Mathematicians Calculate 10 Trillion Digits of Pi With Xeons
Mmm...3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286208998628034825342117067982148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128481117450284102701938521105559644622948954930381964428810975665933446128475648233786783165271201
For the first time mathematicians were able to calculate the Pi constant with 10 trillion decimal digits.
Ten trillion would represent a 1 with 13 zeros. If you were to print that number on paper, you would need about 2.87 billion sheets, based on a standard configuration of about 3500 digits per sheet. Such a stack of paper would reach a height of 21.4 miles.
According to an unofficial announcement the calculation of the 10 trillion digits, it took 371 days and an additional 45 hours to verify on a system equipped with two Intel Xeon X5680 processors, 96 GB of memory and 24 2 TB hard drives. Only the first 5 trillion are offered for download as decimals via five separate downloads totaling 1.91 TB at this time.
The record of 10 trillion records doubles the previous record of 5 trillion digits, which was posted in August of this year.
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Douglas Perry was a freelance writer for Tom's Hardware covering semiconductors, storage technology, quantum computing, and processor power delivery. He has authored several books and is currently an editor for The Oregonian/OregonLive.