"The computing unit with CPUs, memory and SSDs consumes approx. So one might wonder: how much energy was used by the DAViS computer for this record? In 2022, we are all facing a climate crisis that made us all more conscious of the amount of power we consume.
To somewhat offset this speed disadvantage, we connected our disks over a fast data bus (wiring/cables) to the memory and CPU." "Due to financial constraints, we opted for relatively slow, but reliable hard disk drives. "The main reason, we believe, boils down to how fast data can be transferred between RAM (Memory) and hard disk drives." How was the DAViS computer able to calculate the digits?
Scientists calculate pi trillion series#
It usually gets approximated to 3.14159, but scientists have calculated billions of digits.įor most of us, pi is that series of digits that we all used in school - though, let's be honest, we never really understood why. Pi is a mathematic constant defined as: "the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter". "One problem we were facing: our new backup system was delayed, and we had to improvise to backup the intermediate results of the pi calculation." "I did a lot of test runs, calculating pi to lower numbers of digits, to get a firm idea on what to expect during a record attempt."įurther issues were then encountered with the backup system. "The main challenge is the enormous amount of data this calculation produces (about 310 TB to store intermediate results) and to keep the computation running over several months without data loss," - Thomas Keller
The attempt presented a series of challenges, especially considering the scope of the calculation. Overall the whole computation took 108 days and 9 hours to complete. "It took me about one month to tune different parameters of the operating system and y-cruncher (the pi calculation program)," said Keller. The hardware assembly and the installation of the operating system took about three days, but that was only the beginning.
Scientists calculate pi trillion software#
The attempt was led by DAViS (Centre for Data Analytics, Visualisation and Simulation), a regional competence centre for research, industry and education that operates within the University of Applied Science of the Grisnos located in Chur, Switzerland.Īs stated in their project summary, DAViS' machine used the operating system Ubuntu 20.04 on the computation unit.įor the calculation, like for all the previous most accurate value of pi records, it used the software y-cruncher (developed by Alexander J. The record-breaking value counts 62,831,853,071,796 digits, as confirmed by project leader Thomas Keller and his team on 19 August 2021, adding 12.8 billion new digits to pi. Using a high-performance computer, a team of Swiss researchers have calculated a new most accurate value of pi. Grab yourself a slice of pie, because an e pic π record was set in Switzerland. On International Pi Day (3/14, the first three digits of π), scientists worldwide celebrate the number through competitions, presentations and… of course, eating pie!
0 kommentar(er)
