Prime95

Prime95
Developer(s)George Woltman
Initial release3 January 1996; 28 years ago (1996-01-03)
Stable release
30.19 build 13[1] / March 7, 2024; 4 months ago (2024-03-07)
Preview release
30.19 build 14[2] / March 30, 2024; 3 months ago (2024-03-30)
Written inASM, C
Operating systemMicrosoft Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD
TypeMersenne prime finder / system stability tester
LicenseFreeware[3]
Websitemersenne.org Edit this on Wikidata

Prime95, also distributed as the command-line utility mprime for FreeBSD and Linux, is a freeware application written by George Woltman. It is the official client of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), a volunteer computing project dedicated to searching for Mersenne primes. It is also used in overclocking to test for system stability.[4]

Although most[5] of its source code is available, Prime95 is not free and open-source software because its end-user license agreement[3] states that if the software is used to find a prime qualifying for a bounty offered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation,[6] then that bounty will be claimed and distributed by GIMPS.

  1. ^ "GIMPS - Free Prime95 software downloads - PrimeNet". www.mersenne.org. Archived from the original on 2023-02-03. Retrieved 2023-02-04.
  2. ^ Woltman, George (2023-10-04). "mersenneforum.org - View Single Post - ECM users - version 30.9-30.18 (see post #465 & #398)". mersenneforum.org. Archived from the original on 2023-10-27. Retrieved 2023-10-27.
  3. ^ "How To Run a CPU Stress Test Using Prime95". Appuals.com. 2015-12-10. Retrieved 2019-05-23.
  4. ^ Woltman, George. "The security code or checksum is hard to forge. This is the only source code that is not published".
  5. ^ "EFF Cooperative Computing Awards". Electronic Frontier Foundation. 2008-02-29. Retrieved 2019-05-08.