New prime just dropped. The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), a group of volunteers who search for prime numbers that are (2 to the...

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

  • InverseParallax@lemmy.worldEnglish
    783·
    9 days ago

    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.worldEnglish
      378·
      9 days ago

      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.eeEnglish
        532·
        9 days ago

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

          • palordrolap@fedia.io
            221·
            9 days ago

            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.worldEnglish
              232·
              9 days ago

              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.

      • tyler@programming.devEnglish
        7·
        8 days ago

        They literally told you how it’s used for practical applications and you just ignored it. It makes cryptography stronger, hence your password less likely to be broken. National secrets less likely to be leaked. Your identity less likely to be stolen.

        • el_abuelo@programming.devEnglish
          6·
          8 days ago

          I wouldn’t bother arguing with this person. They’re either trolling or intentionally ignorant - either way, you will lose to their vast experience.