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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I wonder if he wrote some of the CUDA code or anything like that.
Is it 3?
I bet it's 3.
My money's on 4.
Can I go with 6? I kinda like 6
No, but I bet it’s multiple of 6!
oh buddy, I ... I've got terrible news for you ...
Almost certainly a multiple of 2 minus one
To save you a click: 2^136,279,841^-1
Formatting is off.
2^136,279,841 - 1
2 to the power of something, then subtract one to make it an odd number.
I’m using Voyager and yours doesn’t work, but the person you responded to looks fine. Weird!
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.
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.
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.
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)
Me wondering why I haven't been able to deploy cloud instances with the A100 for an actual useful purpose for the past month
It feels like people are celebrating this but hating on ai developments. not sure if these people are hypocritical or if that's two different groups of people.
Do you mean to say that this achievement had something to do with AI?
Fermat PRP testing with proofs instead of Lucas-Lehmer testing with full double checks
Looks like pure mathematics to me.
I think they're comparing the huge amount of computing power used for both AI and finding primes.
Yes but when we use power to find new primes then we know them and can use them in cryptography, but if we use power on AI then we dilute current knowledge with fake knowledge. So it's a pretty stark contrast imo.
You can dislike corporate hype around ai and celebrate someone finding a legitimate use case for ai.
Primes are actually useful..
Cryptography is moving away from primes. Given the theoretical danger of quantum computer over them.
Latices is what will theoretically be used in the future for cryptography.
I don't understand this and therefore it's stupid and pointless. Fuck you math elitist assholes with your so-called "large" prime numbers spending billions of dollars that could be used to make my life better. I don't comprehend this at all and there it does not matter. The end.
Yeah, fuck those assholes that pursue science for the benefit of humanity! I do not see why anyone should be allowed to be creative if I do not see the benefit for me in particular.
We need to decide democratically what science is, with everyone getting a fair vote, so wasteful science like this can finally be stopped.
Like voting on which science is right lol?
That's how we end up with solar roadways...
Much of the basis for the RSA cryptosystem, and by extension much of modern computing, was done by some mathematician who prided himself that his work was not applied mathematics and could not ever be applied in any way (bonus point for being pertinent to the topic of large primes). Science is exploratory work, not a straight path to some predefined goal. The person above is evidently clueless as to how science is conducted.
Is this Poe's law? I genuinely thought this was satire but the downvotes and responses are very serious!
If Jesus had wanted us to use prime numbers why did he turn the water into wine and not numbers? Checkmate atheists. /s
He must've been very anxious in order to count up to that...
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
