NVIDIA Computer Finds Largest Known Prime, Blows Past Record by 16 Million Digits

Move speech 2^82,589,933-1, there’s a caller premier juggernaut successful town. That’s right: A researcher and erstwhile NVIDIA worker has recovered 2^136,279,841-1, the largest known premier number, which clears the erstwhile record-holder by implicit 16 cardinal digits.

Prime numbers are affirmative integers that person nary affirmative integer divisors too 1 and itself, according to Wolfram MathWorld. Or much simply, they’re numbers that can’t beryllium evenly divided by thing different than 1 and the fig itself. Some examples: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, and towards the different extremity of the affirmative integer scale, 2^136,279,841-1.

The recently discovered fig is shorthanded arsenic M136279841, making it somewhat easier for america to notation successful conversation. It’s calculated by multiplying 2 unneurotic 136,279,841 times, past subtracting one. The fig is lone the 52nd known Mersenne prime, a peculiar people of premier numbers studied by the monk Marin Mersenne successful the aboriginal 1600s.

Luke Durant is simply a researcher and erstwhile NVIDIA worker who contributes to the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, oregon GIMPS. In fact, he’s “GIMPS’ astir prolific contributor,” according to a press release. GIMPS discovered its archetypal Mersenne premier (the 35th successful total) successful 1996. The survey has discovered the past 18 Mersenne primes, and volunteers tin hunt for the primes themselves utilizing a free program.

Durant utilized a supercomputer comprised of thousands of GPUs successful 17 antithetic countries to find the number, archetypal with an NVIDIA A100 successful Ireland, and aboriginal confirmed by an NVIDIA H100 successful Texas. For his efforts, Durant volition person $3,000 from GIMPS.

The premier numbers recovered by GIMPS are identified utilizing a Fermat probable premier test, and past rigorously checked by a Lucas-Lehmer primality test. “This is the archetypal GIMPS premier discovered utilizing a probable premier trial which sparked immoderate statement arsenic to whether the authoritative find day should beryllium the day the probable premier trial was tally oregon the day the Lucas-Lehmer primality trial was run,” the GIMPS squad wrote successful its release. “We person chosen the Lucas-Lehmer date.”

What’s the constituent of this, you ask? It’s hard to accidental for now. “At contiguous determination are fewer applicable uses for these ample Mersenne primes,” the squad wrote, adding that “same doubts existed a fewer decades agone until important cryptography algorithms were developed based connected premier numbers.” Besides the thrill of the hunt—and of course, a currency reward—finding premier numbers is akin to cardinal research successful mathematics and machine science. Besides really identifying the figures, it proves retired the abilities of unreality supercomputers—networks of GPUs similar those that precocious recovered M136279841.

I should add, the caller premier fig warranted a $3,000 award. But the archetypal hundred-million digit premier volition warrant a $150,000 prize, and $250,000 for the archetypal billion-digit prime! So what are you waiting for?