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.
1.
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 upto a year 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.
2.
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.
3.
Up to $20,000 will be awarded to GIMPS, Inc. to cover
expenses or fund future awards.
4.
For organizing GIMPS and providing the free software,
$25,000 will be awarded to the charity of George Woltman's choice.
5.
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.
6.
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.
7.
If you were to find a 10,000,000-digit prime today the
above rules imply that $25,000 would go to charity, $20,000 would go to GIMPS
primarily to fund future awards, and $55,000 would go to you. Now the bad news. Testing a single 10,000,000-digit number takes a full year on a
500 MHz Pentium III computer. Your
chance of success is roughly 1 in 250,000.
Someone may find a 10,000,000-digit prime before GIMPS does.