Large number multiplication

[Ian Kelly]

On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 1:30 PM, Billy Mays <noway at nohow.com> wrote:
> I was looking through the python source and noticed that long multiplication
> is done using the Karatsuba method (O(~n^1.5)) rather than using FFTs O(~n
> log n).  I was wondering if there was a reason the Karatsuba method was
> chosen over the FFT convolution method?

According to Wikipedia:

"""
In practice the Schönhage–Strassen algorithm starts to outperform
older methods such as Karatsuba and Toom–Cook multiplication for
numbers beyond 2**2**15 to 2**2**17 (10,000 to 40,000 decimal digits).
"""

I think most Python users are probably not working with numbers that
large, and if they are, they are probably using specialized numerical
libraries anyway, so there would be little benefit in implementing it
in core.