The month of February is always an exciting time at PrimeGrid, as it marks the start of the annual Tour De Primes Competition. Badges are awarded to those who find the largest primes and also those who find the most within the month of February. In honor of the event, I decided to switch my BOINC GPU rigs which normally crunch PPS Sieve (sieving does not find primes) to prime finding subprojects on the off chance that I might find some prime worth noting. Imagine my surprise when I checked my email today and saw this:

Dear Primefinder, Congratulations! Our records indicate that a computer registered by you has found a unique prime number. This computer is running BOINC, is attached to the PrimeGrid project, and is assigned to the Generalized Fermat Prime Search n=16 (GFN-16). What makes this prime unique is that it's large enough to enter the Top 5000 List in Chris Caldwell's The Largest Known Primes Database. Since you have auto-reporting selected, the following prime was submitted on your behalf: Added 124228 : 30250088^65536+1 (490257 digits) This prime was found on this workunit which will automatically show as a prime result after verification by the Largest Known Primes Database. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us and we will surely resolve any problems. Once again, congratulations on your find! Thank you for participating in PrimeGrid. PrimeGrid staff

The prime can be seen in this Workunit from PrimeGrid and is available on the list of the top 5000 primes here.

30250088^65536+1 is prime!!!

My prime is currently ranked as the 2047th largest prime known on the list of the top 5000. This prime is also the 142nd largest Generalized Fermat prime currently known. I cannot express how happy I am to have found this prime and especially during this month of competition.

For those wondering, I am currently leading the competition on the Tour De Primes Leaderboard. This probably won't last long given the intense competition, but it would be great publicity for Gridcoin if one of our members could win a jersey this year!