PrimeGrid’s
Mega Prime Search
On 23 October 2012, PrimeGrid’s Proth Prime Search project found the Mega Prime:
9*23497442 +1
The prime is 1,052,836 digits long and will enter Chris Caldwell's “The Largest Known
Primes Database” (http://primes.utm.edu/primes) ranked 51st overall. This prime is alsoa Generalized Fermat prime and ranks as the 12th largest found.
The discovery was made by Heinz Ming of Switzerland using an Intel Core(TM) i7 CPU
860 @ 2.80GHz with 8GB RAM, running Windows 7 Professional. This computer took
just over 5 hours 59 minutes to complete the primality test using LLR. Heinz is amember of the Aggie The Pew team.
The prime was verified by Tim McArdle, a member of the Don't Panic Labs team, using
an AMD Athlon(tm) II P340 Dual-Core Processor with 6 GB RAM, running Windows 7
Professional.
Credits for the discovery are as follows:
1. Heinz Ming (Swtzerland), discoverer
2. PrimeGrid, et al.
3. Srsieve, sieving program developed by Geoff Reynolds
4. PSieve, sieving program developed by Ken Brazier and Geoff Reynolds
5. LLR, primality program developed by Jean Penné
6. OpenPFGW, a primality program developed by Chris Nash & Jim Fougeron
with maintenance and improvements by Mark Rodenkirch
OpenPFGW, a primality program developed by Chris Nash & Jim Fougeron, was used
to check for Fermat Number divisibility (including generalized and extended). For more
information about Fermat and generalized Fermat Number divisors, please see Wilfrid
Keller's sites: http://www.prothsearch.net/fermat.html
 http://www1.uni-hamburg.de/RRZ/W.Keller/GFNfacs.html
Generalized and extended generalized Fermat number divisors discovered are as follows:
9*2^3497442+1 is a Factor of GF(3497441,7)
9*2^3497442+1 is a Factor of xGF(3497438,9,8)
9*2^3497442+1 is a Factor of GF(3497441,10)
9*2^3497442+1 is a Factor of xGF(3497439,11,3)
9*2^3497442+1 is a Factor of xGF(3497441,12,5)

Using a single PC would have taken years to find this prime. So this timely discovery
would not have been possible without the thousands of volunteers who contributed
their spare CPU cycles. A special thanks to everyone who contributed their advice
and/or computing power to the search - especially all the sievers who work behind thescenes to make a find like this possible.
This is PrimeGrid’s 29th mega prime. The Proth Prime Search will continue to search
for more primes. To join the search please visit PrimeGrid: http://www.primegrid.com

PrimeGrid’s
Mega Prime Search
About PrimeGrid
PrimeGrid is a distributed computing project, developed by Rytis Slatkevičius, Lennart
Vogel, and John Blazek, which utilizes BOINC and PRPNet to search for primes.
PrimeGrid's primary goal is to bring the excitement of prime finding to the "everyday"
computer user. Simply download the software and let your computer do the rest.
Participants can choose from a variety of prime forms to search. With a little patience,
you may find a large or even record breaking prime.
BOINC
The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is a software
platform for distributed computing using volunteered computer resources. It
allows users to participate in multiple distributed computing projects through asingle program. Currently BOINC is being developed by a team based at theUniversity of California, Berkeley led by David Anderson.
This platform currently supports projects from biology to math to astronomy. For
more information, please visit BOINC: http://boinc.berkeley.edu
PRPNet
PRPNet is a client/server application written by Mark Rodenkirch that is
specifically designed to help find prime numbers of various forms. It is easily
ported between various OS/hardware combinations. PRPNet does not run each
PRP test itself, but relies on helper programs, such as LLR, PFGW, phrot, wwww,and genefer to do the work.
For more information, please visit PrimeGrid’s PRPNet forum thread:
http://www.primegrid.com/forum_thread.php?id=1215
For more information about PrimeGrid and a complete list of available prime search
projects, please visit: http://www.primegrid.com