this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024
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According to GIMPS, this is the first time a prime number was not found by an ordinary PC, but rather a “‘cloud supercomputer’ spanning 17 countries” that utilized an Nvidia A100 GPU chip to make the initial diagnosis. The primary architect of this find is Luke Durant, who worked at Nvidia as a software engineer for 11 years

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[–] [email protected] 184 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I don't know why Nvidia is mentioned at all, except the hardware. That's cool that this person found the number, but Nvidia didn't do anything except employ them once upon a time and make a product that does a thing. It's not justified to celebrate the maker of a stove when a soup kitchen feeds everyone.

This is a win for Luke and GIMPS in general, and I'm happy for them.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This is the first such prime that was discovered using GPU cloud computing. It's not just an incredible new discovery, but also a demonstration of what this type of hardware network may be capable.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I didn't use to do this, but with the world being on fire I feel like I should ask whether the amount of energy put into finding huge primes is really worth it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Why is anything worth the effort?

Cause research into primes makes computer security stronger. Cause research in general can make new discoveries that can lead to unexpected improvements in life.

Cause we need to know the answer to everything.

Cause it's better than mining crypto or doing AI training models over and over.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

I wonder if he wrote some of the CUDA code or anything like that.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

They mention nvidia because that’s the hardware used to find/prove.

I find it quite relevant to have the person/ group, the strategy or method, and the device used (including chipsets). Most articles on prime number discovery will mention all these things.

The fact that he worked there seems pretty irrelevant tho.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

We define people by their labor value in capitalist societies. It only makes sense headlines would refer to people thru the lens of their previous employer.

[–] [email protected] 131 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Wake up babe, new prime number just dropped.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago
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[–] [email protected] 70 points 1 week ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Can I go with 6? I kinda like 6

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

No, but I bet it’s multiple of 6!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

oh buddy, I ... I've got terrible news for you ...

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

Half-Life 2136279841-1 confirmed.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Almost certainly a multiple of 2 minus one

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 week ago (1 children)

To save you a click: 2^136,279,841^-1

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Formatting is off.

2^136,279,841 - 1

2 to the power of something, then subtract one to make it an odd number.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersenne_prime

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 week ago (3 children)

What Lemmy client are you using? Looks OK on the web and Jerboa.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Sync for Lemmy.

Here's the source of their comment.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Sync still uses Reddit's markdown rules, Lemmy is a little different.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Using Eternity and formatting was off for me. Second reply comment was good though

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

I’m using Voyager and yours doesn’t work, but the person you responded to looks fine. Weird!

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 week ago

Babe wake up, new prime number just dropped.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 week ago (1 children)

this is the first time a prime number was not found by an ordinary PC, but rather a “‘cloud supercomputer’

The first time since the 90's, before that all computer assisted Mercel primes found were found by super computers.

[–] tyler 24 points 1 week ago (1 children)

No first time ever. This isn’t a supercomputer, it’s a distributed cloud network that they’re referring to as a supercomputer because it has a lot of power. It’s not a supercomputer in any other sense of the word, as it’s set up on cloud providers around the globe rather than in one location in the same room.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I don't know if this is a common feature of large primes, but the digits in the exponent (136,279,841) themselves represent a prime number.

[–] sus 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

that does happen to be one of the defining characteristics of mersenne primes.

And searching for mersenne primes happens to be the easiest known way to find extremely large prime numbers (via the Special Number Field Sieve I believe)

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Me wondering why I haven't been able to deploy cloud instances with the A100 for an actual useful purpose for the past month

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

He must've been very anxious in order to count up to that...

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