To find the list of primes till N.

Using Sieve of Atkins:

Wikipedia
Implementation C#

Algorithm:

// arbitrary search limit
limit ← 1000000

// initialize the sieve
is_prime(i) ← false, ∀ i ∈ [5, limit]

// put in candidate primes:
// integers which have an odd number of
// representations by certain quadratic forms
for (x, y) in [1, √limit] × [1, √limit]:
n ← 4x²+y²
if (n ≤ limit) and (n mod 12 = 1 or n mod 12 = 5):
is_prime(n) ← ¬is_prime(n)
n ← 3x²+y²
if (n ≤ limit) and (n mod 12 = 7):
is_prime(n) ← ¬is_prime(n)
n ← 3x²-y²
if (x > y) and (n ≤ limit) and (n mod 12 = 11):
is_prime(n) ← ¬is_prime(n)

// eliminate composites by sieving
for n in [5, √limit]:
if is_prime(n):
// n is prime, omit multiples of its square; this is
// sufficient because composites which managed to get
// on the list cannot be square-free
is_prime(k) ← false, k ∈ {n², 2n², 3n², ..., limit}

print 2, 3
for n in [5, limit]:
if is_prime(n): print n

Computational complexity

This sieve computes primes up to N using O(N/log log N) operations with only N1/2 + o(1) bits of memory. That is a little better than the sieve of Eratosthenes which uses O(N) operations and O(N1/2(log log N)/log N) bits of memory[1]. These asymptotic computational complexities include simple optimizations, such as wheel factorization, and splitting the computation to smaller blocks.