Japanese supercomputer calculates Pi to record 2.5 trillion digits

By Comic Book Guy
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Grand Master

Comic Book Guy

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Posted

Forget ?3.14?,? a Japanese supercomputer has calculated Pi to over 2.5 trillion decimals in what should become a new Guinness Book World Record.

The T2K Open Supercomputer, located at the University of Tsukuba?s Center for Computational Sciences, reaching 2,576,980,377,524 decimals in an approximately 73 hours and 36 minutes long calculation, according to an announcement made to the Japanese press on August 17th. The Center said it was in the process of applying for the record book.

The new number more than doubles the previous record of around 1.2 trillion digits set in 2002 by the Kanada Lab at the University of Tokyo. It is also more than 12 times the record set in 1999, again by the Kanada Lab.

The T2K, capable of doing 95 teraflops (essentially 95 trillion calculations per second), is said to be the 47th most powerful supercomputer in the world and 6th in Japan, according to a June 2009 report by Top500.org.

Whether a pattern has been found or if the number will become scientifically useful has yet to be announced.

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pasty2k2

Posted
Posted
What would happen if they found that pi wasn't irrational? What would they do with their time then?

I suppose that's why they did it, to try and push that 0.00001% chance even further away.

Pretty mental that the 47th best supercomputer does it that fast. Just borrow one of the top 4 or so for a day, I'm sure they won't mind ;)

Mentor

kimsland

Posted
Posted
Completely pointless :rolleyes:

Yes I agree

But then I find most ALL of these non-computer related HUM stories completely pointless

I wonder do you members know anything about computers? Or just how to Copy Paste (non comp technical) news reports?

Maybe post some news on computer stuff, there's actually a few million stories on computer related news

Maybe give it a go ;)

Grand Master

+Majesticmerc MVC

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  • MVC
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Why is it so hard to discover whats left of the value of PI ? :rolleyes:

Because it's an irrational number. That is, a number that has no end, it has infinity decimal numbers.

Veteran

hjf288

Posted
Posted
Yes I agree

But then I find most ALL of these non-computer related HUM stories completely pointless

I wonder do you members know anything about computers? Or just how to Copy Paste (non comp technical) news reports?

Maybe post some news on computer stuff, there's actually a few million stories on computer related news

Maybe give it a go ;)

Bit rich of you to insult other members when you call yourself a tech yet try to connect to irc using ICQ client..

No need for it

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Kronir

Posted
Posted
Takes a long time but i wonder why they stopped it 73 hours in? they should just keep running it for a few months outputting the results :p

Aye. Or heck, I'm sure they could have done another week, at least. :) Why just stop at three days?

Proficient

Conjor

Posted
Posted
What would happen if they found that pi wasn't irrational? What would they do with their time then?

Well seeing as how countless proofs have been giving that show Pi to be irrational (google search) we would have o assume one of two things - we have errors in our methods for calculating Pi; we have errors in the axioms that define our mathematics, and by proxy, Pi. The latter of which would cause the universe to implode.

On another note - how do they know that all of those digits are the correct ones. I have done some work with Pi calculating algorithms and one things Ive noted with all of them is that they are convergent. The last few digits almost never change, but converge slowly to the correct number.

What if the last few digits are actually incorrect; close, but incorrect. We would never know. The only way to check is to run a different approximation program, which would simply yield the same possible error in the approximation.

Grand Master

metallithrax

Posted
Posted
So how many A4 pages would it take to print this at font size 12?

Assuming a 1cm margin all round, 479,349,028.557291666666666 (recurring) pages of A4 at font size 12

Grand Master

ViZioN

Posted
Posted
Yes I agree

But then I find most ALL of these non-computer related HUM stories completely pointless

I wonder do you members know anything about computers? Or just how to Copy Paste (non comp technical) news reports?

Maybe post some news on computer stuff, there's actually a few million stories on computer related news

Maybe give it a go ;)

You know you could post news of your own instead of just insulting other members?

On another note - how do they know that all of those digits are the correct ones. I have done some work with Pi calculating algorithms and one things Ive noted with all of them is that they are convergent. The last few digits almost never change, but converge slowly to the correct number.

Same thought occurred to me. Infact surely it will need to be verified before it can be considered a record?

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