{"id":89883,"date":"2019-04-24T10:42:59","date_gmt":"2019-04-24T17:42:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/a-faster-method-for-multiplying-very-big-numbers"},"modified":"2019-04-24T10:42:59","modified_gmt":"2019-04-24T17:42:59","slug":"a-faster-method-for-multiplying-very-big-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/a-faster-method-for-multiplying-very-big-numbers","title":{"rendered":"A faster method for multiplying very big numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-faster-method-for-multiplying-very-big-numbers2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The multiplication of integers is a problem that has kept mathematicians busy since Antiquity. The \u201cBabylonian\u201d method we learn at school requires us to multiply each digit of the first number by each digit of the second one. But when both numbers have a billion digits each, that means a billion times a billion or 10<sup>18<\/sup> operations.<\/p>\n<p>At a rate of a billion operations per second, it would take a computer a little over 30 years to finish the job. In 1971, the mathematicians Sch\u00f6nhage and Strassen discovered a quicker way, cutting calculation time down to about 30 seconds on a modern laptop. In their article, they also predicted that another algorithm\u2014yet to be found\u2014could do an even faster job. Joris van der Hoeven, a CNRS researcher from the \u00c9cole Polytechnique Computer Science Laboratory LIX, and David Harvey from the University of New South Wales (Australia) have found that algorithm.<\/p>\n<p>They present their work in a new article that is available to the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/scientific+community\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">scientific community<\/a> through the online HAL archive. But one problem raised by Sch\u00f6nhage et Strassen remains to be solved: proving that no quicker method exists. This poses a new challenge for theoretical <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/computer\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">computer<\/a> science.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2019-04-faster-method-big.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><\/p>\n<div style=\"clear:both;\">Read more<\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The multiplication of integers is a problem that has kept mathematicians busy since Antiquity. The \u201cBabylonian\u201d method we learn at school requires us to multiply each digit of the first number by each digit of the second one. But when both numbers have a billion digits each, that means a billion times a billion or [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,32,41,2229],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-education","category-information-science","category-mathematics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}