GIMPS

The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, or GIMPS, is a collaborative project of volunteers, who download software over the internet in order to search for Mersenne prime numbers. The project was founded and the software was written by George Woltman. This project has been rather successful: the largest currently known prime numbers have been found by participants of the group. This includes the largest known prime which, as of November 2002, is 2^13,466,917-1. This prime was discovered on 14th November 2001 by Michael Cameron from Canada.

External links:

• Home page of GIMPS: http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm