Former Nvidia employee discovered world's largest prime number. All it took was a little free software and some datacenter GPUs

Luke Durant from San Jose in California, a former Nvidia worker, achieved one of the rarest mathematical achievements this month. Durant, a former Nvidia employee from San Jose, California, discovered the largest prime number in the world with the help of a few thousand graphics card spread across 17 datacenters in different countries and some free software.

I would write it out for you but I don’t think the site would appreciate having to display more than 41,000,000 digits. You don't have to worry: I downloaded the 18.3MB.txt recording Durant's discoveries and everything appears to be in order.

The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), a 28-year old website that looks just like you imagine, offers a complete download of 2 ^136,279841-1. GIMPS is a free program that attempts to calculate numbers within a rare category called Mersenne Primes.

If you haven't taken the relevant math class in a while, a prime number is any number which can only be divided by 1 and itself. Mersenne primes are prime numbers that are less than a power 2.

Verification is the key to finding as a prime number. If you just mash out a bunch digits on your keyboard, you might get a prime number. But you would have to calculate if it is divisible by a smaller number to prove that. Unsurprisingly, as the number digits of the potential prime number increase, the amount of calculation required increases.

Durant's newly discovered Mersenne prime took a lot of computing. According to GIMPS, it is over 16,000,000 digits bigger than the previous record for prime numbers. GIMPS used "thousands" of server GPUs in 24 datacenter regions across 17 countries to identify potential primes. An Nvidia A100 GPU located in Dublin, Ireland, scored big by identifying 2 ^136,279841-1.

Then, of course, it had to be confirmed, which required additional calculations through a series of primality test on different hardware platforms. The results are clear, at least to some mathematicians. I'll believe their word.

Durant's discovery is the first time GIMPS has been used to discover a Mersenne Prime. GIMPS claims that Durant's network, which consists of GPUs for number crunching, "ends a 28-year reign by ordinary personal computers in finding these large prime numbers."

GIMPS reports that Durant chose to perform the Mersenne prime as a way to "demonstrate that GPUs can do more than AI." Prime numbers may not be the buzzword for investors that AI has been in the past couple of years, but I still admire the motivation.