Pi Computed To 10 Trillion Digits 414
An anonymous reader writes "A Japanese programmer that goes by the handle JA0HXV announced that he has computed Pi to 10 trillion digits. This breaks the previous world record of 5 trillion digits. Computation began in October of 2010 and finished yesterday after multiple hard disk problems, he said. Details in English are not fully available yet, but the Japanese page gives further details. JA0HXV has held computation records for Pi in the past."
Re:What Does This Mean? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you memorize up to the first zero in pi, you can navigate the circumference of the universe in a perfect circle and when you get to the end of the circle (based on the digits of pi you memorized) you'll be off by less than the width of a human hair.
Re:What Does This Mean? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you look at a naive theoretical model for a computer, then you would predict that certain classes of algorithms would be most efficient for calculating digits of pi. (These algorithms use huge FFTs in order to do bignum arithmetic.) Several world records were broken using this technique. However, as the problem size grew, the FFTs started to become impractical, as the communication overhead started to dominate, and eventually algorithms that didn't have such a communication overhead became favoured. Better models of computational efficiency were arrived at, and new records were broken. We now understand time/space trade-offs better.
However, your loaf of bread won't be cheaper because of this, nor will the number of homeless on the street decrease.
Re:Ham Radio Callsign (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, there are. Modern radio systems are meant to be good enough to be reliable. Ham radio systems are the art of the possible. Most hams these days are experimenters who enjoy trying odd things. I've seen voice powered radios, I've seen radio systems designed to communicate via lunar reflections, I've seen radio systems designed to pick up spacecraft in deep space.
Some hams like to study radio wave propagation. Again, this is the art of the possible, not the engineering of the certain. Bouncing signals off of thunderstorms, sporadic E layer reflectors or meteor trails are all in this category. Occasionally, they stumble across something that works surprisingly well.
Some still tinker with modulation methods. Hams were playing with spread spectrum radios in the mid 1980s --long before the engineers sat down to work on the so-called wireless standards. Today, work continues with all sorts of forward error correction codes and modulation techniques.
So, yes, there still is a ham radio. Yes, there still are a more than a few slobs who like to do nothing better than listen to themselves talk on short-wave. But there is still a vibrant core that continues to study all sorts of forgotten alleys in the technology.