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 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 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