Prime Time

Math geeks have been looking for large prime numbers for thousands of years. In the last few centuries, much of the leading-edge work has revolved around Mersenne primes; as a result the largest known prime has often been a Mersenne prime.

Up until 1952, this work was all manual. The highlight of this period: in what may be the ultimate expression of math-geek-ness, Lucas spent 19 years proving 2**127 - 1 is prime.

From 1952 until 1996, the world's fastest computers were used to find Mersenne primes... supercomputers from companies like IBM, CDC, and Cray.

From 1996 onward, the trend towards ubiquitous cheap computing changed the game. GIMPS (Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search) made it easy for volunteers to search for primes in the background on their PCs. With many thousands of volunteers, every Mersenne prime since has been found by GIMPS.

This app isn't about finding the largest prime; instead, it's about finding out how long it might take for a desktop PC to match the work of the world's best and brightest minds, and fastest computers, in the time before GIMPS. This includes about a half century of some of the fastest machines on the planet.

I think it can be done in about a year on my home desktop. To watch, go to http://www.danholle.com and follow the math geek link.