New badges this year for finding primes.
SGS and Genfer 15 are now too small to count.
 
Tour de Primes 2018

Welcome to the 10th annual Tour de Primes. 2 is the first prime number...and the only even one. This makes it unique among prime numbers. Therefore, February is declared Prime month...being the 2nd month of the year. :) And there's no better way to pay homage to a prime number than to go out and find one. :) More precisely, a Top 5000 prime.

For the month of February, an informal competition is offered. There are no challenge points to be gained... just a simple rare jersey at the end of the month to add to your badge list. No pressure or stress other than what you put on yourself. :)

For 2018, we're adding four new badges you can win -- and these are available to everyone!
 

• Red Jersey -- discoverer of largest prime
• Yellow Jersey -- prime count leader (tiebreaker will be prime score)
• Green Jersey -- points (prime score) leader
• Polk-a-dot Jersey -- on the 19th of February we'll have a "Mountain Stage" and award the Polk-a-dot Jersey to the one who finds the most primes on that day (tiebreaker will be prime score for that day).
• Prime badge -- awarded to everyone who finds an eligible prime during the month of February. This is a counter badge, so if you find more than one prime it will show how many you've found, up to 99.
• Mega prime badge -- awarded to everyone who finds a mega prime during February. This is a counter badge.
• Mountain Stage prime badge -- awarded to everyone who finds a prime during the Mountain Stage. This is a counter badge.
• Mountain Stage mega prime badge -- awarded to everyone who finds a mega prime during the Mountain Stage. This is a counter badge.

Results will be available at http://www.primegrid.com/challenge/tdp_2018.php.

As with the last few years, for all primes (BOINC and PRPNet) we're using the new reporting system whereby the prime's date of discovery determines whether it's eligible for the Tour de Primes. Prior to 2014, the date of verification for BOINC primes was used while the discovery date was used for PRPNet primes. The current system is more intuitive and fairer.

Note that SGS-LLR and GFN-15 are too small to be reported to the Top 5000 primes list and are therefore not eligible for the 2018 Tour de Primes.

Currently, the fastest opportunities to find Top 5000 primes is with the PPSE (LLR), and GFN-16 (65536) projects. Of course, should someone find a prime in the mega-prime searches, this would certainly give them a good shot at the green jersey. Not a guarantee, however, as in 2017 there were several mega primes found in the Tour de Primes. Overall, in 2017 we averaged more than one mega prime per week for the entire year, so you might need more than "merely" a mega prime to take home green. In 2017 there were 10 mega primes found during Tour de Primes.

At the current time, PRPNet is not running. If that changes, all ports in PRPNet would be available for the competition.

To participate in BOINC PPSE (LLR), GFN-16, or any other eligible LLR or Genefer project, all you have to do is select it in your PrimeGrid preferences. AP27 sequences are not reportable at T5K, so are not eligible for Tour de Primes.

Good Luck, have fun, and enjoy! :D

Previous Winners

- wdethomas
- tng*
- wdethomas
- tng*

- boss
- Scott Brown
- boss
- Orange_1050

- Scott Brown
- Randall J. Scalise
- vmc

- [DPC]x-RaY99_the_one_man_team
- [DPC]x-RaY99_the_one_man_team
- Lonnie Christensen

- [DPC]x-RaY99_the_one_man_team
- [DPC]x-RaY99_the_one_man_team
- PBT_marian_boss

- Scott Brown
- Usucapio Libertatis
- Scott Brown

- shanky123
- [BOINCstats] LostBoy
- Snf*

- lennart
- lennart
- [SG]marodeur6

- lennart
- s-yama
- lennart

Full rankings can be seen here: 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017

Totals by Year
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 Total Primes found 212 309 766 646 238 254 254 369 261 Total Score 457.30 2663.27 21803.72 20727.04 15614.83 20982.77 30268.46 43993.42 40456.89



Tips and Strategies:

Tip #1: He (or she) who finds the prime FIRST is the discover of the prime. It's a competition between you and your wingman. While having a fast computer helps, your computer is only useful when it's running a task. If you have a cache of tasks sitting on your computer waiting to run, chances are your wingman will return the task before you've even started it. Setting both BOINC cache settings to "0 days" is strongly recommended. People with slow computers find primes all the time because their wingman downloaded the task yesterday but won't start running it until tomorrow. Set your cache to 0 days!

If you're going to ignore tip #1, don't even bother reading the rest. Seriously.

Tips for LLR:
 

• Your mileage may vary. What works for me may not work for you. Before TdP starts, take some time and experiment and see what works best on your computer.
• If you have an Intel CPU with hyperthreading, either turn off the hyperthreading in the BIOS, or set BOINC to use 50% of the processors. (But see below for exceptions.)
  
  
  • If you're using a GPU for other tasks, it may be beneficial to leave hyperthreading on in the BIOS and instead tell BOINC to use 50% of the CPU's. This will allow one of the hyperthreads to service the GPU.
   
  
• Use LLR's multithreaded mode. It requires a little bit of setup, but it's worth the effort. Follow these steps:
  
  
  • Create a app_config.xml file in the directory C:\ProgramData\BOINC\projects\www.primegrid.com\ (or wherever your BOINC data directory is located). For a quad core CPU, the file should contain the following contents. Change the two occurrences of "4" to the number of actual cores your computer has. The example below is for PPSE. Change the app name (2 places) to whatever LLR app you're running. The app names are listed on your task selection page.
    
    <app_config> <app> <name>llrPPSE</name> <fraction_done_exact/> <max_concurrent>1</max_concurrent> </app> <app_version> <app_name>llrPPSE</app_name> <cmdline>-t 4</cmdline> <avg_ncpus>4</avg_ncpus> </app_version> </app_config>
    
  • After creating the file, click on "Options/Read config files". You should then restart BOINC or reboot.
  • The first time BOINC downloads (in this example) a PPSE-LLR task, it may act a little strange and download 4 tasks instead of 1. The run times on this first set of tasks may look a bit strange too. This is normal. This will also occur anytime BOINC downloads more than one task at a time. This can be avoided by setting "Use at most [ 1 ] % of the CPUs" before you download PPSE tasks. After one task was downloaded, increase the percentage.
  • Some people have observed that when using multithreaded LLR, hyperthreading is actually beneficial. I don't use hyperthreading myself, but I encourage you to experiment and see what works best for you.

Tips for GFN:
 

• Only run GFN on a GPU. Use your CPU for LLR tasks where it will be much more efficient.
• Unless you have a really slow GPU and a really fast CPU, leave a CPU core free to service the GPU. You'll want the more powerful GPU running at full speed, even if it slows down the CPU somewhat. A hyperthread should be sufficient if your CPU supports hyperthreading. For example, on a 4 core CPU (without hyperthreading), you could set BOINC to "use 75% of the CPUs" to reserve one core for the GPU.

This has started, lets go find some prime numbers.

Have a great time DJ enjoy your vacation.

bill1024
Congratulations Bill bcavnaugh
Prime Number Found Today Decimal Digits: 441926 (log10 is 441925.15189002)

+1 congrats!

All right, we are on a roll!!!!

bill1024
Come on mega prime.

Me First, you have yours.
 
bill1024 you are at the #2 Spot ATM

My 3rd Prime With this Rig & Task 920343 
442630   (log10 is 442629.70312481)
http://primes.utm.edu/primes/page.php?id=124271

They did something new. If you go to the PG page, then to your account, then look at your tasks.
 
They either have 1st or nothing in the tine for the task description . If it says 1st, it means you beat the wingman.
 
If it has nothing, you were 2nd, IE the wingman. Nice new feature to see how well you are doing in the race to get the task in first.

This is what I mean, I was first 18 of 20 tasks. it shows all completed  tasks not just Primes
 

Haven't found a prime since 2013...still chugging along though.

polarbeardj   442867   (log10 is 442866.242241096)
Link to the Prime: http://primes.utm.edu/primes/page.php?id=124286
http://www.primegrid.com/primes/?section=primelist&userid=934462

Way to go there Bill 

OlddanIT Just hit the prime Jackpot!
Congratulations.
 
 

Go team EVGA !

bcavnaugh
My 6th Prime Found on this workunit Rig 483038 
492315  (log₁₀ is 492314.478837229)
http://primes.utm.edu/primes/page.php?id=124318