Record calculation of 314,000 billion digits of Pi

Dell PowerEdge R7725 uses two AMD EPYC CPUs with 192 cores per chip, 40 Micron 6550 Ion SSDs for a total capacity of 61.44 TB. Testing took place in July before this week’s announcement. The calculation is performed by StorageReview – a website specializing in in-depth evaluation and analysis of data storage products and technologies, from SSDs, HDDs, network hard drives (NAS) to complex enterprise storage systems, helping users choose the appropriate storage solution.

The system uses Y-Cruncher, a powerful, multi-threaded computer program specialized in calculating Pi and other mathematical constants to trillions of digits, while also acting as a performance measurement tool or stability test for the CPU. In the test, 34 drives are reserved for Y-Cruncher to provide space to perform 314,000 billion digit calculations, while the remaining 6 drives are used to store the digits. Recorded read and write speeds reached 280 GB/s when all 40 trays were used simultaneously.

To dissipate heat, the research team used CoolIT SP5 water cooling pads and CoolIT AHx10 Liquid-to-Air CDU water radiators. This combination helps the CPU maintain higher clock speeds, the case fan only operates at about 30%, and the system’s average power consumption stays at about 1,600 W.

The number Pi (symbol π) is a mathematical constant whose value is equal to the ratio of the circumference of a circle to the diameter of that circle. The number Pi does not have an exact value, it is usually taken as approximately 3.14 for ease of calculation. For comparison, if you type the new number Pi on paper in consecutive rows and use a size 10 font, the number will be about 3.7 billion kilometers long, which can stretch from Earth to about midway between Uranus and Neptune.

Finding the longer Pi has become a challenge for mathematicians and scientists, requiring enormous computing power. According to Tom’s Hardwarefinding the sequence of digits after the decimal point of Pi has no real impact on mathematics because calculations rarely require more than a few dozen digits. Instead, calculating numbers to the most accurate value has long been used as a standard for testing new computer programs and data storage systems.

The race to find the length of Pi has intensified in recent years, with a series of records continuously being broken. After the record of 105,000 billion digits of Pi set by American computer storage company Solidigm early last year, StorageReview immediately rose to 202,000 billion digits. This year, Linus Media Group and Kioxia announced the 300,000-digit billion mark before StorageReview reclaimed the top spot.

“At this rate, finding the last digit of Pi is only a few years away,” Tom’s Hardware comment.