вЂњWe needed a robust, durable storage system that could handle petabytes of data without any loss or corruption, while fully utilizing the 100 Gbps bandwidth. вЂњBecause the dataset doesnвЂ™t fit into main memory, the speed of the storage system was the bottleneck of the calculation,вЂќ Iwao wrote. (Versus just 19TB in 2019 - or just 606 years of high-definition movies.) It took 515TB just to store the final number.ДЄ screenshot from our interview with Google Cloud advocate Emma Haruka Iwao вЂ“ June 7 2022Д«ut it turns out that calculating 100 trillion digits of pi isnвЂ™t just a storage problem. Iwao also writes that just the amount of data processed - 82,000TB - is equivalent to 2,598 years of high-definition movies. But in order to calculate pi, you need to keep and store a lot of these different numbers, a few variables in the equation. вЂњSo pi is just one number, thatвЂ™s 100 trillion digits. вЂњThe algorithm has multiple variables,вЂќ Iwao explained in an interview with The New Stack on Tuesday.

Yes, thatвЂ™s 82PB of output - a number thatвЂ™s even more massively large than the 515TB used to ultimately store the number.

вЂњBack in 2019 when we did our 31.4-trillion digit calculation, egress throughput was only 16 Gbps,вЂќ Iwao points out in a second more-technical blog post, вЂњmeaning that bandwidth has increased by 600% in just three yearsвЂ¦ This increase was a big factor that made this 100-trillion experiment possible, allowing us to move 82.0PB of data for the calculation, up from 19.1PB in 2019.вЂќ This meant that their main compute node - running Debian Linux 11 - ended up with a jaw-dropping 100Gbps egress bandwidth support (which is critical for a project like this, which uses a network-based, shared storage architecture). Back in 2019, using Google Compute Engine (powered by Google Cloud), Iwao had fired up 25 virtual machines which churned non-stop for 121 days, ultimately calculating pi out to a record 31,415,926,535,897 places - the first time a record-setting calculation had been performed using the cloud.Д«ut this time, to calculate pi all the way out to its 100,000,000,000,000th decimal place, Iwao worked with a team of three more developer advocates - a team which availed themselves of the very latest infrastructure.ДЇor starter, IwaoвЂ™s team switched to GoogleвЂ™s new Virtual NIC (gVNIC) network driver, which tightly integrates with GoogleвЂ™s Andromeda virtual network stack, giving them the benefit of a higher throughput with a lower latency. Iwao had already set an earlier record for digits of pi calculated. вЂњOne of those things, you guessed it, is using a program to calculate digits of pi.вЂќ вЂњAs a developer advocate at Google Cloud, part of my job is to create demos and run experiments that show the cool things developers can do with our platform,вЂќ Iwao explained in the blog post. Iwao and her team had put 128 virtual CPUs on the calculations - and a whopping 894GB of RAM.

вЂњWeвЂ™d calculated the most digits of ПЂ ever - 100 trillion to be exact.вЂќД«ut whatвЂ™s equally interesting is how they did it. вЂњI was going to be the first and only person to ever see the number,вЂќ Iwao remembered in a blog post published this week. After running calculations for 157 days, 23 hours, 31 minutes and 7.651 seconds, their big moment arrived when it was time to check. вЂњThe 100-trillionth decimal place of ПЂ (pi) is 0.вЂќД®mma Haruka Iwao knows - because she led the first team that ever calculated every single digit.

Program to calculate pi