November 8, 2014 — In 2006, M(32582657) was discovered, and after 8 years GIMPS has finished checking and double-checking every smaller Mersenne number. With no new, smaller primes found, M(32582657) is officially the "44th Mersenne prime". Congratulations and thanks to all the GIMPS members that contributed their resources towards this milestone.
June 1, 2014 — Version 28 is now available for download. The FFT assembly code has been optimized to use Intel's fused multiply-add instructions on Intel's Haswell CPUs (Core i3/i5/i7-4xxx models). Haswell users should see a decent performance increase. Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge users may also see a small speed boost due to some memory bandwidth optimizations. To upgrade, simply exit Prime95, download the new version, and unzip the new version replacing the old version.
February 2014 — Since 2008, GIMPS has given users one year to complete assignments. This rule has not been enforced. This has held up completing milestones as some assignments did not complete even after several years.
During February 2014, new assignment and recycling policies were put in place to help GIMPS make steady progress on milestones by detecting assignments that are proceeding extremely slowly or not at all.
This affects users in two ways:
Users testing 100 million digit numbers are not affected by these new rules. Assignments made prior to March 1, 2014 will be given a year, as promised, to complete (plus a grace period if the assignment is close to complete).
February 23, 2014 — More than 8 years after discovering M(30402457), GIMPS has finished checking and double-checking every smaller Mersenne number. With no new primes found that are smaller than M(30402457), the "43rd known Mersenne prime" can now be called the "43rd Mersenne prime". Congratulations and thanks to all the GIMPS members that perform this somewhat less glamorous double-checking work.
January 25th, 2013 — Prolific GIMPS contributor Dr. Curtis Cooper discovered the 48th known Mersenne prime, 257,885,161-1, a 17,425,170 digit number. This find shatters the previous record prime number of 12,978,189 digits, also a GIMPS prime, discovered over 4 years ago. The discovery is eligible for a $3,000 GIMPS research discovery award.
Dr. Cooper is a professor at the University of Central Missouri. This is the third record prime for Dr. Cooper and his University. Their first record prime was discovered in 2005, eclipsed by their second record in 2006. Computers at UCLA broke that record in 2008. UCLA held the record until Dr. Cooper and the University of Central Missouri reclaimed the world record with this discovery.
While Dr. Cooper's computer found the record prime, the discovery would not have been possible without all the GIMPS volunteers that sifted through numerous non-prime candidates. GIMPS founder George Woltman and PrimeNet creator Scott Kurowski thank and congratulate all the GIMPS members that made this discovery possible.
Mersenne primes are extremely rare, only 48 are known. GIMPS, founded in 1996, has discovered the last 14 Mersenne primes. Mersenne primes were named for the French monk Marin Mersenne, who studied these numbers more than 350 years ago. Chris Caldwell maintains an authoritative web site on the history of Mersenne primes as well as the largest known primes.
The primality proof took 39 days of non-stop computing on one of the University of Central Missouri's PCs. To establish there were no errors during the proof, the new prime was independently verified using different programs running on different hardware. Jerry Hallett verified the prime using CUDALucas running on a NVidia GPU in 3.6 days. Dr. Jeff Gilchrist verified the find using the standard GIMPS software on an Intel i7 CPU in 4.5 days. Finally, Serge Batalov ran Ernst Mayer's MLucas software on a 32-core server in 6 days (resource donated by Novartis IT group) to verify the new prime.
You can read a little more in the short press release.
December 20, 2012 — One year after proving the 41st Mersenne prime, GIMPS finished double-checking every smaller Mersenne number than M(25964951) -- proving that this prime is indeed the 42nd Mersenne prime. There are 47 known Mersenne primes. Mersenne primes are sometimes discovered out-of-order. It is not yet known if there is an undiscovered Mersenne prime between M(25964951) and the next largest known Mersenne prime, M(30402457). Here is a list of all GIMPS milestones and our progress toward future ones. Congratulations and thanks to all the GIMPS members that contributed to this important double-checking work.
May 15, 2012 — You may download version 27 now. The FFT assembly code has been rewritten for better speed on Intel's newer CPUs supporting AVX instructions. Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge CPUs (Core i3/i5/i7-2xxx and 3xxx models) should see a huge performance increase. To upgrade, simply exit Prime95, download the new version, and unzip the new version replacing the old version.
GIMPS is now accepting donations to help fund server upgrades and future Mersenne Prime prize awards. Donations are tax-deductible in the U.S.
October 14, 2009 — Could YOU be the next person to discover a new Mersenne prime and win a cash research award?
The Electronic Frontier Foundation awarded GIMPS the $100,000 Cooperative Computing Award for the August 23rd, 2008 discovery of the 45th known Mersenne prime ("M45") 243,112,609-1, a mammoth 12,978,189 digit number, found on a University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) computer in the GIMPS PrimeNet network, after GIMPS met every requirement for the $100,000 award for discovery of the first 10 million digit prime number.
As promised, GIMPS gave $50,000 of the EFF award to the UCLA Department of Mathematics, where Edson Smith was responsible for installing and maintaining the GIMPS software on their computers. Another $25,000 has been donated to a math-related charity selected by GIMPS founder George Woltman. The remaining $25,000 has been paid in GIMPS Mersenne Prime Research Discovery Awards to Odd Magnar Strindmo for his discovery of M47, Hans-Michael Elvenich for M46, the University of Central Missouri (M44 and M43), Dr. Martin Nowak (M42), Josh Findley (M41), Michael Shafer and his selected charity (M40) and Michael Cameron (M39).
Chris Caldwell maintains an excellent web site on prime numbers. See his page on Mersenne Primes and their history. GIMPS has found 13 of the 47 Mersenne primes ever found during its 13 year history.
Mersenne Wiki Created — From the good folks that brought you the Mersenne Forums comes the Mersenne Wiki. Browse the Wiki to learn more about GIMPS and Mersenne Primes.
GIMPS forums — Here you can chat with fellow GIMPS members, get help with installation questions, learn more about how GIMPS works, etc.
You could discover one of the most coveted finds in all of Mathematics - a new Mersenne prime number. We've found fourteen already. Join in on this fun, yet serious research project. All you need is a personal computer, patience, and a lot of luck.
In addition to the joy of making a mathematical discovery, you could win a (USD) $3,000 cash GIMPS Research Discovery Award for each Mersenne prime discovered, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation is offering a $150,000 award to the first person or group to discover a 100 million digit prime number! See how GIMPS will distribute this award if we are lucky enough to find the winning 100 million digit prime.
Prime numbers have long fascinated amateur and professional mathematicians. An integer greater than one is called a prime number if its only divisors are one and itself. The first prime numbers are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, etc. For example, the number 10 is not prime because it is divisible by 2 and 5. A Mersenne prime is a prime of the form 2P-1. The first Mersenne primes are 3, 7, 31, 127 (corresponding to P = 2, 3, 5, 7). There are only 46 known Mersenne primes.
GIMPS, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, was formed in January 1996 to discover new world-record-size Mersenne primes. GIMPS harnesses the power of thousands of small computers like yours to search for these "needles in a haystack".
Most GIMPS members join the search for the thrill of possibly discovering a record-setting, rare, and historic new Mersenne prime. Of course, there are many other reasons.
Last Updated June 1, 2014