Up for consideration is the following function which can be used to (relatively quickly) factor a 64-bit unsigned integer into its prime factors. Note that the factoring is not probabalistic (i.e., it is exact). The algorithm is already fast enough to find that a number is prime or has few very large factors in a matter of several seconds, on modern hardware.

The question: Can any improvements be made to the algorithm presented, while keeping it single-threaded, so that it can factor (arbitrary) very large unsigned 64-bit integers faster, preferably without using a probabalistic approach (e.g., Miller-Rabin) for determining primality?

// system specific typedef for ulong should go here (or use boost::uint64_t)
typedef unsigned __int64 ulong;
typedef std::vector<ulong> ULongVector;

// Caller needs to pass in an empty factors vector
void GetFactors(ULongVector &factors, ulong num)
{
  // Num has to be at least 2 to contain "prime" factors
  if (num<2)
    return;

  ulong workingNum=num;
  ulong nextOffset=2; // Will be used to skip multiples of 3, later

  // Factor out factors of 2
  while (workingNum%2==0)
  {
    factors.push_back(2);
    workingNum/=2;
  }

  // Factor out factors of 3
  while (workingNum%3==0)
  {
    factors.push_back(3);
    workingNum/=3;
  }

  // If all of the factors were 2s and 3s, done...
  if (workingNum==1)
    return;

  // sqrtNum is the (inclusive) upper bound of our search for factors
  ulong sqrtNum=(ulong) sqrt(double(workingNum+0.5));

  // Factor out potential factors that are greate than or equal to 5
  // The variable n represents the next potential factor to be tested
  for (ulong n=5;n<=sqrtNum;)
  {
    // Is n a factor of the current working number?
    if (workingNum%n==0)
    {
      // n is a factor, so add it to the list of factors
      factors.push_back(n);

      // Divide current working number by n, to get remaining number to factor
      workingNum/=n;

      // Check
c++ algorithm prime-factoring
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