Efficient Sequential and Parallel Prime Sieve Algorithms

Abstract

Generating prime numbers less than or equal to an integer number m plays an important role in many asymmetric key cryptosystems. Recently, a new sequential prime sieve algorithm was proposed based on set theory. The main drawback of this algorithm is that the running time and storage are high when the size of m is large. This paper introduces three new algorithms for a prime sieve based on two approaches. The first approach develops a fast sequential prime sieve algorithm based on set theory and some structural improvements to the recent prime sieve algorithm. The second approach introduces two new parallel algorithms in the shared memory parallel model based on static and dynamic strategies. The analysis of the experimental studies shows the following results. (1) The proposed sequential algorithm outperforms the recent prime sieve algorithm in terms of running time by 98% and memory consumption by 80%, on average. (2) The two proposed parallel algorithms outperform the proposed sequential algorithm by 72% and 67%, respectively, on average. (3) The maximum speedups achieved by the dynamic and static parallel algorithms using 16 threads are 7 and 4.5, respectively. As a result, the proposed algorithms are more effective than the recent algorithm in terms of running time, storage and scalability in generating primes.

Keywords

• asymmetric key cryptography
• prime numbers
• sieve algorithm
• parallel algorithm
• high-performance computing