A computer scientist claims to have computed the mathematical constant pi to nearly 2.7 trillion digits, some 123 billion more than the previous record. Fabrice Bellard used a desktop computer to perform the calculation, taking a total of 131 days to complete and check the result. This version of pi takes over a terabyte of hard disk space to store.
Previous records were established using supercomputers, but Mr. Bellard claims his method is 20 times more efficient. The prior record of about 2.6 trillion digits, set in August 2009 by Daisuke Takahashi at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, took just 29 hours. However, that work employed a supercomputer 2,000 times faster and thousands of times more expensive than the desktop Mr. Bellard employed.
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