Amateur Mathematician Discovers Largest Known Prime Number Using GPUs

Luke Durant, a former NVIDIA employee, identified the 41-million-digit Mersenne prime with a global network of GPUs.

M136279841, the new largest prime number, is a Mersenne prime with 41,024,320 digits, surpassing the previous record by 16 million digits.
Durant utilized the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search GPUs across 17 countries to make this discovery.
This marks the first time a Mersenne prime was found using GPUs instead of traditional CPUs, highlighting their computational power.
The discovery process involved initial identification by an NVIDIA A100 GPU and confirmation through a Lucas-Lehmer test by an NVIDIA H100.
While large primes have limited immediate applications, they are crucial for cryptography and demonstrate the potential of distributed computing.