A new world record: the number of Pi was calculated to 62.8 trillion characters

The number Pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter and begins with the sequence 3.1415926535 and so on indefinitely. The sequences of digits in this number are not repeated. The problem of calculating the number of Pi is a convenient tool for evaluating the computing power of computer systems. A group of scientists from the University of Grisons, Switzerland, has surpassed the world record for calculating this mathematical constant.

The new achievement amounted to 62.8 trillion characters and significantly exceeded the current record of 50 trillion set by Timothy Mulliken in January 2020, and twice as high as Google’s achievement of 31.4 trillion set in 2019. The calculation took three and a half months and computer equipment the size of a computer center. Of course, this is a lot of numbers, and the researchers had to use a very complex computer configuration, including: two 32-core AMD processors; 1 terabyte RAM; a disk drive with a volume of 510 terabytes.

The digits of Pi alone took 63 terabytes on the disk, and the calculation itself lasted 108 days and nine hours. And this is not for the sake of bragging. The team members gained invaluable experience in testing not only computer systems, but also their practical skills. They have shown that they are ready to process huge amounts of data in real projects. The calculation also revealed weaknesses in the equipment configuration – for example, insufficient memory size for backup. By the way, the calculated sequence of digits ends with 781792464.