Get Back in the Kitchen and Make Me Some Pi

Japanese researchers have calculated PI to 1.24 trillion places. The previous record was a mere 206.158 billion places. Both marks were set by teams lead by Tokyo University professor Yasumasa Kanada.

The computer program that generated the number only took 400 hours to execute, but Kanada’s team spent 5 years designing it.

This is actually important beyond the simple feat of calculating X trillion places to PI. As David Bailey of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory tells the Associated Press, calculating PI to that many places would be impossible in any sort of human-relevant timespan with all previously used methods. The innovations that Kanada has introduced to make his PI calculations achievable are also broadly applicable to other calculation problems.

Source:

Japan Pi Value Calculation Earns Record. Associated Press, December 6, 2002.

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