Impressive GPU Numbers From Folding@Home

ludd1t3 writes, "The Folding@Home project has put forth some impressive performance numbers with the GPU client that's designed to work with the ATI X1900. According to the client statistics, there are 448 registered GPUs that produce 29 TFLOPS. Those 448 GPUs outperform the combined 25,050 CPUs registered by the Linux and Mac OS clients. Ouch! Are ASICs really that much better than general-purpose circuits? If so, does that mean that IBM was right all along with their AS/400, iSeries product which makes heavy use of ASICs?"

Are ASICs really that much better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are ASICs really that much better than general-purpose circuits?

Generally ASICs are much better than general-purpose circuits except in general cases.

IBM right all along, or obvious?

[Gothmolly]

Custom app written to run on hardware specifically designed to run apps like it, outperforming general purpose CPUs? Newsflash from Ric Romero!!1!

Re:So obvious...

[Iron Condor]

ASCII silly question, get a silly ANSI.

Distributed amongst home users

[Skevin]

So, will someone please create a really pretty 3D screensaver representing the folding calculation process? I'd love to see a represention with hi-res lighting and texturing, full transforms, and user-scalable views at 400 million triangles/sec.. Thanks.

Solomon

I KNEW it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Macs and Linux suck. This is SCIENTIFIC proof.

Re:So obvious...

[Anonymous Coward]

- Cool, can I play too?
- No, that's what consoles are for.

Re:This is the perfect time...

[loraksus]

Well, I really, really hate the "heater that hasn't been used for 6 months" smell, so that was sort of my primary focus.
That makes it a little better... right?
Please?

Re:Distributed amongst home users

[holysin]

There is this lovely feature called a power button. There's also this really handy feature on most tvs since the mid-late 90s called multiple inputs.

Re:So obvious...

[Jesus_666]

UTF are you talking about? I'm quite sure the mods are not latin-1 post like this go unmoderated.

Golly Beav....

[certain death]

Imagine if they had developed this application for NVidia video cards, probably 2x the speed!!1! Go ahead, mod me a troll....I will appologize tomorrow :o)

Re: Are ASICs really that much better?

[Jeremi]

An ASIC can be orders of magnitude faster for an fft, but you can't write a word processor for it.

You realize that somebody is bound to write a word processor that runs on a GPU now, just to prove it can be done?

Re:Lopsided Alright..ASIC and yea shall receive.

[Baddas]

Man, imagine how simple-minded and yet weak superhuman an AI that ran solely on GPUs would be?

"I can think of many, many things at once. As long as they are the same type of thing."

Re: Are ASICs really that much better?

[hritcu]

they did modify the program to run on what it does have: 4x4 matrix operation units for multiplication and addiction.

This is also what my mother was always telling me when I was a boy: "if you play video games you'll become an addict". She was so right.