Backblaze Hosts 314 Trillion Digits of Pi Online (nerds.xyz)
- Reference: 0180973418
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/03/13/182207/backblaze-hosts-314-trillion-digits-of-pi-online
- Source link: https://nerds.xyz/2026/03/backblaze-314-trillion-digits-pi/
> Cloud storage company Backblaze has [2]partnered with StorageReview to make a massive dataset [3]containing 314 trillion digits of Pi publicly accessible . The digits were calculated by StorageReview in December 2025 after months of heavy computation designed to stress modern hardware. The dataset now hosted in the cloud weighs in at over 130TB, while the full working dataset used during the calculation reached about 2.1PB when intermediate checkpoints were included.
The report notes that the Pi digits have been broken into roughly 200GB chunks to make it more practical for researchers or enthusiasts to download.
Here's what StorageReview founder Brian Beeler said about the project: "Pushing [Pi] to 314 trillion digits was far more than a headline number. It was a sustained, months-long computational challenge that stressed every layer of modern infrastructure, from high core-count CPUs to massive high-speed storage, and it gave us valuable insight into how extreme, real-world workloads behave at scale. Making this dataset available in the Backblaze cloud takes the project a step further by opening access to one of the largest raw outputs ever generated in a single-system calculation. Hosting multi-petabyte files for the broader community is no small feat, and we appreciate Backblaze stepping up to ensure researchers, developers, and enthusiasts can explore and build on this record-setting achievement."
[1] https://slashdot.org/~BrianFagioli
[2] https://www.backblaze.com/contact-sales/pi-day
[3] https://nerds.xyz/2026/03/backblaze-314-trillion-digits-pi/
Confirmed (Score:3)
I just checked it on my TI calculator and confirmed the digits are correct.
Good thing they don't have more! (Score:2)
I use the last digits of pi as my standard pin code.
Re:Good thing they don't have more! (Score:4, Funny)
Is that a rational decision?
Re: (Score:2)
Ba dum tss!
130TB? (Score:2)
Jesus just zip the damn thing! Do you even compress bro? /s
Re: (Score:2)
You can certainly gain something by compressing ASCII down to binary. That could get you a factor of 10/256 theoretically. However, the digits of pi are more-or-less random, not easy to compress further with any algorithm, not even the one zip uses.
Re: (Score:2)
Whoops, make that log(10)/log(256), per the post from 'Sloppy' below.
Spoiler alert (Score:3)
Spoilers: it's three and a bit.
Re: (Score:2)
22/7
Re: (Score:2)
> Spoilers: it's three and a bit.
three and a bit = 011 + 001 = 100.
Four.
When asked for comment, Ludolph van Ceulen said (Score:2)
aaaag arg argh im dead arg
Is it actually PI? (Score:2)
How sure are we that it's accurate? Has the data been validated? If they are stressing the hardware then couldn't a bit get flipped at some point and throw off the whole things?
Re: (Score:2)
They made a paper copy, just in case.
Re: (Score:3)
There is a (relatively slow) algorithm for finding the Nth digit of pi, which can be used to check the last few digits calculated. If the last digits match, the chance of there being an error is negligible. Look up the "Bailey-Borwein-Plouffe formula".
You bastards! (Score:3)
Now I have to change my luggage combination again. Thanks for nothing!
Quick question (Score:2)
Does anyone know off the top of their head the 314,000,000,000,001th digit of pi?
Re: (Score:2)
3.
Prove me wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
Surely, the answer is always 42.
Decent compression (Score:3)
import math
314*math.log(10)/math.log(256)
130.38567772432899
130TB for 314T decimal digits sounds about right!
I'd just use a plain arithmetic encoder (where all 10 symbols are equally weighted) with no dictionary pass (since the next digit can't be predicted from any or all of the previous digits).
Simple (Score:2)
The digits are: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ,6 ,7 ,8, 9.
Duplicate and arrange as needed.
Ridiculous (Score:2)
This is just flat-out waste, anything beyond about 90 digits for pi has no real-world use case. Unless you want to look up some random subset a trillion or so digits in to use for encryption or a random number seed?
Re: so (Score:2)
I think War and Peace starts right at the first digit. I just need to figure out the encoding.
In a practical sense... (Score:2)
I believe that after about 7 digits, the rest really doesn't matter. For practical calculations like calculating the trajectory of a spaceship through the universe, it would only be a few mm off at about 9 digits. So, with no practical applications, this seems kind of a waste of time, and compute power. But I admit it is kind of geeky and cool.
Contact (Score:2)
Has anyone converted it to base11
Useless... (Score:3)
...with [1]this method [wikipedia.org] you can calculate whichever digit of pi you want with an hand-cranked calculator.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bailey%E2%80%93Borwein%E2%80%93Plouffe_formula
Re: (Score:2)
Ok. Let us know when you've calculated 314 trillion digits with your hand calculator.
Okay... (Score:2)
...why?
This is excessive (Score:2)
I always round Pi once I get to 100 trillion digits.
This is 3.14 times too much.
ridiculous precision (Score:3)
If the math is correct, that means we can calculate the circumference of the known universe to a precision much, much smaller than the Plank length.
So in other words: No, there isn't any practical application for this, not now, not in the forseable future, and probably not before the heat death of the universe.
Why though? (Score:2)
That's great and all. You do you.
130TB of Pi digits
Backblaze says making the dataset available in its B2 cloud storage platform allows researchers, developers, and curious tech enthusiasts to explore the results themselves.
.
Any ideas for any (serious) examples of what someone might do with this? I imagine anybody really serious about number theory of pi has already access to something better and perhaps bigger....but I don't know. Help me understand the point of this.
Re: (Score:2)
You need 5 digits to steer a space shuttle. People use 20 digits for rounded corners of their websites. It is unlikely that you need more than 100 digits.
Re: (Score:1)
For something like this: [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Or esoteric research ideas, like list me the first billion digits where the index is a prime.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad
Hmmm (Score:2)
Are you sure that digit 386,761 is correct?
'high core-count CPUs' for a linear process? (Score:2)
Isn't this a very linear process, one core should be plenty for the calculation itself? Or a better question why is and how is a parallel process even needed other than for storing the results to disk?
Re: (Score:2)
why don't you take the 2 seconds it would take to find out