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New largest prime number discovered by former Nvidia software engineer (sherwood.news)

submitted 1 week ago by gedaliyah to c/technology

120 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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] 34 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] AdamEatsAss 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think they're comparing the huge amount of computing power used for both AI and finding primes.

[–] finitebanjo 20 points 1 week ago

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.