3 ms·
One digit in base 10 uses log_2(10) = 3.322 bits. 12.1 trillion is 12.1×10^12, so that many decimal digits uses 40.195 × 10^12 bits = 5.024 × 10^12 bytes = 5.02
by nayuki 8y ago
One digit in base 10 uses log_2(10) = 3.322 bits. 12.1 trillion is 12.1×10^12, so that many decimal digits uses 40.195 × 10^12 bits = 5.024 × 10^12 bytes = 5.024 TB, if it is represented in the most compact form. But in the article they claimed "9.20 TiB of disk was needed to store the compressed digit output", which is about double of that.
- zamadatix 8y agoAccording to the article the space intensive part was "60.2 TiB of disk was needed to perform the computation.". My guess is they weren't too worried with an optimal proprietary encoding of the final number, rather they simply lightly compressed the text output you see at the beginning of the article allowing easier consumption of the result. That text output seems to be ~3.6x less efficient. I.e. nobody claimed optimal compression
- smrq 8y agoThe notion of optimal compression is nonsense anyway. Here is even more digits of pi, compressed to fit into this comment: π Decompression may take some work.