TWIRL

In cryptography and number theory, TWIRL (The Weizmann Institute Relation Locator) is a hypothetical hardware device designed to speed up the sieving step of the general number field sieve integer factorization algorithm. During the sieving step, the algorithm searches for numbers with a certain mathematical relationship. In distributed factoring projects, this is the step that is parallelized to a large number of processors.

Twirl is the act of spinning quickly and lightly, and it may also refer to:

• TWIRL, The Weizmann Institute Relation Locator, a hypothetical hardware device.
• Twirl (album), a 2009 album by Aomusic
• Twirl (chocolate bar), a brand of chocolate bar manufactured by Cadbury
• Twirl (Transformers), a fictional character in the Transformers universe
• Twirl (film), a 1981 movie about baton twirlers starring Erin Moran