Factorizing to prime numbers in Matlab

[audreyh]

My quantum professor, as an aside challenge, asked us if we could write a program in Matlab to factorize a 32 digit number into its prime number constituents. Can anyone direct me in the right direction to research how to do this?

thanks,
Greg

 

[CRGreathouse]

Pollard's rho algorithm is easy to program, but I'm not sure if it's fast enough to handle numbers in that range. SQUFOF is decently fast, I think, and may be programmable as well. Most methods for large numbers are a little too hard to learn and write for a class assignment (IMO).