1 month ago
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Move aside 282,589,933-1, there’s a new prime juggernaut in town. That’s right: A researcher and former NVIDIA employee has found 2136,279,841-1, the largest known prime number, which clears the former record-holder by over 16 million digits.
Prime numbers are positive integers that have no positive integer divisors besides 1 and itself, according to Wolfram MathWorld. Or more simply, they’re numbers that can’t be evenly divided by anything other than 1 and the number itself. Some examples: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, and towards the other end of the positive integer scale, 2136,279,841-1.
The newly discovered number is shorthanded as M136279841, making it slightly easier for us to mention in conversation. It’s calculated by multiplying two together 136,279,841 times, then subtracting one. The figure is only the 52nd known Mersenne prime, a special class of prime numbers studied by the monk Marin Mersenne in the early 1600s.
Luke Durant is a researcher and former NVIDIA employee who contributes to the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, or GIMPS. In fact, he’s “GIMPS’ most prolific contributor,” according to a press release. GIMPS discovered its first Mersenne prime (the 35th in total) in 1996. The survey has discovered the last 18 Mersenne primes, and volunteers can search for the primes themselves using a free program.
Durant used a supercomputer comprised of thousands of GPUs in 17 different countries to find the number, first with an NVIDIA A100 in Ireland, and later confirmed by an NVIDIA H100 in Texas. For his efforts, Durant will receive $3,000 from GIMPS.
The prime numbers found by GIMPS are identified using a Fermat probable prime test, and then rigorously checked by a Lucas-Lehmer primality test. “This is the first GIMPS prime discovered using a probable prime test which sparked some debate as to whether the official discovery date should be the date the probable prime test was run or the date the Lucas-Lehmer primality test was run,” the GIMPS team wrote in its release. “We have chosen the Lucas-Lehmer date.”
What’s the point of this, you ask? It’s hard to say for now. “At present there are few practical uses for these large Mersenne primes,” the team wrote, adding that “same doubts existed a few decades ago until important cryptography algorithms were developed based on prime numbers.” Besides the thrill of the hunt—and of course, a cash reward—finding prime numbers is akin to fundamental research in mathematics and computer science. Besides actually identifying the figures, it proves out the abilities of cloud supercomputers—networks of GPUs like those that recently found M136279841.
I should add, the recent prime number warranted a $3,000 award. But the first hundred-million digit prime will warrant a $150,000 prize, and $250,000 for the first billion-digit prime! So what are you waiting for?
