Pi record now at 31.4 trillion digits in 2019 thanks to Google Compute

It's March 14th which means it's Pi Day! 3.14 - which is a convenient equal to the first 3 digits of pi, get it?

Pi day started in 1988, but as crazy as Pi Day itself sounds, in 2009 the U.S. House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution that recognizes March 14th as Pi Day too.

You can celebrate Pi Day by having a slice of pie, having a debate about its relevance, or trying to see how many digits you can recite without looking it up. But my guess is Emma Haruka Iwao can win that contest.

In honor of Pi day 2019, Google has announced that one of their developer advocates, Emma Haruka Iwao, has successfully calculated pi to 31.4 trillion digits (ironic number), breaking the previous world record of 22 trillion digits. NASA only uses around 15 digits of pi in its calculations for sending rockets into space. 31.4 trillion represented looks like this: 31,400,000,000,000.

So what inspired Emma to take on this challenge and how she did it?

I guess the girl loves Pi! She became fascinated with it at the age of just 12, and it continued to captivate, and challenge her through college. And Google's Compute Engine, powered by Google Cloud had a little something to do with pulling it off too.

Pi Record 2019 on Pi Day 2019 Parallism

31,400,000,000,000
 

From a Google blog post, Mia Neagle said "Emma used it to calculate the most digits of pi—ever. That’s 31,415,926,535,897 digits, to be exact. Emma used the power of the cloud for the task, making this the first time the cloud has been used for a pi calculation of this magnitude."

What is Pi?

In its most basic form, Pi is used to find the area or circumference of any round object. But Pi isn’t just for scientists and mathematicians, if you draw a circle on your computer, if you want to create 3D renderings, every time you look at your watch face, Pi is there. There is an infinite number of digits after the decimal point that never repeats, so the calculation is literally endless. 

Believe it or not, our society uses Pi every day as a benchmark for the fastest and most reliable machines in the world and while humans have raced to calculate Pi digits since the dawn of time (literally dating back to 2000 BC), this is the first time this has ever been done using cloud technology.