Wednesday, April 25th 2007
PS3 Lifts Folding@Home to almost 700 Teraflops
The introduction of the PS3 as a Folding@Home client has now helped the project to reach an impressive 693 teraflops of processing power, with 390 coming from PS3 consoles alone (despite only accounting for 11.4% of active processors). This figure is a significant improvement on the 367 TFLOPS being contributed by Sony's new console last month - the continued support from everyone who participates in the project helps Stanford University research cures for diseases such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, along with many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes. Anyone wishing to become involved in the project should take a look at techPowerUp!'s own F@H team which currently stands in 741st place out of 62360 teams contributing. It is completely free (other than electricity and internet costs) and will put your idle processing power to good use.
Source:
Neowin.net
10 Comments on PS3 Lifts Folding@Home to almost 700 Teraflops
But games like
Simulated folding!!!! (Now Multi-player!)
MySQL Online multi-player!!!
Long string math theory!! (Can you get the answer be fore the computer?)
Those don't interest me.
But it is nice that such a powerful processor is being used for something good.
Back on point. Nice to see such a powerful machine helping good causes. Though I think they should have figured something out by now. Look to the rainforests. Im sure many cures are lying there, waiting to be discovered. Its something I strongly believe in.
I recall reading IBM wanted blade servers using the cell processor even before the PS3 was released knowing full well its power.
Either way, the work units the PS3 (and the ATI client) perform are not as numerous as the x86 units, so by no means should everyone who likes to fold replace all their PCs with PS3s just to get more points cause in the end it doesnt do as much good for the project as a whole.
Not that I have anything against the PS3s, I just think competition is healthy ;)
You can imagine that a conroe or kentsfield could quite happily trounce a PS3... oh and those who rant about it? dont forget the PS3 uses specially designed work units, not the same x86 ones PC users get - direct comparisons are impossible.
(The ATI work units are teh same deal - designed for teh GPU's)