GNU Multi-Precision Library

From Free net encyclopedia

The GNU Multiple-Precision Library, also known as GMP, is a free library for arbitrary precision arithmetic, operating on signed integers, rational numbers, and floating point numbers. There is no practical limit to the precision except the ones implied by the available memory in the machine GMP runs on. GMP has a rich set of functions, and the functions have a regular interface.

The main target applications for GMP are cryptography applications and research, Internet security applications, algebra systems, computational algebra research and others.

GMP aims to be faster than any other bignum library for all operand sizes. Some important factors towards this end are:

Using fullwords as the basic arithmetic type.
Using different algorithms for different operand sizes. The algorithms that are fastest for really big numbers are seldom fastest for small numbers.
Highly optimized assembly code for the most important inner loops, specialized for different processors.

The first GMP release was made in 1991. It is continually developed and maintained, with a new release about once a year. The current release is 4.2.

GMP is part of the GNU project, and is distributed under the GNU LGPL. This license makes the library free to use, share, and modify, and allows the user to pass on the result. The license gives freedoms, but with restrictions on use with non-free programs.

GMP has been used for integer arithmetic in some popular computer algebra systems such as Maple [1] (since release 9) and Mathematica [2][3] (since version 5.0), and can be used for integer arithmetic in Victor Shoup's Number Theory Library for [[C++]].

GMP is also used in SAGE, Software for Algebra and Geometry Experimentation.

[edit]