2023 Tour de Primes

Tour de Primes 2023

Welcome to the 14th 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 2023, we're bringing back the badges introduced in 2018:
 

• 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 19^th 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 an eligible 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_2023.php.

This year sees the demise of the "just for giggles" Double Checker scoreboard. Because of the fast double check system, there are no more double checkers for primes large enough to be in TdP.

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 PPSE, SGS, and GFN-15 are too small to be reported to the Top 5000 primes list and are therefore not eligible for the 2023 Tour de Primes.

Currently, the fastest opportunities to find Top 5000 primes is with the PPS-MEGA (LLR), and GFN-16 (65536) projects. Of course, should someone find a prime in the larger searches, this would certainly give them a good shot at the green or red jerseys. Not a guarantee, however, as in 2022 there were 83 mega primes found in the Tour de Primes. Overall, in 2021 we averaged over eight mega primes per week for the entire year, so you might need more than "merely" a mega prime to take home green.

All ports in PRPNet are available for the competition.

To participate in BOINC PPS-MEGA, 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.

Sieve projects don't find primes, so PPS-Sieve can't find anything in TdP.

Good Luck, have fun, and enjoy! :D
 
Tips and Strategies:

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 a 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:
  
• 
  
  • Use multi-threading on larger tasks. What constitutes "larger" varies according to how fast your CPU is and your personal tastes.
  • It's no longer necessary to use app_config.xml to set up multi-threading. On the PrimeGrid preferences page, set "Multi-threading: Max # of threads for each task" to "No limit" to use the maximum number of threads for each task, or select a specific thread count if you prefer.

Tips for GFN:

• New for this year, GFN can use multihreading, so running GFN on your CPU might make sense. Unlike LLR, sometimes hyperthreads do help GFN CPU tasks, so use them if you have them.
• 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.

Thanks Bill

bill1024
Here is the PG thread for the TDP
http://www.primegrid.com/forum_thread.php?id=10127
Feb1st to Feb 28th, exact time, I believe is 00:00:01 Feb.1st UTC to 23:59:59 UTC Feb.28th
Note that PPSE, SGS, and GFN-15 are too small to be reported to the Top 5000 primes list and are therefore NOT eligible for the 2023 Tour de Primes.

Thanks Bill.
I see that the PG website is still very slow for me.

planetclown
Thanks for the post. I usually observe and have jumped in for the mountain stage, but this year will participate. Want to find my first prime.

GFN16 is the biggest non-prime and PPS-MEGA is the smallest MEGA-prime, those are the best bets to find a prime that will count this year.
Good luck, hope you find one.

I still set my rigs to only download running tasks and set Resource share to 0 the Store at least 0 in the BOINC Manager.
The problem I am seeing now is their website is very slow and it takes a long time to get tasks and upload and report tasks.
They are in the EU so for the most part we will always have a slow network to their website.
When I go the my home page only have loads and then seconds later the other half.

bill1024
This starts at 7PM EST. tomorrow night. About 1 day 2 hours from now.

Is the PG website slow to load your main (Home Page)?
https://www.primegrid.com/home.php
Going with PPS and GEN16 & GEN17 and letting the host pick them.

And we’re off!! Good luck everyone.
Going with GFN16 and PPS MEGA for now..

Still having trouble connecting to PG Bill?
There was a short time last night the website was really slow but it was ok within twenty minutes or so.

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=17 Mega (GFN-17-Mega). 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 134960 : 138896860^131072+1 (1067279 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

Khalifrio

bcavnaugh
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=17 Mega (GFN-17-Mega). 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 134960 : 138896860^131072+1 (1067279 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

👍🏻💪

Thanks All!!!!

bcavnaugh
T5K, task Mega for Paul pew   
 

Congrats on the MEGA pew!

Nice job pew!

pinned

bill1024
One in the books. GFN16. I wasn't going to even run this box but it is so cold outside I fired it up and...
 
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 135021 : 196745786^65536+1 (543550 digits)

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 135066 : 200662976^65536+1 (544111 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