According to GIMPS, this is the first time a prime number was not found by an ordinary PC, but rather a “‘cloud supercomputer’ spanning 17 countries” that utilized an Nvidia A100 GPU chip to make the initial diagnosis. The primary architect of this find is Luke Durant, who worked at Nvidia as a software engineer for 11 years

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      54
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      14 days ago

      They literally just told you. Prime numbers have applicability in cryptography.

        • palordrolap@fedia.io
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          22
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          14 days ago

          It’s not just about primes, it’s about proving the technologies and techniques needed to verify such a number is prime, which might then be extrapolated to things unrelated to proving things prime.

          For example, GIMPS (the organisation behind this find) was a great example of distributed computing long before people had multiprocessor supercomputers in their homes.

          But let’s not forget the hobby factor. You don’t get to decide what other people do for fun. If they want to lend a portion of their computer’s runtime to a distributed computing project, that’s up to them.

          Some people climb tall mountains, and that’s not of much use to anyone either.

    • tyler@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      14 days ago

      They literally told you how it’s used for practical applications and you just ignored it. It makes cryptography stronger, hence your password less likely to be broken. National secrets less likely to be leaked. Your identity less likely to be stolen.

      • el_abuelo@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        14 days ago

        I wouldn’t bother arguing with this person. They’re either trolling or intentionally ignorant - either way, you will lose to their vast experience.