In our last report Folding@Home was at 1.5 Exaflops and had eclipsed the theoretical El Capitan Supercomputer not due to come online until 2023. Folding@Home has gained another 900petaFLOPS and is now not only 15x more powerful than the next most powerful supercomputer, IBM's Summit but more powerful than the next 500 supercomputers combined. Researchers have been scrambling to create more simulations to run as computational performance growth has exceeded all expectations.

The TechPowerup! team is currently ranked #29 with 618 active Folders. If you want to donate some spare cycles you can download the client over at the Folding@Home web page and download the installer for your client. When setting up the client make sure to enter your TeamID as 50711 to help us rise the ladder to world domination. This is an easy way to contribute to the largest computational medical cure research project ever completing vital research on COVID-19 and various other diseases.

It's not been that long since we praised the worldwide community for allowing Folding@Home to reach double the performance of the world's top supercomputer, IBM's Summit, which ekes out calculations at the petascale with 200 peak petaFLOPS. However, the world has again shown promise when it comes to people selflessly giving their power and performance for a higher cause. Folding@Home now likely smokes performance metrics of some Tier 1 civilizations out there (in the Kardashev scale, of course, should there be some; I'm cautiously jesting in all regards) with its 1.5 ExaFLOP performance.

As it stands, and should users keep on donating their processing power, it seems the community can even go as far as eclipsing the deployment of the world's most powerful supercomputer, El Capitan, which is only meant to be operational - get this - in 2023. This means we are close to offering equivalent performance for multiple disease research (including COVID-19), today, to that of a currently theoretical supercomputer. Of course, queues are long towards receiving work, so now it's become a problem for researchers to keep this computational power fed with data to crunch - we're actually hitting bottlenecks that supercomputers too have achieved before us.

The latest Folding@Home GPU client core released by Pande Group adds support for NVIDIA's latest GeForce 400 Series GPUs, using the NVIDIA CUDA GPU compute technology. Dubbed GPU3 core, this beta release of the Folding@Home client core packs several optimizations to harness the new GPUs. Apart from GeForce 400 Series, the core supports the full range of GPUs, although the developers don't recommend using it with ATI GPUs, as the software doesn't offer any advantage, and could instead be buggy. They are, however, working on improving the software for ATI GPUs. The graphical and console clients using this core can be downloaded from here.

TechPowerUp's Folding@Home and World Community Grid teams, both among the top 100 teams in their own merits, have decided to give back to the community by announcing the TechPowerUp Community Crunching/Folding Contest. Organized entirely by the community, the contest gives one lucky winner, a pre-assembled, turnkey PC with optimal hardware for distributed computing (DC-PC). For starters, the PC has an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 accelerator to run GPU-accelerated distributed computing applications of the likes of Folding@Home GPU, while its Pentium Dual-Core handles CPU-driven distributed computing applications, such as World Community Grid. With 500 GB of handy storage, Windows XP SP2 OS, Antec BP-550Plus 550W PSU to power it all, and In Win X-Fighter as its housing, the prize would make a perfect addition to any distributed computing enthusiast's armory.

Now open to everyone, the contest is a purely community funded and organized. It involves achieving 60,000 BOINC points and 100,000 F@H points within a contest time frame of 60 days, starting from 11:59PM EST on 10/14/09. The contest ends on 11:59PM EST on 12/12/09. Participants must 'crunch' (score) for WCG Team #22175 and 'fold' (scoring) for Folding@Home team #50711 only. The winner will be selected within five days of contest closure, and contacted by e-mail. TechPowerUp doesn't partake as the organizers of this contest, and hence do not hold any liabilities. We do however, like to commend our Folding@Home and World Community Grid teams for organizing this contest, that symbolizes goodwill and team-spirit, and wish everyone associated with it good luck. For more information, please visit this page.

Just a couple days ago, we informed you that NVIDIA had joined the Folding@Home team. However, at the time, benchmarks for this new client were unavailable. I am now happy to inform you that (internal) benchmarks are available for your viewing pleasure. The rather large green bar was achieved using the new NVIDIA GPU core, the GTX280. As far as exact numbers go, this sucker can fold at 500 mol/day, which is much higher than the Radeon HD 3870 numbers (170 mol/day), five times higher than PS3 numbers (100 mol/day), and astronomically higher than the average computer numbers (4 mol/day). Whether or not this translates into actual gaming performance is yet to be seen, however, it's pretty hard to imagine how something so powerful wouldn't bring back some respectable FPS in games like Crysis.

After ATI joined the F@H team almost a year ago, the time for NVIDIA to follow up has finally come. There will be a Folding@Home NVIDIA GPU client out soon, the company confirmed today.

Yes, it's finally coming - the NVIDIA GPU client we have all wanted since first seeing and tasting the power of the ATI GPU Folding@Home client

Mr. Vijay Pande, the man behind the Folding@Home project said. NVIDIA also showed the new NVIDIA GPU client running a live demo on "next generation GeForce graphics card". Head on over at PC Prospective to find out more on the story.

Until now, the only graphics cards supported by the Folding@home GPU client were ATI's Radeon 16xx, 18xx and 19xx series cards. However, a new beta version is now available from here which will allow owners of HD 2xxx and 3xxx cards to contribute some of their graphics processing power to the project. The Folding@home project is run by Stanford University and simulates protein folding in the hope of finding cures for diseases including Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease and many Cancers. Even if you do not own a supported graphics card, you can still download the standard CPU client and contribute your idle processing power - all you need is an internet connection. To find out more, why not take a look at techPowerUp!'s Folding@home team?

Less than a year after the project originally came to the console, the total number of PS3 owners contributing to Folding@home has surpassed one million users - and they're still registering at a rate of 3,000 a day. Vijay Pande, who is in charge of the project, said:

Since partnering with SCEI, we have seen our research capabilities increase by leaps and bounds through the continued participation of Folding@home users. Now we have over one million PS3 users registered for Folding@home, allowing us to address questions previously considered impossible to tackle computationally, with the goal of finding cures to some of the world's most life-threatening diseases. We are grateful for the extraordinary worldwide participation by PS3 and PC users around the globe.

The PS3 now accounts for around 74% of the total teraflop computing power of the project. For those who don't know, the Folding@home program runs simulations in protein folding and misfolding, helping scientists understand (and hopefully cure) diseases such as Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's and certain forms of cancer. If you are looking to get involved in the project, you may be interested to hear that techPowerUp! has its own folding team - all you need is an internet connection and a computer.

Sony has updated the Folding@Home client for the PS3 to version 1.3. The improvements offered by this version are the ability to play music from the hard drive whilst folding and the option to turn-off the console after a specified amount of time or after the current work unit has been completed. Sony has also tweaked the code a little to allow it to handle more complex protein simulations. Version 1.3 requires you to install the recently released 2.10 firmware on your PS3.

If you are unfamiliar with the Folding@Home project, it is run by Stanford University and simulates protein folding in an attempt to find cures for diseases and illnesses including Alzheimer's, BSE, CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease and a number of cancers. You do not need a PS3 to participate in the project; any computer connected to the internet is capable of running a Folding@Home client. For more information you may wish to look at the Folding@Home website and techPowerUp!'s Folding@Home team.

Sources close to AMD have informed that Advanced Micro Devices has picked up Mike Houston. Houston is known for his work at Stanford University, most notably with the Folding@Home GPGPU client. At this time, it is unclear to us what Houston's title or specific role will be at AMD/ATI.

A project that harnesses the spare processing power of Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) to help understand the cause of diseases has entered the record books. Guinness World Records has recognised folding@home (FAH) as the world's most powerful distributed computing network. More than 700,000 PS3 owners have enrolled their consoles in the Folding@Home project to examine how the shape of proteins affect diseases such as Alzheimer and BSE. The addition of all the PS3 Cell processors has taken the computing power of the network to more than one petaflop. By comparison BlueGene L, which tops the list of most powerful supercomputers, has a top speed of just 280.6 teraflops.

It is clear that none of this would be even remotely possible without the power of PS3, it has increased our research capabilities by leaps and bounds

said Professor Vijay Pande of Stanford University and a leader of the FAH project.

The Folding@Home project has now managed to exceed one petaflop of processing power, thanks largely to the introduction of Sony's PlayStation 3 console last year. The project is currently operating at 1152 teraflops, with 889 teraflops being contributed by the PS3 and Windows based machines being closest competitor with just 164 teraflops. This means that over three-quarters of the processing power for Folding@Home is being provided by the PS3 due to the console's Cell Broadband Engine. Vijay Pande, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University said the following:

The recent inclusion of PS3 as part of the Folding@Home program has afforded our research group with computing power that goes far beyond what we initially hoped. Thanks to PS3, we are now essentially able to fast-forward several aspects of our research by a decade, which will greatly help us make more discoveries and advancements in our studies of several different diseases.

The Folding@Home project runs simulations in protein folding, which are helping scientists work towards cures for illnesses such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and certain forms of cancer. If you want to contribute to the project, you should take a look at the Folding@Home website and techPowerUp!'s Folding@Home team - all it requires is an internet connection and your idle processing power.

Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. (SCEA) today announced a Folding@home(TM) application update (v1.2) for PLAYSTATION(R)3 (PS3(TM)) users, further demonstrating the company's continued commitment to the Stanford University distributed computing project. This latest update provides PS3 users with added functionalities and features, including support for Remote Play for PSP(R) (PlayStation(R)Portable), added protein simulations and visuals, as well as a screensaver mode which enables PS3 to consume slightly less power and increases the performance of protein-folding simulations.