I am stuck with the sieving stage of Quadratic Sieve algorithm. I've read lots of papers to this point but I can't find any guidlines how to choose sieving interval or how sieving is actually done because what I've seen so far is 'we pick a sieving interval' or 'then sieve around this'.
This is what I've understood and have done (following Contini's paper):

1. Say, for N = 90283, I compute bound $B = e^{(\frac{1}{2} + o(1))(\sqrt{\ln n \ln \ln n})} = 44$, where I take $o(1) = 0.22$ (just a random guess, I assume). What is the best way to pick good $o(1)$?

2. Then I take $C = \lceil \sqrt{N}\rceil = 301$

3. Then using Atkin Sieve I get a list of primes $<B$:

$\{2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43\}$

4. Then by computing Jabobi (Legendre) symbol for each value in the primes list I pick the first quadratic nonresidues to get factor base:

$\{2, 3, 7, 17, 23, 29, 37, 41\}$

5. Then using Tonelli-Shanks algorithm I compute modular roots $\pm t$, where $t$ is a solution to $t^2 \equiv N \mod{p}$ with $p$ a prime from factor base.

6. Then I get two arrays of solutions $sol1 = t - C \mod p$ and $sol1 = - t - C \mod p$, with p's from factor base. and also get one arrays of logarithms for p's $l_p = \ln p$ rounded up to some precision, say two decimal digits. What is a good precision?

sol1 $= \{0, 0, 2, 13, 11, 26, 10, 28\}$

sol2 $= \{0, 1, 5, 14, 8, 10, 17, 26\}$

$l_p$ $= \{0.69, 1.1, 1.95, 2.83, 3.14, 3.37, 3.61, 3.71\}$

Now as far as I understand I have to initialize 'sieving_array' initialized to 0's, say, to size $= 60$ elements. Also, how should I choose size of the sieving interval? Is there any formula similar to the bound?

Then I have to add values from $l_p$ to sieving array to positions $sol1[j] + i *$factor_base[j] and $sol1[j] + i *$ factor_base[j], where $0 \le i \le$ size and $0 \le j \le |$factor_base$|$. And for prime $p=2$ add $l_p$ only to positions with sol1. So I get this list (rounded to two decimal digits):

$\{1.79, 1.1, 2.64, 1.1, 1.79, 1.95, 1.79, 1.1, 3.83, 3.05, 8.77, 3.14, 3.74, 3.93, 3.52, 1.1, 3.74, 3.61, 1.79, 3.05, 0.69, 1.1, 1.79, 1.95, 1.79, 1.1, 9.72, 1.1, 5.5, 0.0, 6.57, 7.07, 0.69, 3.05, 4.93, 0.0, 1.79, 3.05, 0.69, 4.47, 3.74, 0.0, 1.79, 1.1, 2.64, 1.1, 1.79, 8.39, 4.62, 1.1, 0.69, 3.05, 1.79, 0.0, 10.49, 4.47, 0.69, 4.24, 3.74, 0.0\}$

Now, I have to look through values in the list, and if some of them are at least $\log(2x \sqrt N)$ this means polynomial $g(x)$ can be factored over factor base.

My main question is: where does this $x$ come from? I have this list of values, but what do I do with it? If I have an element in this list, for example, $1.79$ - with what $x$ do I have to compare it? How to pick good error term? Is $x$ position of $1.79$? If it is, what value indicated by this $1.79$ is factorable over factor base?

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If you are at all serious about making a good job of this, you should obtain the book "Prime Numbers: A Computational Perspective" by Richard Crandall and Carl Pomerance (Amazon link here). It has a thorough exposition of the Quadratic Sieve method, and addresses your problem explicitly. –  TonyK Aug 24 '12 at 5:14
This is exactly what I ended up with - the book arrived a couple of days ago :) –  Ypsilon IV Aug 24 '12 at 5:37

You've covered a lot of material in your question but I will focus on your main sticking point: determining a cutoff for use after sieving. There are two issues that make choosing the cutoff problematic:

• Each of the numbers in the sieve interval is actually a different value so no one cutoff is ideal for all the whole interval.
• In practice no one sieves for prime powers and so there are probably lots of numbers that can be factored over the factor base without actually reaching the square root of the number.

If you choose a cutoff larger than the square root of the largest number, none of the candidates will pass the test and sieving will be pointless. Also, since you are adding a crude estimate of the log of the factor, need also need some slack to account for, say, a number composed of factors that all round down. Finally, if prime $p$ is in your factor base and you don't sieve for prime powers $p^a$, you need even more lattitude to catch numbers that are not squarefree.

From a theoretical point of view, the sieving is just an optimization to avoid trial dividing all the numbers in the interval. So the choice of the cutoff is to a large extent an implementation decision:

• If you choose the cutoff too high you will miss some numbers that can be factored over the factor base.
• If you choose the cutoff too low you will waste a lot of time trial dividing numbers than cannot be factored over the factor base.

The ideal value of the cutoff therefore depends on exactly how fast sieving is and how fast trial dividing is. The solution is to try a variety of values and see what works best in your particular implementation.

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