This discovery marks a significant milestone in mathematical research, following the previous record, M82589933, found six years ago. This is the first Mersenne prime specifically described using data center GPUs.
After a year of testing, Durand’s team confirmed the simplicity of M136279841 using an A100 GPU in Dublin, Ireland; this was also confirmed by Nvidia H100 in San Antonio, Texas using the Lucas-Lemaire test.
Prime numbers are natural numbers greater than 1 that can only be divided by 1 and itself. So a prime number has exactly two divisors.
Prime numbers play an important role in mathematics and cryptography, as their properties are used in data encryption, finding divisors, and other computational problems.
Source: Ferra
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