CASH AWARDS FOR NEW MERSENNE PRIMES
At the time of this
software release, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is offering a $100,000
award to the first person or group to discover a ten million-digit prime number.
If you find such a prime with the software provided, GIMPS will claim the award
and distribute the award according to the following rules.
- No money will be awarded unless and until GIMPS discovers a 10,000,000
digit prime, it is independently verified, and EFF validates our claim
according to their rules. Verification is likely to take up to a month and
publication in a suitable academic refereed journal as required by EFF rules
will likely take another six months. For tax reasons, no money will be awarded
until GIMPS is incorporated as a non-profit organization. You are responsible
for all applicable taxes.
- Up to $20,000 total will be awarded to the discoverers of new Mersenne
primes found after September 1, 1999 and prior to the discovery of the
10,000,000 digit prime. Each new Mersenne prime will receive a maximum of
$5,000. Up to $10,000 total will be awarded to the discoverers of mathematical
or algorithmic breakthroughs in searching for Mersenne primes. To qualify for
the entire award the breakthrough must be simple enough to be implemented in
prime95 and double current throughput. George Woltman will be the sole
determiner of whether a suggested breakthrough will be implemented, how it
affects throughput, and the dollar amount to be awarded. Examples of what does
not qualify: optimizations of the present code, new CPU architectures,
suggesting a parallelized FFT implementation, etc. Examples of what might
qualify: a faster way to find factors, a way to eliminate or speed up
double-checking, a new way to use smaller FFT sizes, etc.
- Up to $20,000 will be awarded to GIMPS, Inc. to cover expenses or fund
future awards.
- For organizing GIMPS and providing the free software, $25,000 will be
awarded to the charity of George Woltman's choice.
- The remainder goes to the discoverer of the 10,000,000 digit prime. If a
group or team wishes to make a claim of one of the above awards, they must
appoint a single individual to make the claim and disburse the award.
- These rules may be changed at any time prior to the discovery of a
10,000,000 digit prime. The decisions of the GIMPS board of directors in
applying the rules above and granting awards is final. Prior to GIMPS'
incorporation the decision of George Woltman is final. See
http://www.mersenne.org/prize.htm
for updates.
- If you were to find a 10,000,000 digit prime today the above rules imply
that $5,000 would go to Michael Cameron, discoverer of the 39th Mersenne prime,
$5,000 would go to Michael Shafer, discoverer of the 40th Mersenne prime, $5,000
would go to Josh Findley, discoverer of the 41st Mersenne prime, $5,000 would go
to Dr. Martin Nowak, discoverer of the 42nd Mersenne prime, $0 would go to
discoverers of algorithmic breakthroughs, $5,000 would go to GIMPS primarily to
fund future awards, $25,000 would go to charity, and $50,000 would go to you.
Now the bad news. Testing a single
10,000,000 digit number takes a month on a 2GHz Pentium 4 computer.
Your chance of success is roughly 1 in 250,000. Someone may find
a 10,000,000 digit prime before GIMPS does.