Super PI

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Super PI used to calculate 1,000,000 digits of Pi.

Super PI is a computer program that calculates Pi to a specified number of digits after the decimal point - up to a maximum of 32 million. It uses FFT arithmetic and Borwein's quartically-convergent algorithm and is a Windows port of the program used by Yasumasa Kanada in 1995 to compute Pi to 2³² digits. Super PI uses x87 floating-point unit, so it favours processors with good FPU performance, such as AMD Athlon 64, Intel Core 2.

1 Significance
2 Performance Milestones Achieved
3 The Future
4 Lack of Real Credibility
5 Notes
6 External Links

[edit] Significance

Super Pi is used by hundreds of thousands of overclockers to test the stability and performance of their computers. Usually, if a computer is able to calculate PI to the 32 milionth place after the decimal without mistake, it is considered to be stable in terms of RAM and CPU, although this is not always true. Some computers can calculate 32M in Super PI and still be unstable. It is by no means the fastest program for calculating Pi, but it is by far the most popular one. See software for calculating π for faster alternatives.

[edit] Performance Milestones Achieved

In June 2006 a milestone was achieved for the single-threaded SuperPI Mod client. Coolaler, a Taiwanese member of the XtremeSystems Overclocking Team, was the first to calculate 1M digits of PI in less than 10 seconds using SuperPI.[1] He reached clocks of more than 5.5GHz on a 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 Engineering Sample[2] using LN2 cooling. In the overclocking arena, achieving the fastest 1M calculation time in Super PI is a significant achievement. It is prestigious and extremely hard to achieve. Similar analogies hold for 2M, 4M, 8M, 16M, and 32M places.

1 Million Places
- 09.xxx seconds - coolaler - Core 2 Duo X6800 ES @ 5.52GHz ^[1]
- 08.xxx seconds - Onepagebook - Core 2 Duo X6800 ES @ 5.55GHz ^[2].
2 Million Places
- 23.xxx seconds - coolaler - Core 2 Duo X6800 ES @ 5.403GHz ^[3]
4 Million Places
8 Million Places
16 Million Places
32 Million Places

[edit] The Future

Super Pi is single threaded, so its relevance as a measure of performance in the current era of multi-core processors is diminishing quickly. As the calculation times become faster and faster, Super PI is also becoming a rather poor stability test.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Lack of Real Credibility

Fraudulant SuperPI results are easy to create. It is as simple as editing the text-file in the programs folder/directory. One could easly make a false claim about their results. This problem is corrected in the modified version of SuperPI, also known as SuperPI Mod. This version includes a checksum. The checksum can be validated at http://www.xtremesystems.com/pi/ if there is a doubt whether the results are fraud or not. The screenshot in this article is one of SuperPI Mod.