On 01/08/2013 16:23, Rob Arthan wrote:
On 1 Aug 2013, at 16:07, David Matthews wrote:
... In particular, the configure script will use GMP if it is present but falls back to the internal arbitrary precision package if it is not. That has the effect that if GMP was detected during the build process then the linking line must include -lgmp. However, if GMP is not present then including -lgmp will result in an error message.
What are the advantages in building with GMP?
If you are working with large arbitrary precision values particularly multiplying and dividing GMP is likely to be significantly faster. The default code is fairly naive. It's unlikely to make any difference for values that are only slightly longer than short precision (31-bits on 32-bit; 63-bits on 64-bit) and doesn't affect arithmetic on short precision values.
Regards, David