Calculating Pi
In May 2025, after seeing a video from Linus Tech Tips about setting a new record calculating Pi, I was curious what this was all about. I did some reading and realized there were several different categories that benchmark these records but that the process to do it yourself was relatively simple. Obviously, tuning a system to do it in some record setting fashion is more complicated, but you can render absurdly long calculations of Pi yourself quite easily. I decided to push an old 2011 Mac Mini to its thermal limits and make it calculate 1 billion digits of π. Because… why not?
🧪 Pi Computation Benchmark – Old Mac Mini Edition
🖥️ System Specs
| Component | Details |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i5-2415M @ 2.30 GHz |
| Architecture | 2 cores / 4 threads (Sandy Bridge) |
| RAM | 16 GB (13.1 GB usable) |
| OS | Debian-based |
| Cooling | Apple’s “eh, good enough” fan |
| Benchmark Tool | y-cruncher v0.8.6.9545 |
⚙️ Benchmark Settings
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Digits Calculated | 1,000,000,000 |
| Mode | RAM Only |
| Algorithm | Chudnovsky (1988) |
| Threads Used | 4 |
| Twiddle Tables | 58.9 MiB |
| Working Memory | 4.29 GiB |
| AVX Support | ✅ (but no AVX2) |
⏱️ Results
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Total Time | 12.12 minutes |
| CPU Utilization | 374.78% |
| Multi-core Efficiency | 93.70% |
| Final 50 Digits of π | 7139868209 3196353628 ... 5483278746 |
| Validation | ✅ Spot Check Passed |
File: Pi - 20250516-234849.txt
📊 How It Stacks Up
| System | Time (1B Digits) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 💾 My Mac Mini (2011) | 12.12 min | Surprisingly not dead |
| Ryzen 7950X3D | ~1 min | Absolute monster |
| M2 MacBook Air | ~4 min | Fanless wonder |
| Raspberry Pi 5 | ~30 min | Respectable for ARM |
| Intel N100 Mini PC | ~9–10 min | Efficient and cheap |
| 2015 MacBook Pro (i7) | ~12–13 min | Pretty close to mine 👀 |
🧠 Final Thoughts
“You may not like it, but this is what peak 2nd-gen Intel performance looks like.”
This Mac Mini sat in a garage for 5 years, and today, it entered the π chat with honor.
📎 Want to Try?
You can run this yourself with: ```bash wget “https://cdn.numberworld.org/y-cruncher-downloads/y-cruncher%20v0.8.6.9545-static.tar.xz” tar -xf “y-cruncher v0.8.6.9545-static.tar.xz” cd “y-cruncher v0.8.6.9545-static” ./y-cruncher
📼 Video That Inspired This
Linus Tech Tips on YouTube - “This World Record took YEARS (and a Million dollars..)”