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5 Trillion Digits of Pi — a New World Record
KPexEA writes "Alexander J. Yee & Shigeru Kondo claim to have calculated the number pi to 5 trillion places, on a single desktop and in record time. The main computation took 90 days on Shigeru Kondo's desktop. Verification was done using two separate computers. The program that was used for the main computation is y-cruncher v0.5.4.9138 Alpha." Looks like the chart of computer-era approximations of Pi here might need an update.
If there's ever a robot uprising, I bet it's going to be started by us making them do stuff like this.
Does this rag smell like chloroform to you?
You know the KGB commercials? I'd find it funny if someone were to ask them what the 5 trillionth and one decimal digit of Pi is.
I've heard that in the book (not movie) "Contact" that when Jodie Foster's character meets the uber-aliens she asks them:
"Do you believe in God?"
-"Yes"
Taken aback "Really, why?"
-"We have proof, when PI is expended out to (some number), there is a message"...
I really wish I read the book to know what the message is (maybe "Nietsche is dead"?)
I no longer login because I feel that while attacking a company's products is fair game (specifically Apple), having stories singling out their users as "selfish" and unkind is not "news for nerds stuff that matters". Am I an Apple fanboi? Let's just say I've used NIX for decades (yes I'm old) and I'm not talking OS X.
A tour de force of math and computing hardware and software skills.
Makes me want to turn in my geek card.
Looks like the chart of computer-era approximations of Pi here might need an update.
This chart is very outdated anyway.
It doesn't even list Daisuke Takahashi (2009, 2.576.980.370.000 digits), and Fabrice Bellard (2010, 2.699.999.990.000 digits)
They just took the number 3.14159 and added a load of random digits to the end - let's face it, nobody's going to check!
How can we be sure all those digits are correct?
And, more important question, what are they for?
In all cases I faced so far, 355/113 provides a simple and nice approximation.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
... how many digits someone will calculate Pi too each year.
But I am legitimately curious what is the real significance of learning Pi to a more accurate measurement? I'm not a mathematician, physicist, or computer scientist.
Name...That...Autocomplete!
Trillion in which language? How many zeros does it have?
But don't we have algorithms which let us calculate pi to an arbitrary number of digits? Well-known series methods computed using algorithms which have been tuned and re-tuned to the point where it's not really possible to make further major computational optimizations? Therefore this isn't so much a new accomplishment as it is "hey look, I left my pi calculating program running longer than the last guy" modified by the occasional minor optimization tweak and running on faster hardware?
Okay, great, you now have a new more precise fixed value for pi. This means you can calculate things involving pi to precision even most physicists can't find a use for. I'm sure that's nice. Someone somewhere maybe has a use for it. Maybe this made that person's day. But is it really, really something that's newsworthy? And if hypothetical "needing pi to 5 trillion digits" guy needed it to that precision that badly - wouldn't he have already let the calculation run long enough to get it already if this particular calculation only took 90 days?
They're calculating Pi in base 10, which is the wrong path.
Pi should be calculated in base 3.141593...
It's a paradox, people.
Why?
Why not?
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There might actually be something interesting in there. Lots of discoveries have been made by people who were just trying things out or seeing what they could see.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
write it on the back of a Mazda 3?
I sat down to write a new sig tonight and all I did was make the chair warm.
When I read the title, I thought someone had successfully memorized 5 trillion digits of Pi. They just computed it? What a letdown.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Yes, we do. Mathematical algorithms, i.e., equations on paper.
Absolutely not. The algorithms have to run on practical, exists-on-the-Earth-today computers. Try to multiply two, million-digit numbers together on your laptop and you'll see what I mean. These achievements are all about computational optimizations. RTFA -- especially the sections entitled "Arithmetic Algorithms" and "Maximizing Scalability." Even the algorithm used for multiplication changes (dynamically!) during the program's execution, based on the size of the operands.
Not even close. The computations are so long, and so intense, that errors caused by hardware imperfections can be expected, so error detection and correction algorithms have to be added. If "I left my pi calculating program running longer than the last guy" it would not produce the correct result -- even if the data structures and algorithms it used were up to the task.
In a word, yes. Could you do it? It's a very, very difficult technical feat, one that required hardware powers and software abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Besides, you're worried about newsworthiness when the two previous /. articles are on wall-climbing robots and the popularity of video game arcades in New York?
This isn't about needing pi to 5 trillion digits. This is about learning how to do large computations faster. Like, improving the state of the art.
what's the last digit of Pi
Eugenijus
5 trillion digits are a *lot* of digits! no patterns yet in there?
Just to be sure, have the sent the digits to the SETI program looking for patterns? There is some talk that beyond some 2 or 3 billion digits there is a message that apparently begins, "O Brhama, I have created Thee to build the universe, You shall create the universe in accordance to these Laws called Vedas...."
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Yes. Avoid floating-point.
Either used fixed-point (yuck), symbolic calculations and then only finding the decimal expansion at the last stage, or rewrite your formula to avoid any possible lack of precision (i.e. any division).
Hmm, I'm not I like this. Has anybody considered the security impact of this? Pi being a proper irrational number is bound to have, as substrings of digits in it's decimal representation, all possible combinations of characters represented as eg. UTF-8, so somebody could easily find all passwords currently in use in there, lined up alphabetically. Somebody clearly hasn't thought this through.
Yeah, it's not March 14th but for the occasion it seems fitting:
It's a Wonderful Day for Pi
Pi - full version / just the numbers
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
So, is it still between 3.14 and 3.15?
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
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Put labour last in the senate, Aug 21
Why?
You think I should preference the Sceptics Party first? Or the Citizens Electoral Council?
To find the secret message of God, of course. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
segfault
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Vote how you like. I am a Victorian so this is my Big Chance to vote Stephen Conroy out.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
http://tauday.com/ I endorse the views expressed in above piece.
... a desktop computer? That's not a desktop computer. No one should call it desktop, even if it's in a $40 worth case.
That's thousands of dollars worth hardware.
Most of what's done today is a waste of computing power. Anyway...
First off, it's a simple test. A proving ground of sorts. It's also a good place for a programmer to cut his teeth on a lot of concept that he can relate to with other programmers since it is so wide spread.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
But, my teacher said Pi is 22/7. Surely that's close enough.
While this is cool. It reminded me of this guy, who was able to memorize pi out to 22000 digits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tammet
You set someone up there with a perfect Pink Floyd joke, but I can't find the best algorithm...
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Conroy is a twat, all agreed.
I have already voted - did it today - sex party 1 in the senate...
Certainly didn't put Labor last tho - there are seriously derange lunatics to preference well after Labor.
Direct link to the hardware (with photos)!
Also, anyone else also notice the partially cropped off friend, it's not Clippy, on the final result screenshot?
How big was this desk, and what was sitting on its top that was doing the actual calculation? It's odd to simply refer to a piece of furniture as doing the calculation.
The "world's fastest laser printer" prints about 60 ppm. At one page a second, 10,000 digits per page, it would take 500 million seconds or fifteen years to print it out. So one might hope to live to see all the known digits of pi printed out... unless those pesky computer scientists calculate more of them. But, really, 5 trillion digits ought to be enough for anybody.
And it would only require a million reams of paper.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
that ones headed to a stack overflow not a segfault.
the PDF correctly displays the mathematical formula, while the html doesn't for me
Yes, the HTML version appears to be encoded in the old Macintosh character set, and doesn't have a header specifying the encoding. To view it properly, change the encoding in your browser. In Firefox: View -> Character Encoding -> More Encodings -> West European -> Western (MacRoman).
Alternatively, you can save it locally and convert it to UTF-8. If you have iconv, the command would be
iconv -f MAC -t UTF8 -o piCompute-utf8.html piCompute.html
Prices from Newegg and CDW (Newegg doesn't carry the memory)
CPU(s) $3,446.30
Memory $6,708.00
MB $359.00
Disks $3,599.84
Disk controllers $1,058.00
OS $659.00
Case/Misc $500.00
Total $16,330.14
Insert obligatory Star Trek: TOS reference here.
Cranking out 5 TRILLION places in Pi is. . , well, it's pretty staggering.
But is anybody else planning to run some explorations through all that data? I expect somebody, somewhere is.
Here's a fun experiment. . .
Draw a picture of Batman on your Wacom, reduce it using some graphics algorithm to the shortest string of digits you possibly can, and search for that string in Pi. He's got to be in there somewhere. . . Probably there's a set of plans for, "How to build an awesome time machine", too.
-FL
Tin ear. Poetry fail. The last line needs more syllables.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Once you get past 2 quadrillion places...PI starts spitting out alphanumeric...the first occurrence is ...42531whogivesaflyingflapdoodle...
So erm...what is the 5th trillionth digit of pi? Not to cast aspersions on such a brilliant piece of work...just curious (I for one, would like to know something Alex Trebek doesn't know).
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Also got my first story posted! Yippee!
I think the Pink Floyd adaptation would involve "Pi has become... comfortably numb"
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Surely there should be, by now, a server out there somewhere continuously calculating and serving up additional digits of pi? The Web site art is obvious, of course.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I can't explain, you would not understand. This is not how I am.
mod me funny