Researchers Break Pi Calculation Record

Posted by John Farrier in Science & Tech on August 18, 2009 at 1:29 pm


Researchers at the University of Tsukuba in Japan have broken the record for the number of calculated digits of the constant pi:

The T2K Tsukuba System is a 640-computer cluster with a processing speed of 95 trillion floating-point operations per second. The T2K calculated a total of 2,576,980,377,524 decimal places in 73 hours 36 minutes, which is a small fraction of the 600 hours taken by the previous record holders—Hitachi and the University of Tokyo—who calculated only 1.2 trillion places.

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COMMENT

10 comments to "Researchers Break Pi Calculation Record"

  1. seb
    August 18th, 2009 at 2:51 pm

    Anyone care to explain why it is important to find out how long PI is?

  2. sc0tty
    August 18th, 2009 at 3:14 pm

    Ok, who's gonna write that whole number down for some math problem?

  3. werD
    August 18th, 2009 at 3:22 pm

    Pi's decimal representation is infinitely long.

    All we're doing here is benchmarking cluster performance and giving autistic savants new things to memorize.

  4. v.dog
    August 18th, 2009 at 4:35 pm

    Just one question; if no one has ever calculated it that that far before, how do we know that its right?

  5. argon
    August 18th, 2009 at 4:58 pm

    if we know it to a certain point we well be able to draw energy from subspace, that is, the exact amount of energy it takes to calculate which creates a paradox that finally let´s us divide by zero what happens after that I can´t even possibly imagine . . .

  6. felixthecat
    August 18th, 2009 at 6:09 pm

    Super fail, I'd say. They calculated only a couple of trillion numbers, while there are still trillions of quadrillions and even a whole googel to uncover.

  7. BartC3
    August 18th, 2009 at 6:11 pm

    neerds? nerrds. nerrrrrrrds!

  8. vonskippy
    August 18th, 2009 at 6:19 pm

    Did they find the embedded circle yet?

  9. Christophe
    August 18th, 2009 at 9:19 pm

    Couldn't all that calculation power be used for, I don't know, help research on diseases such as cancer, aids, flu, etc... ?

    (oh, wait! I know! http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org !)

  10. xultar
    August 20th, 2009 at 2:30 pm

    The cookies (if that is what they are) look disgusting.

    I just had to say that.


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