In a groundbreaking discovery, Luke Durant, a 36-year-old researcher and former NVIDIA employee, has identified the largest known prime number to date. Using the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), Durant applied advanced algorithms and an impressive network of GPUs to uncover this new mathematical marvel. The newly discovered prime, now the 52nd known Mersenne prime, consists of 41,024,320 decimal digits, represented by the formula 2^136,279,841-1.
Luke Durant’s work reflects both a dedication to computational power and a strategic utilization of modern technology. His journey began in October 2023 when he recognized that the rapid growth of GPU resources in the cloud could unlock new capabilities for GIMPS, a program initially developed by Mihai Preda. Durant built a sophisticated infrastructure of cloud-based GPU servers across 24 data centers in 17 countries to handle the enormous computing demands of this project.
The achievement was highlighted by GIMPS as ending “the 28-year reign of ordinary personal computers finding these huge prime numbers.” By October 11, Durant’s “cloud supercomputer” completed a probable prime test on an NVIDIA A100 GPU in Dublin, Ireland, suggesting that the number 2^136,279,841-1 might indeed be prime. A rigorous Lucas-Lehmer primality test confirmed this result the following day on an NVIDIA H100 in San Antonio, Texas.
The search for Mersenne primes, named after the 17th-century French monk Marin Mersenne, has been a pursuit of mathematicians for centuries. Mersenne primes are derived from the formula 2^p – 1, where ‘p’ is a prime number. While this isn’t the only method for finding primes, it is often more efficient. Though large Mersenne primes currently have limited practical applications, GIMPS notes that similar skepticism existed in past decades—before advancements in cryptographic algorithms demonstrated the profound utility of prime numbers.
GIMPS, one of the longest-running distributed computing projects, started with software exclusive to Intel PCs but expanded over time. Ernst Mayer played a key role in adapting GIMPS to various non-Intel processors, which allowed for independent verification of nearly every GIMPS-discovered prime. Later advancements included specialized software for GPUs, culminating in the introduction of Mihai Preda’s GpuOwl, a program that is now essential to GIMPS’ operations.