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The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) currently offers a US$3,000 research discovery award for participants who download and run their free software and whose computer discovers a new Mersenne prime having fewer than 100 million digits.
There are several prizes offered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for record primes.[7] GIMPS is also coordinating its long-range search efforts for primes of 100 million digits and larger and will split the Electronic Frontier Foundation's US$150,000 prize with a winning participant.
The record passed one million digits in 1999, earning a US$50,000 prize.[8] In 2008 the record passed ten million digits, earning a US$100,000 prize and a Cooperative Computing Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.[7] Time called it the 29th top invention of 2008.[9] Both the US$50,000 and the US$100,000 prizes were won by participation in GIMPS. Additional prizes are being offered for the first prime number found with at least one hundred million digits and the first with at least one billion digits.
Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search
GIMPS was founded in 1996 by George Woltman. The software ran on Intel i386 systems using hand-tuned assembly code for the critical calculations, resulting in highly optimized Lucas-Lehmer code.
It wasn't long before GIMPS had it's first discovery in November of that same year, showing the effectiveness of distributed computing in harnessing spare computer cycles in a coordinated effort.
As efficient as the software itself was, the early years of GIMPS involved a manual process using emails to request work assignments and then send the results back. As the project grew, a more efficient system was needed and Scott Kurowski responded to that need with the introduction of PrimeNet through his company Entropia, a pioneer in the early days of distributed computing projects. Without Scott's invaluable contribution, the ability to manage thousands of volunteers and millions of work assignments would not have been possible. PrimeNet paved the way for the future growth of the project as a whole.
With the solid foundation of PrimeNet in place, George continued his focus on improving the core calculations of Prime95. As new Intel and AMD processors were introduced, George worked with the new instruction sets and timings to increase the performance. The core of the program is now able to optimize itself to work at peak efficiency on all modern CPU's, but also still finds a home on many older generation systems.
