If you remember your college math class, you probably know that pi (π) equals Around 3.14. But behind this rough reference are an infinite number of numbers. Calculating as many decimal places for pi as possible is a still important challenge for scientists and mathematicians all over the world.
The challenge that began two thousand years before our era, with the Egyptians and the Babylonians, who approached 3.1. In 250 BC, it was Archimedes who calculated that Bay was between 3.1408…and 3.1425. It would be necessary to wait for the arrival of computers and supercomputers from the 1950s to start learning more decimals.
Since then, supercomputers all over the world have been exhausting their brains to get as many decimal places of pi as possible. yesterday, Google announced Having reached 100 trillion digits of, or 100,000 billion, or 100,000,000,000,000,000 – that’s a lot of zeros.
The tech giant thus broke the previous record, which was 62.8 trillion decimal places, held by the University of Applied Sciences in Graubünden, Switzerland, in 2021. The latter has broken Google’s previous record dating back to 2019, which was 31.4 trillion digits It was found.
To make this calculation, Google used the main means: the computing engine. It’s a supercomputer whose features make you dizzy: 128 processors (the default), 864GB of RAM and 100Gb/s of bandwidth. The program ran for 157 days, 23 hours, 31 minutes, and 7.651 seconds (that’s accurate).
Why all the effort? Computer scientist Emma Haruka Iwao, project manager, explains that pi calculations are a very good benchmarking tool for evaluating technical progress and the evolution of computing power of current machines. It’s also a good way for Google to reassert its power…by account.
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