The Quarky Engineer

This is fun… Drift mode in the Tesla.

Speaking of useful things that computers can do – I have been noodling around the idea of calculating 100 trillion digits of Pi. The current record is 50 trillion digits.

The difficulty in the calculation is in the amount of memory needed to do the calculation. Using the Chudnovsky algorithm as implemented with the y-cruncher software I would need 503 TBs of working memory, plus an additional 160TBs for space to store the result.

It is not easy to get >500TBs of RAM, but it is possible to use disk storage in place of RAM. It slows down the calculation considerable, but reduces the cost to the problem of getting 660TBs of storage.

I figure 4x 16 drive cabinets of 12TB hard drives would do the trick, all connected over SAS to a 4 proc Xeon box with 1TB of RAM.

I am guessing it would take 14,100-20,000 compute hours (So close to 2 years running at full speed).

I already did 100 billion, and 1 trillion digits of Pi as a warm up.

What could I do with 100 trillion digits of Pi? What could you not do with that much coolness in one place. Perhaps I could find another number in this sequence: https://oeis.org/A057680

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to attend a workshop about the foundations of risk and risk estimation from Nassim Taleb. For those that don’t know Nassim he is the author of a number of books including ‘The Black Swan’, and is an options trader, mathematician, and general purveyor of the fundamentals.

Taleb’s approach is to use fundamental math to explore what outcomes are possible. The techniques are straightforward, the simulations helpful, and the outcomes slightly unexpected.

The actual ‘teaching’ at the workshop was chaotic, but the underlying concepts were easy to understand, especially if you read his books first.

It was also my first chance to hang out with my friend Paul (and his wife Joanna). I have known Paul on FB for many years, but this was the first time we were able to meet face to face. Not surprising he was exactly as I expected.. he is intellectual curious across a board spectrum of the fields of the world, thoughtfully and contemplative about what drives things, and fantastic at explaining how a theory applies to a real world scenario.

Over the years I have been on FB I have been surprised so many times by people posting that they ‘need to give up Facebook’ because it is causing so much stress, harm, or some other detrimental outcome. Facebook has been nothing but an incredible asset for me. It allows me to meet people I would have otherwise not met and stay in contact with friends, neighbors, and people I may never meet in real life. Like the gun, the knife, and the pen, it is a tool that can be used or misused. It is your choice. Really.