Given the number of machines Luke Durant is running
<a href="https://www.mersenne.org/report_recent_results/" rel="nofollow">https://www.mersenne.org/report_recent_results/</a>
it must cost a lot of money, given those are GPU nodes. I wonder what's the story there. Also I think up till yesterday the name was not shown on his submissions, it was only shown as ANONYMOUS.
The first Mersenne prime since 1996 not to be discovered on x86 hardware, but on an NVidia A100 [1].<p>[1] <a href="https://www.mersenne.org/primes/" rel="nofollow">https://www.mersenne.org/primes/</a>
Earlier Hacker News discussion, after the announcement that a (then secret) number was a probable prime, yet to be verified prime: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41858024">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41858024</a>
I wonder where Luke Durant got the money from to fund the effort. He's a former NVIDIA employee, I wouldn't be surprised if this was funded by NVIDIA.