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. Super Pi is used by many overclockers to test the performance and stability of their computers. In the overclocking community, the standard program provides a benchmark for enthusiasts to compare “world record” pi calculation times and demonstrate their overclocking abilities. The program can also be used to test the stability of a certain overclock speed. If a computer is able to calculate PI to the 32 millionth place after the decimal without mistake, it is considered to be moderately stable in terms of RAM and CPU.

Once I was through overclocking my new computer, I decided to run Super Pi tests on Linux to see speed and stability. I was wondering how many seconds it will take to calculate 1M under Linux 64-bit platform compared to that what I got on Vista 64-bit:

openSUSE x86-64

Vista x64

10.109 on Linux vs 13.618 on Windows … does that mean Linux is faster at this than Windows, or they have different approaches … rr is Linux after all better tweaked for such operations, and hence most of the super computers found are Linux based?

Grab Super Pi for Linux from here. Once extracted run the following command:

./super_pi 20

Or you can download the latest PTS suite and run Super Pi, and many other tests, within that package.

In case you want to run more than 1M, such as as 32M for stability tests, then following is what you need to know:

• 20 means 20 bit number, which equals 1m
• 21 means 21 bit number, which equals 2m
• 25 means 25 bit number, which equals 32m

BTW, if I am not mistaken, Super PI is a single threaded, so its relevance as a measure of performance in the current era of multi-core processors will diminish quickly, unless a multi-core functionality is not added. There are currently some projects such as HyperPi and MultiPi in development.

So, what is your score then in Super Pi?