Luke Durant, a former engineer at NVIDIA (working on developing CUDA since 2010), has discovered a new prime number (2^136,279,841) – 1 or M136279841, which has a staggering 44 million digits when written in base ten.
The process of discovering prime numbers of this magnitude cannot be done using conventional computers. Luke developed software that runs on graphics chips on large clusters, utilizing thousands of GPUs distributed across 24 data centers in 17 countries. It took approximately a year for this process to complete. The NVIDIA A100 chip in Ireland initially reported that the number M136279841 was likely a prime number. Further confirmation came the next day from the NVIDIA H100 chip, confirming that this number is indeed a prime.
The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) awarded Durant with a prize of $3,000, with him stating that he will donate it to the Alabama School of Math and Science. The next major prize will be awarded when a prime number with 100 million digits is discovered, with a prize of $150,000.
Source: GIMPS
TLDR: Luke Durant discovered a new prime number with 44 million digits, utilizing advanced software and GPU clusters across multiple data centers. He was awarded $3,000 by GIMPS and plans to donate it to a school. Future prizes await for discovering even larger prime numbers.
Leave a Comment