2.7 Trillion Digits of Pi -- With a Desktop Computer!

French computer programmer Fabrice Bellard has announced a new record for approximating the value of pi to 2.7 trillion digits. This is not that surprising. Approximating pi is a common and somewhat competitive challenge. Last August, for instance, in Japan, Daisuke Takahashi calculated the value of pi to 2.577 trillion digits. What caught my eye, however, was that Bellard computed and checked his result on a desktop computer costing less than 2000 euro. It took him 103 days to compute and another 28 days to check all of these digits. By contrast, former record holder Takahashi needed only 29 hours. He used very powerful computers, though. To this Blind Bambi, Bellard's achievement of this new world record, using only a common desktop computer, is quite amazing.