Oops - New Prime! (M49 related)

[Madpoo]

Originally Posted by airsquirrels

What if Anonymous really is one guy who managed to build a bot net and decided to use it to search for primes, then realized many computers on his botnet had decent GPUs. Wouldn't that be interesting...

I was just reading an article about some Bitcoin guy who decided that, in his opinion, Bitcoin is doomed to failure (he disagrees with the direction of some of the technical aspects).

Wouldn't it be interesting if some major bitcoin miners gave up and maybe picked Prime95 as a new hobby? One can hope.

[pinhodecarlos]

Originally Posted by Madpoo

Wouldn't it be interesting if some major bitcoin miners gave up and maybe picked Prime95 as a new hobby? One can hope.

Did you see http://www.gridcoin.us/ ?

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by Madpoo

Wouldn't it be interesting if some major bitcoin miners gave up and maybe picked Prime95 as a new hobby? One can hope.

Or, maybe, this is a "short selling" opportunity. Difficult to know when to "go long", mind you....

[kladner]

Originally Posted by Madpoo

I was just reading an article about some Bitcoin guy who decided that, in his opinion, Bitcoin is doomed to failure (he disagrees with the direction of some of the technical aspects).

Wouldn't it be interesting if some major bitcoin miners gave up and maybe picked Prime95 as a new hobby? One can hope.

Aren't the hardware requirements a bit different for bitcoin versus GPGPU?

[aurashift]

Originally Posted by kladner

Aren't the hardware requirements a bit different for bitcoin versus GPGPU?

Yes. Bitcoin miners (at least the current profitable ones) use ASICs that (I think) only do SHA hashing algorithms. They'd be useless for this.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by aurashift

Yes. Bitcoin miners (at least the current profitable ones) use ASICs that (I think) only do SHA hashing algorithms. They'd be useless for this.

Nothing like custom silicon for a specific operation. It's as if a CUDA or AMD GPU could only do TF. It might be monstrously fast, but a one-trick pony. I prefer flexibility and choice.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by kladner

Nothing like custom silicon for a specific operation.

As readers of this forum will know, there are important historical examples of that!

1. This was how the British cracked Nazi crypto at Bletchley Park:
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/
http://www.tnmoc.org/

2. Also how the US government persuaded the US Congress that DES was still safe when it wasn't:
https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/Crypto/Cr...f_des_faq.html

[ramshanker]

Seriously guys, I didn't expect this would take soooooooo long.

Multiple verification is already completed I believe.

[science_man_88]

Originally Posted by ramshanker

Seriously guys, I didn't expect this would take soooooooo long.

Multiple verification is already completed I believe.

they did say tuesday ...

[ATH]

Here is the list of old Mersenne Prime threads if anyone is feeling nostalgic:

2013-01-25: M57885161: http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=17704
2009-06-04: M42643801: http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=11996
2008-09-06: M37156667: http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=10616
2008-08-23: M43112609: http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=10564 (also covers M37156667)
2006-09-04: M32582657: http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=6290
2005-12-15: M30402457: http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=5139
2005-02-18: M25964951: http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=3727
2004-05-15: M24036583: http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=2475
2003-11-17: M20996011: http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=1420

2003-06-01: M16811549 False alarm M40: http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=672

Only 1 thread number is prime: 3727 for M25964951

[ATH]

From the M40 false alarm thread post #114: http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthr...p?t=672&page=3

Originally Posted by Prime95

It is official - not prime. Both Guillermo's Mlucas run and my prime95 run return a matching non-zero residue.

We will never know what caused prime95 to generate a false positive, I am studying the code for ways in which a memory corruption could cause this. Something good will come from this sorry ending.

I am confidant this incident will have little negative impact on GIMPS. While the episode was probably an unhappy roller-coaster ride for one individual, the false positive problem is far less damaging to GIMPS than the version 17 shift bug disaster.

This incident illustrates why most other distributed projects keep any client finds secret (even from the discoverer) until verified. If we had a similar policy this could have been swept under the rug and no one would ever have known. I kind of like our policy though. It lets everyone in on the ups and downs of the project.

Thanks to Guillermo and Ernst for dedicating time to the verification run.

What was the "version 17 shift bug disaster"? I think I heard there was once a prime made public that turned out to be a bug?