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Lightning strikes twice. On September 4, 2006, in the same room just a few feet away from their last find, Dr. Curtis Cooper and Dr. Steven Boone's CMSU team broke their own world record, discovering the 44th known Mersenne prime, 232,582,657-1. The new prime at 9,808,358 digits is 650,000 digits larger than their previous record prime found last December. However, the new prime falls short of the 10 million digits required for GIMPS to claim the Electronic Frontier Foundation $100,000 award.
With five record primes found in less than 3 years, GIMPS has been on an incredible lucky streak. Never before have Mersenne primes been bunched so closely together. When looking at the exponents, we expect only 1.78 Mersenne primes between powers of two, and prior to 2003, a maximum of 3 Mersenne primes were found between powers of two. The last 5 Mersenne prime exponents all fell between 224 and 225 -- and we haven't finished testing all the exponents in that range!
The new prime was independently verified in 6 days by Tony Reix of Bull S.A. in Grenoble, France using 16 Itanium2 1.5 GHz CPUs of a Bull NovaScale 6160 HPC at Bull Grenoble Research Center, running the Glucas program by Guillermo Ballester Valor of Granada, Spain.
Dr. Cooper and Dr. Boone could not have made this discovery alone. In recognition of contributions made by the project coordinators and the tens of thousands GIMPS volunteers, credit for this new discovery goes to "Cooper, Boone, Woltman, Kurowski, et al". The discovery is the tenth record prime for the GIMPS project. Join now and you could find the next record-breaking prime! You could even win some cash.
Perfectly Scientific, Dr. Crandall's company which developed the FFT algorithm used by GIMPS, will make a poster you can order containing the entire 9.8 million digit number. It is kind of pricey because accurately printing an over-sized poster in 1-point font is not easy! This makes a cool present for the serious math nut in your family.
For more information on this prime discovery read the full press release.
On December 15, 2005, Dr. Curtis Cooper and Dr. Steven Boone, professors at Central Missouri State University, discovered the 43rd Mersenne Prime, 230,402,457-1. The CMSU team is the most prolific contributor to the GIMPS project. The discovery is the largest known prime number.
The new prime is 9,152,052 digits long. This means the Electronic Frontier Foundation $100,000 award for the discovery of the first 10 million digit prime is still up for grabs!
Dr. Cooper joined GIMPS over 7 years ago with colleague Dr. Vince Edmondson. Edmondson was instrumental in the campus-wide effort until he passed away in 2003. Cooper, Boone, and CMSU truly earned this discovery, diligently coordinating over 700 PCs!
For more information on this prime discovery read the full press release.
Mersenne Wiki Created. From the good folks that brought you the Mersenne Forums comes the Mersenne Wiki. Browse the Wiki to learn more about GIMPS and Mersenne Primes.
Version 24 of prime95/mprime released. Go to the download page to upgrade.
NFSNet / Cunningham project needs your help!! The Cunningham project is trying to complete the factorization of 2n-1 and 2n+1 where n 2^n-1 and 2^n+1 for current ECM status. Visit the forums for help setting up prime95 to run ECM curves.
GIMPS forums. Here you can chat with fellow GIMPS members, get help with installation questions, learn more about how GIMPS works, etc.
You could discover one of the most coveted finds in all of Mathematics - a new Mersenne prime number. We've found ten already. Join in on this fun, yet serious research project. All you need is a personal computer, patience, and a lot of luck.
In addition to the joy of making a mathematical discovery, you might win some cash. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is offering a $100,000 award to the first person or group to discover a ten million digit prime number! See how GIMPS will distribute this award if we are lucky enough to find the winning ten million digit prime.
Prime numbers have long fascinated amateur and professional mathematicians. An integer greater than one is called a prime number if its only divisors are one and itself. The first prime numbers are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, etc. For example, the number 10 is not prime because it is divisible by 2 and 5. A Mersenne prime is a prime of the form 2P-1. The first Mersenne primes are 3, 7, 31, 127 (corresponding to P = 2, 3, 5, 7). There are only 44 known Mersenne primes.
GIMPS, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, was formed in January 1996 to discover new world-record-size Mersenne primes. GIMPS harnesses the power of thousands of small computers like yours to search for these "needles in a haystack".
Most GIMPS members join the search for the thrill of possibly discovering a record-setting, rare, and historic new Mersenne prime. Of course, there are many other reasons.
The How it Works page tells you what hardware you need and how the program runs.
The Download page lets you download the free software.
The FAQ page answers some frequently asked questions.
The benchmarks page compares the programs speed on many different CPU types.
The Prizes page tells you how GIMPS will divide any prize money.
The Status page tells you how the search is progressing.
The Top Producers page ranks participants by CPU time contributed.
The PrimeNet page gives statistics maintained by the server.
The History page gives a brief history of the project.
The Math page describes the math and algorithms GIMPS uses.
The Source code page lets you download the source code and gives UNIX users a pointer to code they can use.
The Mailing list page lets you subscribe to a mailing list that discusses Mersenne numbers.
The Manual testing page lets you pick exponents to test if you cannot get the PrimeNet server to work.
The Credits page lists many of the people that have helped GIMPS over the years.
The Links page gives you pointers to several other web sites.
The Other projects page gives you pointers to other distributed computing projects.
Last updated: September 11, 2006
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