this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024
422 points (97.1% liked)

Technology

58871 readers
4422 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

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

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 48 points 3 days ago

Babe wake up, new prime number just dropped.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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

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

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

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

Sync for Lemmy.

Here's the source of their comment.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago (5 children)

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

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

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

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago

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

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 183 points 3 days 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] 45 points 3 days 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 3 days ago (4 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.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days 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.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 131 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Wake up babe, new prime number just dropped.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 days 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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days 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)

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 days 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

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 69 points 3 days ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Can I go with 6? I kinda like 6

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

No, but I bet it’s multiple of 6!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

Half-Life 2136279841-1 confirmed.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

Almost certainly a multiple of 2 minus one

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 39 points 3 days 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.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 days 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.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›