Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search - Primes Found

Primes Found

All Mersenne primes are in the form Mq, where q is the (prime) exponent. The prime number itself is 2q − 1, so the smallest prime number in this table is 21398269 − 1.

Mn is the rank of the Mersenne prime based on its exponent. As of Oct 7, 2012, M41 is the largest Mersenne prime for which it is known that there is no other unknown Mersenne prime below, with a lower exponent, since all Mersenne numbers with prime exponent below 25,048,477 have been checked twice.

Discovery date Prime Mq Digits count Name Mn Electronic machine platform
13 November 1996 M1398269 420,921 M35 Pentium (90 MHz)
24 August 1997 M2976221 895,932 M36 Pentium (100 MHz)
27 January 1998 M3021377 909,526 M37 Pentium (200 MHz)
1 June 1999 M6972593 2,098,960 M38 Pentium (350 MHz)
14 November 2001 M13466917 4,053,946 M39 AMD T-Bird (800 MHz)
17 November 2003 M20996011 6,320,430 M40 Pentium (2 GHz)
15 May 2004 M24036583 7,235,733 M41 Pentium 4 (2.4 GHz)
18 February 2005 M25964951 7,816,230 M42 ? Pentium 4 (2.4 GHz)
15 December 2005 M30402457 9,152,052 M43 ? Pentium 4 (2 GHz overclocked to 3 GHz)
4 September 2006 M32582657 9,808,358 M44 ? Pentium 4 (3 GHz)
23 August 2008 M43112609 12,978,189 M47 ? Core 2 Duo E6600 CPU (2.4 GHz)
6 September 2008 M37156667 11,185,272 M45 ?
12 April 2009 M42643801 12,837,064 M46 ? Intel Core 2 Duo (3 GHz)

The number M43112609 has 12,978,189 digits. To help visualize the size of this number, a standard word processor layout (50 lines per page, 75 digits per line) would require 3,461 pages to display it. If one were to print it out using standard printer paper, single-sided, it would require approximately 7 reams of paper.

Whenever a possible prime is reported to the server, it is verified first before it is announced. The importance of this was illustrated in 2003, when a false positive was reported to possibly be the 40th Mersenne prime but verification failed.

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