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Since we are talking factorials, i wanted to ask. What is the largest factorial that the biggest supercomputer known to man has computed? how long did it take
by vivzkestrel 1y ago
Since we are talking factorials, i wanted to ask. What is the largest factorial that the biggest supercomputer known to man has computed? how long did it take
- adgjlsfhk1 1y agoprobably not very big. factorials are pretty boring in the sense that it's relatively trivial to compute a factorial almost as big as your hard drive. 99% of the time will happen in a single multiply
- cperciva 1y ago99% of the time will happen in a single multiply Far from it. Asymptotically it's a proportion 2/log(N) of the compute cost.
- LegionMammal978 1y agoYeah, most algorithms that run in O(n polylog(n)) time, including most divide-and-conquer bigint arithmetic, will ultimately be dominated by how much memory you have available. For some experiments a while back, I would create a terabyte-long swapfile to extend the range of what GMP could do, and it still filled up within a couple CPU-weeks at most.
- ethan_smith 1y agoThe current record is 10^10^9 (a billion billion digits) by Peter Luschny in 2021 using a parallel algorithm. For exact factorials, Clifford Stern calculated 170! in 2012 which has over 300 digits.