We describe how to generate large primes using the primality proving algorithm of Atkin. Figure 1: The Titanic . 1. Introduction. During the last ten years, primality testing evolved at great speed. Motivated by the RSA cryptosystem [3], the first deterministic primality proving algorithm was designed by Adleman, Pomerance and Rumely [2] and made practical by Cohen, H. W. Lenstra and A. K. Lenstra (see [9, 10] and more recently [5]). It was then proved that the time needed to test an arbitrary integer N for primality is O((log N) c log log log N ) for some positive constant c ? 0. When implemented on a huge computer, the algorithm was able to test 200 digit numbers in about 10 minutes of CPU time. A few years ago, Goldwasser and Kilian [11], used the theory of elliptic curves over finite fields to give the first primality proving algorithm whose running time is polynomial in log N (assuming a plausible conjecture in number theory). Atkin [4] used the theory of complex multiplicat...

We explain how the Elliptic Curve Primality Proving algorithm can be implemented in a distributed way. Applications are given to the certification of large primes (more than 500 digits). As a result, we describe the successful attempt at proving the primality of the lO65-digit (2^3539+ l)/3, the first ordinary Titanic prime.