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

submitted 1 month ago by gedaliyah@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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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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[–] driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 39 points 1 month ago (2 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.

[–] tyler@programming.dev 24 points 1 month 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.

[–] fishbone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 month ago

Legit question: how is that different conceptually to the random individuals all running Prime95? Could that not also be referred to as a cloud supercomputer?