Storage Review Breaks Record for Hundred-Trillion-Digit Calculations with Solidigm QLC SSDs

▲ Overview of Pi Calculation (Source: Solidigm)

Pi calculations can be used as a benchmark to assess the performance of computationally intensive workloads. Recently, a product has emerged that broke the record for 100 trillion-digit calculation speeds in these Pi calculation benchmarks.

Solidigm, a NAND flash memory solution company, announced on the 20th that its D5-P5316 QLC SSD array broke the record for a calculation speed of 100 trillion digits of Pi in a recent test.

StorageReview, a global storage review media outlet, reported that it calculated the digits of Pi at a speed approximately three times faster than the previous record holder, Google, using Solidigm's drives.

Brian Beeler, Editor-in-Chief of StorageReview, formed a team at the Cincinnati, U.S. research lab, with advice from Solidigm, to run the Pi calculation using Solidigm D5-P5316 QLC SSDs.

He stated, “Since Pi is a well-known mathematical number with a clear definition, it serves as an ideal benchmark for comparing system performance, as calculation results and outputs can be easily compared across various systems.” He added, “Solidigm’s high-performance SSDs helped break the record for Pi calculations with record-breaking times and levels, serving as an opportunity to further solidify our position in the industry as a global leader in data storage solutions.”

Thanks to the SSD's density, performance, and cost configuration, the P5316 is now capable of performing large-scale data set analysis that was previously only possible through massive investments in the cloud, on-premises, or on-site. According to Biller and the Storage Review team, 23 PB of data was written to QLC storage, and read activity for new checkpoints also met or exceeded those figures. The Solidigm D5-P5316 QLC SSD consistently provided sufficient read access without overload.

Greg Matson, Vice President of Solidigm's Data Center Storage Group, said, "With read performance equivalent to best-in-class TLC SSDs that are expected to last up to 10 years at this workload intensity, the possibilities for what this drive can do in data center applications are as endless as Pi. We are very pleased that Solidigm's SSDs helped with the record-breaking Pi calculation attempt conducted by Storage Review. This demonstrated the superior capabilities of Solidigm storage drives and opened up real-world application possibilities."

Brian Beeler also added, “QLC performs massive write operations, transferring nearly 30TB of writes to each drive daily, and works perfectly for the workload. If this speed is maintained, it will exceed 10 PBW per year,” and “These QLC SSDs provide tremendous density in a single server while having absolutely no trouble sustaining computations. In tests conducted over approximately 60 days, the overall SSD durability was barely worn out.”

Although calculations on this scale are not actually applied, the range used for the most precise measurements of pi in science and academia is 10 digits. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory uses only 15 digits for calculations for spacecraft navigation. This demonstrates how well Solidyme QLC SSDs can handle today's high-volume workloads used in business-critical applications such as advanced data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and data pipelines.

"I was very impressed that SolidDigm and StorageReview calculated Pi to hundreds of trillions of digits in a record time using 4th generation AMD EPYC CPUs," said Raghu Nambiar, Corporate Vice President of Data Center Ecosystem and Solutions at AMD. "This is another strong proof that customers are leveraging EPYC processors for truly computationally intensive workloads."