M136279841: The largest known Mersenne prime using a GPU has been confirmed

News has been circulating in mathematician circles for a few days that a new largest prime number has likely been discovered; Now the result has been confirmed. The Great Internet Search for Mersenne Primes (GIMPS) project found Mersenne prime number 52 M136279841, six years after the discovery of number 51:2^136,279,841-1, which has an impressive 41,024,320 digits, is the largest new known prime number. Luke Durant, a 36-year-old researcher and former Nvidia employee from San Jose, found the number on October 12, 2024 using GPUs. The prime number was first identified as a possible prime by an Nvidia A100 GPU in Dublin, and then finally confirmed by another Nvidia H100 in San Antonio, Texas using the Lucas-Lehmer test. The 52nd Mersenne prime number was later verified using various other methods on various independent systems. This process continued until October 19. The newly discovered number is the 18th prime Mersenne number that GIMPS has discovered since its launch in 1996. If you want, you can get a good idea 18MB zip archive Download in numbers 41,024,320.

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End of the era: GPUs replace CPUs

This discovery marks the end of a 28-year era in which classical computers found these giant prime numbers. In 2017, Mihai Preda developed GpuOwl to use the computing power of GPUs to test Mersenne numbers for their initial (prime) properties and made it available to GIMPS users.

Durant recognized the potential of GPUs and developed an infrastructure to run GIMPS on multiple GPU servers. In October 2023, he began contributing to the GIMPS initiative, taking advantage of the growing availability of GPUs in the cloud, through which he built a “cloud supercomputer” infrastructure with thousands of server GPUs in 24 data centers in 17 countries, she says. . GIMPS project press release.

What are Mersenne primes?

Mersenne primes, named after the 17th-century French monk Marin Mersenne, have the form 2^p-1, where p It is itself a prime number. Euclid had already proven that every Mersenne prime number results in a perfect number. A perfect number is a number whose integer divisors add up to the number itself. The new largest perfect number is 2^136,279,840 × (2^136,279,841-1) It has more than 82 million jobs.

Mersenne primes play a central role in number theory and have practical applications in cryptography. Every Mersenne prime number produces a perfect number, which makes it particularly interesting for mathematicians. The newly discovered prime number creates a perfect number consisting of more than 82 million digits.

The success of GIMPS crowdsourcing

Founded in 1996 by George Waltman, GIMPS harnesses the collective computing power of thousands of ordinary computers around the world. Volunteers can Download the program for freeTo participate in the research and have a chance to win a research award worth $3,000. The project continues its search for additional Mersenne primes and invites anyone interested to join the search for these mathematical rarities.

Durant emphasized that this discovery shows the diversity of graphics processors, which make critical contributions not only to artificial intelligence, but also to mathematical and scientific research.

(Fazza)