this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024

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

submitted 6 hours ago by gedaliyah@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

48 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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[–] driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 3 points 20 minutes ago

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.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 28 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Is it 3?

I bet it's 3.

[–] pruwybn@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

My money's on 4.

[–] RelativeArea0@lemmy.world 1 points 36 minutes ago

Can I go with 6? I kinda like 6

[–] Chozo@fedia.io 52 points 5 hours ago

Wake up babe, new prime number just dropped.

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 64 points 5 hours ago (3 children)

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.

[–] underwire212@lemm.ee 6 points 3 hours ago

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.

[–] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 25 points 5 hours ago

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.

[–] solrize@lemmy.world 8 points 5 hours ago

I wonder if he wrote some of the CUDA code or anything like that.

[–] 0laura@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 4 hours ago (3 children)

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.

[–] TheOneCurly@lemm.ee 2 points 26 minutes ago

Primes are actually useful..

[–] xep@fedia.io 12 points 3 hours 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@lemmy.world 6 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

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

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 2 points 25 minutes 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.

[–] Nutteman@lemmy.world 9 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (2 children)

You can dislike corporate hype around ai and celebrate someone finding a legitimate use case for ai.

[–] TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee 3 points 2 hours ago

Yeah. Stuff like this, work in medical treatments and new drugs, I'm on board.

Using it to replace human workers or steal their hard work to train them?

Fuck you sideways with a cactus, you corporate fucks.

[–] mariusafa@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 4 hours ago

He must've been very anxious in order to count up to that...

[+] just_another_person@lemmy.world -66 points 5 hours ago (3 children)

And this helps humanity and mathematicians by...nothing. It's absolutely nothing.

[–] InverseParallax@lemmy.world 55 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

If we can analyze larger primes, we can generate larger primes which has applications in math, particularly cryptography and other areas, not even beginning to look at number theory. Specifically being able to verify them over a cloud is useful, we can generate them quicker and worry about their safety less. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hensel's_lemma has uses in physics actually.

Oh, you mean you don't understand it, gotcha.

Yes, and Bayesian statistics are useless too, they're all about things that have already happened!

[+] just_another_person@lemmy.world -54 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

No. I understand it plenty. Quantifying shit to the Nth degree doesn't fix anything. It makes math more precise, but math that will never be used for any practical applications.

Please inform me about the ways this information and "breakthrough" will be used in a meaningful way that matters at all.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 40 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

They literally just told you. Prime numbers have applicability in cryptography.

[+] just_another_person@lemmy.world -31 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

And the highest degree of that is not used. So...

[–] palordrolap@fedia.io 15 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

It's not just about primes, it's about proving the technologies and techniques needed to verify such a number is prime, which might then be extrapolated to things unrelated to proving things prime.

For example, GIMPS (the organisation behind this find) was a great example of distributed computing long before people had multiprocessor supercomputers in their homes.

But let's not forget the hobby factor. You don't get to decide what other people do for fun. If they want to lend a portion of their computer's runtime to a distributed computing project, that's up to them.

Some people climb tall mountains, and that's not of much use to anyone either.

[+] just_another_person@lemmy.world -19 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Right. Like I shouldn't have a say in Microsoft, Google, OpenAI and others starting dead Nuclear Reactors up to feed the power hungry data centers they run to exactly.

I'M clearly the problem here.

[–] prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works 13 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I'M clearly the problem here.

Here specifically, very much so yes.

[+] just_another_person@lemmy.world -13 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Nah. I can take the downvote and still be on the right side of things.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 10 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Can, but aren't.

[+] just_another_person@lemmy.world -12 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Doing just fine 😘

[–] somebodysomewhere@lemmy.world 4 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Ever heard the saying "if one guy is an asshole, he's an asshole. If everyone is an asshole, you're the asshole"?

Not saying you're an asshole, but that is to say you're the only one defending your viewpoint, and you are welcome to it. But we'd all appreciate consideration of the information as opposed to the offense you seem to be taking.

Nuance exists everywhere in our complicated world.

The example that springs to mind is when we discovered that Archimedes invented the foundations of calculus long before Newton and Leibniz. The argument typically goes that the foundations of mathematics would be much further along had this discovery been realized but many others argue that we would have had no practical way to apply it in the time that Archimedes lived.

Now the part that I think you are missing is that the interesting part is not only that we now know that a new number is prime, but that knowing that a number is prime involves verifying that a number is prime and the larger the number is, the more difficult it is to verify so this almost always involves landmark advances in math and computing. Especially since prime numbers are distributed asymptotically meaning they are typically a few orders of magnitude larger than the previous one.

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world -3 points 56 minutes ago

Totally.

Have you also heard the saying "Somebody Somewhere is sick of your bullshit'?

[–] InverseParallax@lemmy.world 10 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

No, you're just an idiot, you're not a problem, you're not significant enough to ever amount to a problem, you'll be forgotten 5 minutes after you're dead.

But, at least you have your impotent rage?

[–] dsilverz@thelemmy.club 21 points 5 hours ago

Have you ever heard of the Riemann hypothesis? Since 1859 it's yet to be solved. The generalization of prime numbers (i.e. a function f(n) that yields the nth prime) would impact fields such as Navigation Systems and Traffic Management, Communication Systems and Satellite Communication (i.e. your Internet connection could become more efficient and faster), Astrophysics and Cosmology, Quantum Mechanics, AI and Machine Learning, E-commerce, Finances and Algorithmic Trading, among many other fields. (Yeah, it seems like nothing. /s)

[–] _bcron_@lemmy.world 21 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Does it need to? Does anything need to? I'd argue that humans toying with the novelty of 'seemingly useless' things has enriched humanity by a whole lot. Archmedes basically dicking around doing fuck all in that shed of his instead of growing crops

[+] just_another_person@lemmy.world -38 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

Yes. The amount of effort and resources used to do this shouldn't just be a fucking waste.

This is a fucking waste. Proper fucking waste.

Nobody will use this math in our lifetime. Probably not the next generation either. We're incapable of using it in any meaningful way except bragging rights.

[–] SexualPolytope@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 27 minutes ago

If smart people thought like this, we won't have cryptography.

[–] _bcron_@lemmy.world 23 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

Nobody will use this math in our lifetime.

That's a presumption. Have you ever considered that there's a non-zero chance that you're wrong?

[–] wagesj45@fedia.io 7 points 2 hours ago

Even if it's true, he's just admitting that he doesn't care about future generations. Fuck them kids, I guess.

[+] just_another_person@lemmy.world -23 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

It's not a presumption when there is no basis for it all. It's a fucking fact.

If there was a segment of society that said "Hey, we really want to do this thing, but we really just need the highest prime number possible! Why won't anyone find that for us?" Then I'd say OK.

You've got a guy out to beat a record and get his name on the books here. Useless.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 14 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

That segment exists. That's literally why they are continually trying to find larger primes.

[+] just_another_person@lemmy.world -9 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Again, to what use?

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 10 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

No idea, I'm neither a cryptographer nor mathematician. All I know is that they're used somehow. Something about multiplying two large primes to get a big number. Apparently it's a challenge to factor that number to derive the original primes, and that challenge is what makes breaking a cryptographic algorithm difficult.

[–] AlotOfReading@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago

Any cryptography you're likely to encounter uses fixed size primes over a residue ring for performance reasons. These superlarge primes aren't relevant for practical cryptography, they're just fun.