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Latest News
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Dutch Power Cows Stampede!
(posted by louis helm) |
Monday, 14 Apr 2008 |
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You may have noticed there's been a lot of extra production this month. That's because the Dutch Power Cows are running a month-long "Stampede". DPC members are switching from other DC projects to make a huge impact together and really contribute on a new level. They are on course to overtake the previous overall contributing team, TeamPrimeRib. We at Seventeen or Bust appreciate the huge burst of support coming from DPC and hope some of the supporters who join for the monthly stampede settle in and contribute for a long time to come. Happy prime hunting! -Louie |
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11TH PRIME FOUND! ONLY 6 REMAIN!
(posted by louis helm) |
Tuesday, 30 Oct 2007 |
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This result was reported at 2:03PM EST on October 17th. We've checked and re-checked the primality several times and have now submitted it to The Prime Page where it currently stands as the 10th largest known prime number ever discovered [2,116,617 digits]. Sturle, a member of team Busty Seventeen from Oslo, Norway tells us that he started crunching SB 4 years ago to "give [him] a new set of work outside of GIMPS." He currently has 160 computers crunching GIMPS and another 110 crunching SB. Only 10 of his computers were running the crucial double-check work that lead to this new discovery. He manages all his computers from the University of Oslo with intelligent scripts that only utilize them when other users aren't logged in. We've opened a thread to comment on the discovery in the forums. Our records confirm Sturle completed over 9,000 tests before finding this result so he is quite a deserving discoverer. That said, he couldn't have done it alone and neither could we. You all keep this effort going with your dedicated crunching and your contributions are what led to this latest find. Congratulations to the entire Seventeen or Bust community! |
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33661•2^7031232+1 is prime! The double checking effort uncovered this new prime showing once again why it is so important to conduct these re-testing efforts. Most re-tests conclusively verify the original result but if the first test had even a single memory error during the computation, there's a chance a prime could have been missed. That's what likely happened here. The discoverer, |
10TH PRIME DISCOVERED!!!!!
(posted by louis helm) |
Saturday, 05 May 2007 |
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19249 * 2^13018586 + 1 is prime!!!! SB has done it again, discovering a new largest ever non-Mersenne prime. This latest result was submitted at 00:33 EST on March 26th by Konstantin Agafonov, a member of team TSC! Russia. Konstantin is from Korolev, Russia where he works as a systems administrator for a construction company. Before joining SB, Konstantin participated in other DC projects like Find-a-Drug, where he was the 5th largest overall contributor! Konstantin says he has used up to 100 computers on SB. This particular prime was found on one of his 3GHz Pentium 4s running Windows. To read more about the discovery, check out the official Press Release. Thanks to all our dedicated number crunching volunteers... some of whom have been crunching for five years now! Every one of you helped make this discovery possible! Congratulations and Happy Cinco de Mayo! |
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DOUBLE CHECK UNCOVERS 9TH PRIME!
(posted by louis helm) |
Wednesday, 19 Oct 2005 |
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4847 * 2^3321063 + 1 is prime! This is great news as k=4847 was a relatively dense series that required more tests in a given range than the average k. The prime was discovered at 10:50PM EST on October 15th by Richard Hassler, a long-time user who has been crunching SB since August 2003. You may notice that this prime is smaller than the last few discoveries we've made (only 999744 digits [decimal expansion]). That's because this prime was uncovered by a double check. Hopefully those of us disappointed by the artificial slowdown that double checks have caused recently are pleased that it resulted in a new discovery so quickly. We're working to correct the scoring system so that these tests are worth as much per amount of computation as larger ones. Until we do, keep in mind that although the scoring has temporarily decreased, the ease of finishing a test has gone up which does improve your chances of actually finding a prime. Congratulations to the whole SB community! These primes are rare so take a moment to appreciate all the hard work that goes into producing them. Each SB participant helped do their part to increase the bounds of human knowledge with this discovery. Be proud of your accomplishment! 9 down -- 8 to go. |
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SB v2.5 released
(posted by louis helm) |
Saturday, 10 Sep 2005 |
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SB v2.5.0 is now available for Win32 and Linux (and FreeBSD!) on the download page. |
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You Could Be Famous!
If you're lucky enough to eliminate a multiplier, not only will you receive credit for the mathematical discovery, but you'll also have discovered an extremely large prime number: large enough to get your name in the annals of mathematical history! Ten lucky participants have helped to discover ten of the largest primes ever uncovered! You could be next!
What Is It?
SB (Seventeen or Bust) is a distributed attack on the Sierpinski problem. Our system utilizes the spare computational power of hundreds of computers around the world, creating a powerful network of machines working together on the problem. Anyone can participate: we provide a piece of software that installs on your computer and uses its "spare time" to help our project. You won't even notice it's running, since it only uses your processor if it would otherwise be sitting unused.
The Sierpinski problem itself deals with numbers of the form N = k * 2^n + 1, for any odd k and n > 1. Numbers of this form are called Proth numbers. If, for some specific value of k, every possible choice of n results in a composite (non-prime) Proth number N, then that k is called a Sierpinski number. The Sierpinski problem itself is: "What is the smallest Sierpinski number?" (For a more rigorous mathematical discussion of the problem, see prothsearch.net's Sierpinski Problem page.)
John Selfridge proved, 45 years ago, that k = 78,557 is a Sierpinski number. Most number theorists believe that this is the smallest, but it hasn't yet been proven. In order to prove it, we have to show that every single k less than 78,557 is not a Sierpinski number, and to do that, we have to find some n that makes k * 2^n + 1 prime. When Seventeen or Bust was started, this had already been done for all but 17 values of k; hence the name of the project. After 5 years of computation, we have eliminated 11 multipliers: eleven down, six to go.
Who Are You Guys?
The project was started in March of 2002 as a collaboration between Louis Helm, at the University of Michigan, and David Norris at the University of Illinois. Countless individuals have also contributed to the project, most notably George Woltman (author of the GIMPS project), who contributed blindingly-fast source code, and Michael Garrison, who maintains the project's central server. To these and everyone else that has helped make this project possible, we sincerely thank you.
