Ex-Nvidia programmer discovers world's largest 41-million-digit prime number, wins Rs 2.52 lakhs for record-breaking feat

It seems not everyone has a traumatic relationship with math from their childhood¡ªsome people genuinely love numbers. One of them is a former Nvidia programmer who, at 36, spent nearly a full year on a quest to find the world¡¯s largest prime number.

A prime number is a whole number greater than one that can only be divided by one and itself. Examples include 2, 3, 5, and 7.

Luke Durant¡¯s quest

Luke Durant, a 36-year-old former programmer from Nvidia, dedicated a year of his life¡ªand a significant amount of his own funds¡ªto discover the largest known prime number.

This impressive number, known as M136279841, contains a staggering 41,024,320 digits and represents the first major prime number breakthrough in nearly six years.

The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), a collaborative project, announced Durant's discovery on October 21.

This significant finding is classified as a Mersenne prime, a special type of prime number named after Marin Mersenne, a French monk who studied them over 350 years ago.

A number is identified as a Mersenne prime if it can be expressed in the form 2?-1.

Mersenne primes are quite rare, making Durant's discovery of the 52nd known Mersenne prime all the more remarkable.

How he did it

Durant was impressed by the advanced technology and collaborative effort of the GIMPS community in their quest to find large prime numbers.

The GIMPS community consists of volunteers worldwide who run the project¡¯s software on their personal computers, searching for new prime numbers, while mathematicians analyse the results to enhance future discoveries.

After learning to use the project's software and utilising cloud computing, he combined these tools to create a powerful virtual supercomputer, running enough systems around the world to achieve impressive speeds.

Durant's discovery is noteworthy as the first Mersenne prime found using graphics processing units (GPUs), as opposed to the central processing units (CPUs) used in earlier searches.

GPUs excel at performing mathematical calculations quickly and can handle numerous data points at once, making them ideal for tasks like rendering high-quality graphics or training AI networks to manage vast amounts of information efficiently.

Thanks to his discovery of the new Mersenne prime, Luke Durant is now eligible for the $3,000 (Rs 2.52 lakhs) GIMPS Research Discovery Award. He shared with CNN that he plans to donate the prize money to his local public high school.

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