Which is the fastest algorithm to find prime numbers?

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

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.