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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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GRID SUPERCOMPUTER UNEARTHS
LARGEST PRIME SO FAR
The new largest prime number, identified by Michael Shafer, contains
6,320,430
digits, and would take someone the best part of five weeks to write out
longhand.
Shafer was taking part in a mass computer project known as the Great
Internet
Mersenne Prime Search (Gimps).
The project spent 25,000 years of computer time to find the new prime
number.
A prime is a number that can only be divided by one and itself.
Virtual Supercomputer
Shafer, a chemical engineering graduate student at Michigan State
University,
said, "I had just finished a meeting with my advisor when I saw the computer
had found the new prime.
"After a short victory dance, I called up my wife and friends involved with
Gimps to share the great news."
Shafer used a 2 GHz Pentium 4 Dell Dimension PC running for 19 days to
prove
the number was prime.
"The software runs great without affecting the computer. I get my work done
and contribute to the project at the same time."
Now in its eighth year, Gimps has accomplished six consecutive
successes.
"Great teamwork has paid off for us again," says Gimps founder George
Woltman.
"In addition to congratulating Michael Shafer, we wish to thank all 60,000
volunteer home users, students, schools, universities and businesses from
around the world that contributed to this discovery.
"Joining Gimps is a great way to learn about math through participation --
and
you might find a new Mersenne prime, like Michael."
Building Blocks
Gimps pulls together hundreds of thousands of computers in parallel to
create
a virtual supercomputer running at nine trillion calculations per second.
This enabled Gimps to find the prime in just two years instead of the
25,000
years a single computer would have required.
Prime numbers have long fascinated mathematicians.
A whole number greater than one is a prime if its only divisors are one and
itself. They are important for number theory.
The Fundamental Theory of Arithmetic says that primes are the building
blocks
of numbers.
The first prime numbers are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11. A Mersenne prime is a prime
number
of the form 2P-1 (where the superscript "P" is the exponent, or number of
times the original figure must be multiplied by itself).
The first Mersenne primes are 3, 7, 31, 127. There are only 40 known
Mersenne
primes.
Their study has been central to number theory since they were first
discussed
by Euclid in 350 B.C.
Big Prizes
The man whose name they now bear, the French monk Marin Mersenne, made a
prediction about which values of "P" would yield a prime.
It took 300 years and many important discoveries in mathematics to prove
his
conjecture.
Gimps was formed in January 1996 by George Woltman to discover new
world-record-sized Mersenne primes.
All the necessary software can be downloaded for free. Most Gimps members
join
the search for the thrill of possibly discovering a record-setting, rare, and
historic, new Mersenne prime.
In May 2000, a Gimps participant received a $50,000 co-operative computing
award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation for the discovery of the first
million-digit prime number.
A $100,000 award awaits discovery of a 10-million-digit prime-number, a
challenge Gimps participants are already working on.
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