Saturday, August 23, 2008

GPUs push Folding@Home past 3 Petaflops!

Following a thread in the Folding Community Forums - Highwater Mark , it seems that the total project power of Folding@Home has now passed the 3 Petaflops mark!

This is quite a significant achievement for the project, as 1 Petaflop was only achieved back in September last year. It just goes to show how much the project has grown since then. The release of the more mature GPU2 client has been the significant factor in getting the project to the power it's at now and undoubtably it's also going to be the big push for the project in the next couple of years.

There has already been around 25,000 GPU2 client installs to date, with a healthy 16,000 of those currently 'active'. This easily gives the GPU clients the best active/total CPU ratio of any type. Most others are less than 1:10.

Now there was a bit of a discussion on whether this 3 Petaflops measurement was 'legit' as the whole Stats Server issue could have produced unrealistic figures, but thats seemed to have settled well and truly, and we are definitley past 3 Petaflops by more than a whisker!

The NVIDIA GPUs seem to have the most support at the moment, having ~9,000 more active folders than what the ATI camp has. This is most likely due to the fact that the NVIDIAs are being rewarded with a better PPD average than the ATIs, but then again NVIDIA does have a better market share in graphics cards. But they have also recently released a GeForce Power Pack (to show off special NVIDIA graphics card only features such as PhysX demos & CUDA-based programs) which includes the GPU2 Folding client. So that might have atleast spurred the last week or so's jump in total project power to over 3 Petaflops.

Looks like its time to invest in a little GPU folding action! Just a note though, the PS3 active numbers have really taken a dive lately, and i'd just like to indicate that although GPU systems now put out the most folding power for the project, the PS3 work units are still very important for the project's development, just like the old CPU client is still very valuable. So don't worry about the points too much, just fold however much you can, and know that your helping a very worthy project.

Taken from the OS Stats page -

Client statistics by OS

OS Type Current TFLOPS* Active CPUs Total CPUs
Windows 1992096332138357
Mac OS X/PowerPC 78270118934
Mac OS X/Intel 20646859276
Linux 6236482326368
ATI GPU 36633236439
NVIDIA GPU 14051277418556
PLAYSTATION3 111139388584773
Total 3170316338 3252703

Total number of non-Anonymous donators = 1056777
Last updated at Thu, 21 Aug 2008 06:04:49
DB date 2008-08-21 06:00:03

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