The large-scale voluntary computation project for searching for Mersenne prime numbers (GIMPS) celebrated its 20th anniversary with the discovery of the largest of the currently known primes 2 74 207 281 - 1. Curtis Cooper, one of the many thousands of GIMPS volunteers, used one from the computers of his University of Central Missouri to make this discovery.
The prime number, dubbed M74207281, was calculated by multiplying 74,207,281 twos and subtracting one. The resulting number contains 22,338,618 digits, which is nearly 5 million more than the number that held the previous record for the longest prime number.
Despite the fact that the use of primes is very common, for example in cryptography, the longest prime number obtained is most likely too large to be practical. However, the search for the number itself brought many practical benefits to scientists. Historically, the search for Mersenne primes was used as a test for computer equipment. Earlier this month, thanks to the GIMPS prime95 software, members of the German computer community discovered some flaws in the latest Intel Skylake processors, on the basis of which the team conducted this study. It is noteworthy that similar hardware problems were found in many other private personal computers that also took part in the calculations.
To prove that there were no errors in the main computational process, a prime number was analyzed by different programs on different computer equipment. Andreas Hoglund and David Stanfill conducted an analysis using CUDALucas software for NVIDIA Titan GPUs. In addition, David Stanfill conducted a number analysis using ClLucas software for AMD Fury graphics chips. The last test was conducted by Serge Batalov, on MLucas software running on an 18-core server.
For Dr. Cooper, a professor at the University of Central Missouri, the so long prime number found is the fourth. The first was calculated in 2005, followed by the opening of the second in 2006. The Cooper number lost a record in 2008, but a new number discovered in 2013 returned the palm to him. Interestingly, the longest prime number for today was discovered on September 17, 2015, but it took 127 days only to prove that there is really something worthwhile to a scientist. The analysis was carried out using a personal computer based on the Intel I7-4790 processor.
Although the number itself was discovered by Cooper's computer, the scientist notes that this discovery would not have been possible without the other volunteers who participated in the GIMPS project.
The new prime number refers to the natural numbers of Mersenne, named after the French mathematician Marin Mersenne, who studied their properties in the 17th century. At the moment, only 49 Mersenne numbers are known. Since GIMPS was founded in 1996, only 15 such numbers have been discovered.
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