Google employee smashes Guinness record on Pi Day

New Delhi: Google Developer Emma Haruka Iwao spent Pi Day smashing the Guinness record for calculating Pi to the highest number of digits —31 trillion —  breaking the previous record of 22 trillion. Iwao broke the record on March 14 by calculating the value of Pi, represented as 3/14 or 3.14 to 31.4 trillion decimal places. That's π x 10 to the power 13.

What is Pi?

Denoted by the Greek letter π, Pi is defined as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Pi's first three digits, 3.14, are known but the remaining is infinitely long. Calculating the rest of the digits that follow is difficult as the sequence follows no set pattern.

Iwao's secret? A pi-calculator Google tool

Iwao, a Google employee from Japan, used Google tool, Y-cruncher, a Pi-benchmark program created using a Google Compute Engine virtual machine cluster by Alexander J. Yee.

The calculation, which consumed 170TB of data, was completed in 121 days with 25 virtual machines. The new record is around 9 trillion digits more than the last world record set by Peter Trueb in November 2016.  Iwao, who has worked at Google for the last three years, said she "feels very surprised."

She also became the third woman to set a world record for calculating pi.