PPS Mega Prime!
On 2 November 2012, 3:47:30 UTC, PrimeGrid’s Proth Prime Search project found the Mega Prime:7*2^5775996+1The prime is 1,738,749 digits long and enters Chris Caldwell's The Largest Known Primes Database ranked 24th overall. The discovery was made by Martyn Elvy (Martyn Elvy) of New Zealand using an Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5345 @ 2.33GHz with 3GB RAM, running Windows Server 2003. This computer took just over 11 hours 16 minutes to complete the primality test using LLR. Martyn is a member of the NZ.BOINC team.The prime was verified by Robert Ruge (robert) of Australia using an Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5650 @ 2.67GHz with 10 GB RAM, running Linux. This computer took just under 6 hours 24 minutes to complete the primality test using LLR. For more details, please see the official announcement.

More...