Folding@Home reaches Petaflop processing power levels
By Conrad Quilty-Harper 
posted Sep 23rd 2007 12:09AM
posted Sep 23rd 2007 12:09AM
In an achievement that is heavily weighted towards the addition of a PS3 client to the project, Folding@Home has busted through the Petaflop mark, producing a distributed supercomputer capable of above and beyond a thousand trillion flops. Currently the client stats show 1.194 Petaflops of activity, 0.93 of which is due to the PlayStation 3's contribution. Of course, Sony will likely be preparing a press release as we speak, and they've every right to. What we've got to ask is where are Microsoft and Nintendo in this equation? Sounds to us like the only specifications needed are an internet connection and a CPU, which -- last time we checked -- the Wii and 360 both have.
welcome to yesterdays news engadget...slow weekend aint it?
Get a life retard. Not everyone is an uber-dork like you who checks out every single website and blog in existance so they can run to the others yelling, "OMG, I saw it over at some other site 23 minutes ago, youse guys is so slow".
Yoshi is a bonehead. I heard it on the 5 o clock news driving home on Thursday. You don't have to be a fanboi or blogwhore to pick up on something this big.
Not Everyone lives in the US. I found it totally ... ROXXORZ!!
But you do have to be a fanboi or blogwhore or just a general asshat to come on a blog and claim that since YOU happened to see it a day ago that therefore it's not worthy of a story from any other source other than the ones that YOU happen to frequent. Believe it or not, the world does NOT revolve around YOU.
@Twitchy
If you mean that YOUR power is made from renewable energy I can't argue, but there aren't many countries in the world that get more than half of their juice from renewable sources. Denmark maybe.
Nuclear power is not a renewable resource.
sure its yesterdays news, but not everyone read yesterdays news regarding that and thats why they have it posted (aside from the fact its their job)
Just imagine how much work would be done if people actually bought PS3s ;)
Imagine how much work they would be doing if they used actual computers. I know, its risky, but I'm willing to bet if they had moderately powerful computers, they would get more work done.
You mean besides the 4.5 Million + people who already bought one right?
Think of all the electricity wasted by people leaving their ps3's on running folding at home. All that money spent on electric bills... that could be used by the folding @ home people far more effectively.
they have plenty of computers on the job Zeus, but the problem is, the only way to get it going faster than the PS3 is if they use an ATi X1900 or X1950 card and with the vast number of cards out you can bet that it only amounts to a small group
Uh... Ok?
@h0mi:
Yeah, so the Folding@Home people can buy PS3s and run them there and use your money to pay the bills.
How the hell is a team dedicated to mass computing supposed to use your money in a better way?
@ h0mi:
Our juice is produced mainly (soon exclusively) from renewable resources. So get back in your 2 mile/gallon SUV and drive off a cliff.
Current GPU's are only capable of single floating point calculations, therefore rendering them highly ineffective for a large number of scientific applications.
The Cell processor, although not as capable as an intel compatible chip, can take on much more general purpose tasks, asynchronously,
In contrast, GPUs must take on all tasks synchronously (which is where their price/performance excels) and can only handle a limited instruction set.
As such a PS3 far outstrips modern radeon cards in terms of folding power
Wow, low ranked? SDF must've assembled and swooped in on anyone who dare criticize something that makes people actually use their ps3. Meanwhile some imbecile tells me to drive off a cliff and is highest ranked? What a load of crap.
Supposedly IGN determined that a ps3 running folding@home would cost a user $6.88 to $27.76 to run folding@home 24hours a day for a week. (That's 168 hours)
http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/2007/03/30/how-much-electricity-does-foldinghome-consume/
It's unlikely most ps3 owners are leaving it on all the time just to do folding at home, so lets say a ps3 owner does something a bit more reasonable- leaves it idle 168 hours in a month, not a week. That averages out to about 5 hours 20 mins a day. With an electric bill going up on average of at least $7 a month, and 600,000 ps3 owners doing this, now ps3 owners are spending at least $4.2 million each month in order to let their ps3s run folding@home. And these costs do not calculate how this impacts on energy demand on an energy grid at capacity during the summertime, not to mention he environmental impacts of all of those kilowatt hours of electricity produced.
imagine if a gaming console is to thank for the cure... talk about a new ad campaign..
Sony ps3!!! So awesome it kills cancer!
lol
There's already a cure for cancer and it sure as hell isn't chemotherapy.
Oh imagine Jack Thompson if that happened, "Sureeee those EXTREMELY VIOLENT video games saved a few million lives, BUT they were the ONLY CAUSE of the shooting at Columbine."
@jroc
To bad Chuck Norris never cries.
MS and Nintendo probably wont join in. if they join in, it would "show" how the PS3's hardware owns the 360 / wii's hardware, showing MS / Nintendo as sucking, making ps3 owners happier and 360/wii owners sadder. then the stupid press would hop on it because they don't know anything that's happened in the past 2 years. thats my theory
(before you flame, i'd like to say that i own a 360 and i do not own a PS3. the specs of PS3 > the specs of the 360 and wii)
What is it with Sony fanbois and specks, doesn't anyone play games to have fun anymore or is it that we just want the best looking sh!&&y tittles now?
You're right the PS3's processor IS better for endless streams of data and the 360's setup is more powerful for gaming. Don't worry I won't flame you for your ignorance and misleading of that information at all.
According to Sony, yes, the PS3 is better, but in the real world, its far from it.
That's just his point; MS and Nintendo don't want to give the PS3 any bragging rights, lame as we may find those virtues to be. If Sony could make that direct comparison of "2 times better at Folding@Home," mainstream folk may see that as indicative of a faster, more powerful console. Which, technically, the PS3 is, although that is clearly not reflected in its games. Aardvark is not saying the PS3 is GREAT, just that its better at chugging this kind of data, which outsiders may conflate with video game performance.
Ahh! It wouldn't be a positive thread without "Zeus The God" and "h0mi" here to try to bash Sony or the PS3.
O maybe the reason the PS3 is bashed so much is because there is a lot of material to work with?
... or a lot of Microsoft shills.
PS3 needs to be bashed because Sony is a shitty company - look up rootkit and you will find that Sony is up to alot more then just rootkit viruses - can you say trying to monopolize the HiDef arena so everyone in the word has to pay Sony rights to have HiDef content put on a disk. I could go on how they locked the Sigal Games dev team out of thier office after taking over Vanguard so they could fire then faster - but you sony fans wont believe me. Thats ok though - just keep dumping money into Sony and when you have to pay $5 more for a DVD dont come crying to me "I wish Blue Ray was open source like HD DVD was back in the day"
And how fast we all forget about all the class action law suits brough against Sony in the past couple of years. "Sony dangle that played out Final Fantasy franchise in my face again so I can forget about how shitty your PR is"
My favorite is the constant bashing of MS products by Sony CEOs - but you never ever hear a MS CEO bashing sony.
Look Sony fanboys research your company actually research them - you will fing out that Sony is actually a real POS.
Why do people have to turn an article like this into something against Sony? They aint perfect WE ALL KNOW THAT, but give them a break over this - it's a good thing they're doing!
@Jason51873 - "My favorite is the constant bashing of MS products by Sony CEOs - but you never ever hear a MS CEO bashing sony." Oh dear. You lost all credibility with that line.
Hey all! I see that this conversation has moved completely away from the original article, so I'm going to jump into the flaming MADNESS!!(Keeping in good spirits here)
Have any of you ever played a GAME on the PS3?? Just asking, because the last time I played it, the thing stuttered so badly i wanted to drop the controller right there. I was playing Motorstorm and Warhawk, and most of the time, i saw amazing graphics, and pretty good gameplay. Then, I would get into an intense battle, and JITTER, I'm dead. I say to myself, "Well that's not normal, i must be playing a bad system." But it DOESN'T CHANGE! Wherever I go, the jitter is there. This console is not that amazing. IT DOESN'T EVEN HAVE DX10 GRAPHICS!!
The most that any PS3 or X-Box 360 will ever have is different ways to manipulate DX9. God, you all are so simple-minded. This isn't about which company is best, but the fact that in less than a year, you will see SUPREMELY better graphics on a PC, no jitter involved. And the best part is, when all of you are crying about how your games look so last-gen, I'll be going out and buying a new graphics card, and gloating about the fact that whenever there is a hardware update, I can simply SWAP OUT THE CARDS, while you all have to wait for Microsoft or Sony to come out with a new version, which you will then have to buy all over again.
Sorry to break it to you, but it's the truth. The PS3 may be good at crunching numbers, but it will never beat the flexability and graphics quality of the future games. (Also, compare a folding at home GPU with a PS3. I'm not sure, but i think that the GPU has more power.)
@Mike10010100
DX9 on the PS3? No PlayStation# game uses DirectX at all, and almost certainly never will.
you're right to be unsure.
the Cell processor far outstrips all available graphics cards in terms of processing power
Sony's strategy is very clever, they've put a DX9 graphics card in their console (bear in mind here that the only console that uses DX is the Xbox 360), but they'll be able to create graphics that continue to keep up to date for a couple of years yet as more graphics is moved over to the cell processor.
Programming games for the cell processor is still in its infancy, but with companies jumping onto it left right and center (look at toshiba's recent shift to managing hd content on the cell which will be capable of a lot more than just decoding video), the capabilities of the processor will be begin to be unlocked.
Think 2xCore 2 Quads which are specialised for graphics and physics.
What the folding@home project shows off for sony is what results you can get out of the cell when you dedicate time to exploiting the maximum power out of it. Given time, more people will be doing so.
(btw, i'm a PC user, i dont own a console. If I did it'd be a Wii. I like good graphics but consoles are for playing with friends)
yeah, C.T. wrote it far better than i did. im not trying to compare the systems, but if the 360 and wii join F@H, people will say that the PS3 is better because it can process more data, faster.
i didnt mention anything about the games, so its pretty stupid that they were brought up.
@jason2345291209247-
You sure live in a fantasy-filled world. Are their any unicorns with Halos on their heads and pretty little Bill Gates flower blooms all over your world? The reality of the world is, that they all bash each other. [Ignorance is bliss.]
No Andir I'm not bashing Sony or the ps3. I couldn't care less about the ps3/360/wii comparisons or other off topic chats. I merely think that if every ps3 owner instead of leaving their ps3s on to do this, had simply sent the money spent on their electric bills to the folding@home group or to assorted disease charities, the money would've been better spent that way. At a minimum you'd be looking at 4 million a month.
SETA@Home still has more power....
That's sad... But if they get contact with aliens and they come here and solve the problems folding@home is working on, I won't complain.
Xbox 360 would be helpful to the project; so long as it doesn't fry.
the reason why 360 and wii dont do is that neither of them have IBM's seven-core cell microprocessor as its CPU, unlike the playstation 3, allowing it to calculate large numbers at a faster speed.
I wish my wii and my 360 had a 7 core processor that was only used to jack up the price of them, because every one knows that PS3 software uses it at full potential
The PS3 CELL is 1 General purpose "normal" computer core, and seven (1 of which is always idle, and 1 of which is turned off) SPEs which are mathematical calculation units perfect for folding at home. (or SETI HINT HINT) because the real work is done using mathematics.
Now I'd love to know if they are actually making any sort of progress with their new found processing power.
and I'm #10 on the engadget F@H team... woot.
damn you ryan...i'm @ 354 and climbing, pretty good considering i was 400 about 2 weeks ago. If you're still doing some folding, which i think you are, then you should see yourself climbing into the top 5 soon...i think all those guys haven't had an active cpu in the last 50 days. then again, i fold on my comp, my dads comp, an old piece of shit intel p3, and the ps3 (occasionally)
looks like engadget just stated to summon the ps3 funboys, ok holding@home sounds like its the right thing to do but, that thing takes about 8hours to complete one cycle and at 400 plus watts you mind as well donate money to the red cross or something, besides it will take a miracle to really find a cure for cancer or any decease since drug companies are not trying to find a cure for nothing, just a treatment to make money of you, its sad but its what our world is turning to, its all about the $$$$
So, instead of trying to find a cure for something, you'd rather spend all your money treating it forever?
Let me ask you something? Do you really think that when you go to a doctor, do you think he cares if you see daylight the nextday, he's more worried about what kind of insurrance you have, if he cures your decease you would not need to see him anymore and he really dont want that what you think, thats why all drugs have side effect because they are not ment to cure anything they are ment for treatment
read the faq for the ps3 at FAH website, the ps3 uses approx 200 watts not 400 watts, and being friends with many cancer survivors, they much rather spend the money on"400" (Read:200) watts of power to find a cure then donate it to the red cross so they can fu@k up again. Use your heart AND brain next time, k?
That's exactly the reason why I'd rather give my time/money to a company researching a CURE instead of dosing out a treatment.