Frenchman calculates Pi to 2.7 trillion decimal places
48 replies, posted
[quote]
PARIS (AFP) – A French software engineer said on Friday he was claiming a world record for calculating Pi, the constant that has fascinated mathematicians for millennia.
Fabrice Bellard told AFP he used an inexpensive desktop computer -- and not a supercomputer used in past records -- to calculate Pi to nearly 2.7 trillion decimal places.
That is around 123 billion digits more than the previous record set last August by Japanese professor Daisuke Takahashi, he said.
Takahashi, using a T2K Open Supercomputer, took 29 hours to crunch Pi to 2.577 billion digits.
Bellard took 131 days, comprising 103 for the computation in binary digits, 13 days for verification, 12 days to convert the binary digits to a base of 10 and three final days to check the conversion.
The gear cost "a bit less than 2,000 euros" (3,000 dollars), Bellard, who earns a living as a software consultant in digital television in Paris, said in an email exchange.
"It is a completely standard PC. The only unusual thing is that it has five 1.5-teraoctet hard disks. Mainstream PCs generally have only one 1-teraoctet disk."
Bellard has placed on his website details of the achievement, including the use of a high-powered mathematical engine called the Chudnovsky algorithm that chewed through the computation.
Extracts of the 2,699,999,990,000-digit outcome have been published so that they can be compared to preceding records in order to gain independent verification, Bellard told AFP.
Files containing the digits are also being offered to any outside organism keen on hosting the record, he said.
Pi, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, kicks off with 3.14159... in a string whose digits are believed never to repeat or end.
Bellard said he was "not especially interested" in Pi's digits but more in taking up the gauntlet of writing the software to carry out the arithmetic.
"Optimising these algorithms to get good performance is a difficult programming challenge," he wrote.[/quote]
He tore the Japanese record out of the water.
:science:
Source: [url]http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/sciencemathematicsfranceoffbeat[/url]
This guy has dedication.
Why would you do that
What's a teraoctet? A terabyte?
[editline]05:42PM[/editline]
[QUOTE=BackflipHatchetAttack;19552950]Why would you do that[/QUOTE]
15 minutes of fame
Now win a war.
[QUOTE=DrLuke;19552966]What's a teraoctet? A terabyte?[/QUOTE]
Terabyte in french.
That's a lot of Pi.
The only digits I remember are 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399. I've started memorising the digits since friday.
And tomorrow we will all have forgotten about him.
His calculations will eventually surrender to the test of time, and be forgotten.
[editline]05:38PM[/editline]
I mean, really, who wants to store a terabyte of numbers? I don't
Soooo...who's gonna post it?
[QUOTE=Canned Induvidual;19554054]Soooo...who's gonna post it?[/QUOTE]
[quote]Extracts of the 2,699,999,990,000-digit outcome have been published[/quote]
No one.
[QUOTE=Canuhearme?;19552887]He tore the Japanese record out of the water.[/QUOTE]
2.7 trillion tears 2.577 trillion out of the water? That's 4.8% more decimal places than the previous record and I wouldn't consider that as "tearing it out of the water".
oh lol mega bad reading
I read this as [i]"Freeman calculates Pi to 2.7 trillion decimal places"[/i]
If all of those were to be posted, it would take at least 4-5 threads to hold it.
Here is just ONE million digits of pie. It's hard to imagine 2.7 TRILLION digits.
[url]http://3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592.com/index314.html[/url]
You do realize that there is a formula for Pi.
[QUOTE=Miigga;19554219]2.7 trillion tears 2.577 trillion out of the water? That's 4.8% more decimal places than the previous record and I wouldn't consider that as "tearing it out of the water".[/QUOTE]
Read it again silly, the old record was 2.577 BILLION, the new one is 2.7 TRILLION.
[QUOTE=Epic Sandwich;19553304]Terabyte in french.[/QUOTE]
That's one of those things I so fucking hate about the french: their need to find a stupid fucking french word for everything. Can't they just use byte? Fucking chauvinists... For the rest they're ok.
Or they voice-over [U]everything[/U] on tv, ever heard the simpsons in french? I did, my ears fucking bled
[QUOTE=BackflipHatchetAttack;19552950]Why would you do that[/QUOTE]
If we eventually found a repeating or ending digit(s), it could flip the mathematics world upside down... potentially.
This guy has exactly 3.1415% of a life.
[QUOTE=Jimmy422;19555884]This guy has exactly 3.1415% of a life.[/QUOTE]
Cause he sat there the whole time just staring at the [b]computer[/b] doing the calculations.
[QUOTE=Darmok;19553233]Now win a war.[/QUOTE]
Excellent first post. Welcome to facepunch.
So what number is in the 2.7 trillionth place?
[QUOTE=Rubs10;19556126]So what number is in the 2.7 trillionth place?[/QUOTE]
I'm pretty sure it's 1.
or 2.
[sp]or 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 or 7 or 8 or 9 or 0.[/sp]
[QUOTE=Faunts;19556057]Excellent first post. Welcome to facepunch.[/QUOTE]
<3
[QUOTE=Faunts;19556057]Excellent first post. Welcome to facepunch.[/QUOTE]
not really. It's just the same dumb old "ha ha france sucks" stuff that gets posted in every single thread in any way related to france.
[editline]12:43PM[/editline]
ahaha france: they surrender, ahaha this is still funny after being posted thousands upon thousands of times in hundreds of threads with little variation or creativity
Wow, he should eat some pi after that.
[QUOTE=Sigma-Lambda;19556680]not really. It's just the same dumb old "ha ha france sucks" stuff that gets posted in every single thread in any way related to france.
[editline]12:43PM[/editline]
ahaha france: they surrender, ahaha this is still funny after being posted thousands upon thousands of times in hundreds of threads with little variation or creativity[/QUOTE]
Yet France actually made US what it is today.
'mericans don't know about the statue of liberty's origins
So uh, is there a pattern or something?
[QUOTE=PelPix123;19557428]So wait...
All I would have to do is buy an expensive computer and write or find a multithreaded application that calculates pi...and leave it on for longer than he did to break the record?
I mean, couldn't I leave it on for several [i]months[/i] and break the record by a long shot?[/QUOTE]
Or pi@home
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