Mersenne prime numbers are activate used in random number generators and crypography.
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The mathematicians and community over at mersenneforum.org found a bug in the new 6th Generation Intel Core “Skylake” architecture that freezes any system that has a Skylake processor in it when running the GIMPS Prime95 Advanced Exponent test. The Skylake processor bug is reproducible when using the Windows and Linux operating systems. When such Intel systems were tasked with hunting for prime numbers, using the Prime95 software, they would reproducibly experience system freezes depending upon the program parameters.
Naturally, it was pretty disturbing since the software has been running on countless other processors and only failed to do so with Intel’s latest.
It is, thus, a great boon that Intel has already fixed the problem (implemented via a BIOS update) and is now looking to propagate it to end-users via their OEM partners. This won’t always be easy for end users to apply though and there is always an element of risk when updating a BIOS. Intel has addressed the issue, releasing a BIOS update to fix it.
Intel said in a statement: “Intel has identified an issue that potentially affects the 6th Gen Intel Core family of products”.
The issue rears its ugly head when performing complex workloads like those used in Prime 95. It’s unlikely that a typical PC user would ever encounter the bug but it’s a major issue to people who work in big data and who use their computer for pure computing, as in the case of Prime95 users.
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While most of us will not be devoting shedloads of processing time looking for prime numbers, it is a little odd.
