either.

I then ran *pari-gp*, which also uses GMP, and it is much, much
faster than Gnu coreutils 'factor' -- even the GPU-accelerated
'factor' that came with my laptop.  But pari-gp *doesn't* use the
GPU.

I haven't been able to find any mention of how the built-in
'factor' utility manages to find and utilize the GPU.

Perhaps someone on this list may know the answer ?