Redwood City, CA Ð When scientists in Maryland set out to verify the British discovery of the largest prime number, they elicited help from NeXTstations and Cray software produced on NeXT computers.
A prime number is an integer that can be divided only by 1 or the integer itself with no remainder.
According to NeXT, the role played by NeXT illustrates the portability and connectivity of NeXT technology, and the power of NeXT development tools that enabled NeXT scientists to develop software on the Cray.
Using a supercomputer running software written at NeXT Computer, U.S. scientists were able to verify the new record prime number in about 16 Cray hours. The new number is 2756839 -1.
"When they stumbled upon this new prime number in England they asked a group of us Ð a team we call the 'Gang of Eight' Ð to prove the number was indeed prime," said Richard E. Crandall, chief scientist at NeXT.
The test was performed by David Smitley, a government scientist, on a Cray-2 at a government supercomputer center in Maryland. The NeXT software, written in C, was developed over the past two years. "Modern programs such as this one combine ideas from the fields of number theory and signal processing," said Crandall.